Vesuvius - The Volcano What Done It in AD79!

 

Above is Mount Vesuvius viewed from the excavated ruins of Pompeii. Any trip to the Bay of Naples area involves Vesuvius, even if only as a view. On Day 2 of our time recently in Sorrento, as a base for visits to Pompeii and Herculaneum, the party had a day with nothing scheduled. So this became the opportunity to pay a visit to the volcano's crater.

Mount Vesuvius viewed from Sorrento

Picking up a minibus from Pompeii Scavi-Villa dei Misteri, the train station that serves the ruins I admired and was horrified in equal measure by the driver's skills as he maneuvered the packed vehicle ever upwards on the slopes of Vesuvius. It helped in no way that, with my well developed fear of heights, I was on the side of the bus with the most dramatic view of the perilous drop down the side of the mountain that my window seat offered!

Nevertheless, we made it to the point where the buses disgorged their tourists and left them to make their way to the rim of the crater on foot. The literature states that the climb is only 1.8 metres but whilst manageable it wasn't exactly a walk in the park.

The upward journey offered marvelous views across the Bay of Naples. 

I was surprised to find that the air was free from the smell of sulphur. In my albeit limited experience of climbing volcanoes (Mount Teide in Tenerife in 1982!) even dormant volcanoes show off a lot of sulphur and associated odours! No such problems on the crater's edge on Vesuvius.

Panoramic view of the crater

In terms of thermal activity there were no more than a few wisps of steam just visible around some of the rocks. But to peer into the void is like looking at a vision of Tolkien's creation of Mordor! It is definitely a place in which to feel wholly insignificant in the face of the full force of nature. Just think that Prior to the eruption in AD59 Vesuvius was no less than 600 meters higher than it is today and consider the statistic that I mentioned in the earlier Pompeii post, that at the height of the eruption, the volcano was ejecting an estimated 1.5 million tonnes of material per second! I find those facts very intimidating. 

We spent about an hour walking around the area of the rim that is accessible to the public   (approximately half of the perimeter by my reckoning) before making the descent back to the car park area and our daredevil bus driver. The way down was a little more perilous as the pumice on the path had a tendency to take your feet from under you. 

This chap though had it all sussed!

Vesuvius is safe for now. Monitoring stations are clearly visible around the crater. We were told as long as Sicily's Mount Etna continued to perform, Vesuvius will remain quiet. However, if the Etna's seismic activity tailed off the folk in and around the Bay of Naples would need to take heed!