Flamingos and lemon groves at Sicily's Vendicari reserve

We rented Il Nido because we thought other people wouldn’t like it: small, basic and without internet, the online picture suggesting it was pressed up against a concrete pillar beneath a rotting flyover. The hostess opened a cupboard and said, “This is a bomb.” My partner whispered, “Not bomb, bombola” — the gas canister.

In the driving rain we heard frogs and a goose, until a sunny Saturday revealed the roar as waves and the gobbling sound as wild flamingos. We were, as promised, in a tumbledown baglio among shimmering lemon groves on the edge of the Vendicari nature reserve, and it was glorious.

A baglio is a fortified group of buildings around a central courtyard; opposite our building the barns were caved in and the courtyard more a sunken boulder. Poppies and marigolds billowed in one corner, and on a collapsed roof a starling practised a bewildering repertory of voices.

vendicari, sicily, flamingos, lemon groves, baglio, il nido, nature reserve, starling, poppies, marigolds