Avandra Field Guide · Sardinia, Italy
Sardinia: The Gallura Coast, the Gorge and the Archipelago
12
nights
756
km driving
9
challenges
2,575
XP to earn
12
nights
756
km driving
9
challenges
2,575
XP to earn
Follow in the footsteps of Richard and Jackie, the hosts of Early Retirement Wanderlust, on their fortnight on Sardinia. Off the boat on the north coast, three nights under olive trees at Badesi, then the striped basilica at Saccargia and the painted alleys of Bosa on the way down the west coast to Tharros, a Phoenician city on a spit of the Sinis. A night in a gated car park in Cagliari because the city has nothing else, then up the east coast to a beach with a watchtower over it, and two nights at a thousand metres on the Genna Silana pass — cool air, a sunrise over the valley, and the path down into the Gola di Gorropu, where the walls run to five hundred metres and the floor closes to four. Then the ferry across to La Maddalena, a lap of the island on a road bike, and the nuraghi at Arzachena before the crossing to Corsica. Wild camping is frowned on here, so this is a campsite trip: twenty-five euros a night with an ACSI card almost everywhere.
Best from April, May, June, September and October
756 km of driving in total, about 14 hours over 12 days
A Creator Trail
Follow in the footsteps of Richard and Jackie, the hosts of Early Retirement Wanderlust, on their fortnight on Sardinia, which they drove in May and June 2026. They left their careers at 51 to see more of the world in a campervan, and film it as they go — the travels, the house renovations and the ups and downs of retiring early.
The route and the stop notes come from their trip, across 3 videos; prices are what they paid at the time. They drove it in a 5.4 m campervan, so the access notes assume that length.
Orgosolo: The Murals and Monte Novo San Giovanni
Edited by Avandra
Days 1–3 · 3 nights
Badesi and the Gallura hills
56 km · 1 h 5 min from Porto Torres (the arrival port)
Off the overnight boat from Toulon, which calls in Corsica at about six in the morning before Sardinia.
Base camp · 3 nights
Camping Village Baia Paradiso
4.1
565 Google reviews
€25 a night with an ACSI card · Private beach and pool; olive-shaded pitches, some sandy and low under the branches
Editor's note
Three nights in the first week of the season, with the toilet blocks half rebuilt around them and almost nothing else on this stretch of coast — which is the point, because the evenings are silent. Watch the pitches if you are high-topped: the old olive trees give the shade but take the headroom, and some ground is soft sand. The day out is on the bike: a forty-kilometre loop with a ten-kilometre climb to a hill village where the coffee is a euro thirty and you can see Corsica from the top.
Day 4 · day stop
Saccargia
58 km · 1 h 6 min from Badesi and the Gallura hills
Inland and south, off the coast.
Stop · day stop
Basilica di Saccargia
The basilica stands alone in the valley; rough approach roads
Editor's note
A church on its own in a valley with no village attached, banded black and white and consecrated in 1116. Worth the stop for the stonework alone, and the apse frescoes if it is open. The roads in are badly broken in places.
Day 4 · day stop
Bosa
74 km · 1 h 12 min from Saccargia
Down the inland roads, where an isolated 30 km/h sign is the warning that a rough stretch follows.
Stop · day stop
Bosa
Park below the old town and walk up; the lanes are too tight for a van
Editor's note
The town comes into view from the hills above, painted houses stacked over the Temo — the only navigable river on the island. Wander the alleys, where the town’s own needle lace is still worked in doorways, then climb to the Castello Malaspina on the hill. Tortoises cross the roads around here and oncoming drivers flash their lights to warn you.
Days 4–5 · 2 nights
Torre del Pozzo and Tharros
42 km · 57 min from Bosa
South down the west coast.
Base camp · 2 nights
Camping Bella Sardinia
3.9
1,289 Google reviews
€25 a night with an ACSI card, electric included · Very large, tour-operator style; quiet midweek, loud over a bank holiday
Editor's note
A big site with statics and tour units, dated but spotless, with a pool, a pizzeria and a mini-market, and plenty of shade. Tharros is the day out: a city founded by the Phoenicians in the eighth century BC on the tip of the Sinis, fortified by Carthage, rebuilt by Rome and given up around 1050. It is open ground above the sea with no shade at all, so go early.
Day 6 · 1 night
Cagliari
122 km · 1 h 42 min from Torre del Pozzo and Tharros
Across to the south coast.
Aire · 1 night
Camper Cagliari Park
€23 a night, showers €1 · Gated with staff overnight; Portakabin facilities, no shade. Walking distance to the old town
Editor's note
The only option in the city — no campsites, no park-ups — so it has a monopoly and no shade, and it is still worth it for being able to walk into the Castello district. Safe, gated, quiet overnight. The old town is handsome and heavily tagged with graffiti; a back-street pizzeria will do you a margherita for seven euros. The flamingos are in the Molentargius salt pans behind the Poetto beach.
Days 7–8 · 2 nights
Bari Sardo and Arbatax
116 km · 2 h 4 min from Cagliari
Up the east coast on the rebuilt SS125, which is far easier going than its reputation. Their night between here and Cagliari was at a small farm campsite in the south-east interior found on Park4Night, which the videos never name — there is a cluster of them inland if you want the same.
Base camp · 2 nights
Camping Torre di Bari Sardo
4.8
808 Google reviews
€25 a night with an ACSI card · Very large pitches; facilities in converted shipping containers, hot showers €1 for three minutes
Editor's note
Their favourite site of the Sardinia leg and the one to copy: family-run, spotless, free coffee on arrival and departure, and the beach five minutes away. The water off Torre di Bari is clear and cold and gets deep fast, the beach is fine pebble so bring something on your feet, and there is a ruined watchtower above it and pine forest behind for shade. No beach clubs, which is why it stays quiet even on a bank holiday. Arbatax and its red porphyry rocks are up the coast.
Days 9–10 · 2 nights
The Genna Silana pass and the Gola di Gorropu
56 km · 58 min from Bari Sardo and Arbatax
Inland and up: tight mountain passes, then good mountain road. Allow well past whatever the satnav says.
Base camp · 2 nights
Camping Gorropu-Camper Sosta Silana
4.6
540 Google reviews
€25 a night with electric hookup; carry cash · About 1,000 m up on the pass; facilities sit roughly 25 m below the pitches
Editor's note
The best stop on the trip. A campsite and aire together at about a thousand metres, cool at night after the coast, with a sunrise over the valley and pitches that look straight down it. The guardian will run you to the trailhead early if you ask, and a van comes round selling honey, cheese, salami and wine, so keep cash. The gorge is the reason to be here: about six kilometres and six hundred metres down on a shaded balcony path, then the climb back out, which is the hard part and brutal in the mid-thirties — or take the jeep shuttle from below instead. Orgosolo and its murals are the other day out, over the mountain.
What brought them here
Su Gorropu: The Canyon Under the Supramonte
400 XPWalk in along the Rio Flumineddu, the river that cut the gorge, and keep going to where the floor closes to about four metres across with over five hundred metres of limestone standing above you
3.7 km from camp
About 6 h
Orgosolo: The Murals and Monte Novo San Giovanni
325 XPWalk the streets of Orgosolo and look at the murals on its walls, painted from 1969, on the village's politics and history
11.5 km from camp
About 4 h
Walks from camp
Days 11–12 · 2 nights
La Maddalena and Caprera
164 km · 3 h 2 min from The Genna Silana pass and the Gola di Gorropu
Two hours north to Palau, then the twenty-minute car ferry — about €77 return for a van and two people, booked on the operator’s own site.
Base camp · 2 nights
Area camper e case vacanze sole
4.3
354 Google reviews
€36 a night with electric hookup · One of only three sites on the island, and the closest to the town; cyclable in
Editor's note
The priciest stop of the leg and the one that cost them sleep, because the mosquitoes got into the van both nights despite the screens. Worth it anyway: a twenty-seven-kilometre lap of the island on a road bike, out at eight, with the coast road following every contour past cove after cove and a short sharp climb to the high point. Too hilly for folding-bike gearing. Caprera is over the road bridge and heaves even early on a Sunday — the beach at the far end is packed, the coves halfway along are not.
Also within reach
The Costa Smeralda: Porto Cervo and the Granite Coves
275 XPSwim at the Spiaggia del Principe, the crescent of white sand on the Costa Smeralda, on the coast developed from 1962 under Karim Aga Khan IV
18.2 km from camp
About 5 h
Bonifacio: The Town on the Edge of the Cliff
250 XPWalk the Haute Ville the length of its cape — 1,600 m long and barely 100 m wide — out to the houses built on the lip of the undercut limestone, which have given the impression of imminent collapse for centuries without troubling anybody who lives in them
29.3 km from camp
About 5 h
Day 13 · day stop
The nuraghi at Arzachena
27 km · 48 min from La Maddalena and Caprera
Back on the ferry to Palau and a short run inland.
Stop · day stop
Nuraghe La Prisgiona
Two sites with separate entrances a few hundred metres apart
Editor's note
Two Bronze Age sites within a few hundred metres of each other, and the pair of them are the best archaeology on this route. La Prisgiona was lived in from the fourteenth to the ninth century BC: a false dome over eight metres in the central chamber, a well more than seven metres deep in the courtyard, and a meeting hut with a ring bench for twelve. Coddu Vecchiu, down the lane, is a giants’ tomb built in three goes over a thousand years.
Day 13 · day stop
Santa Teresa Gallura and the crossing to Corsica
40 km · 47 min from The nuraghi at Arzachena
West along the north coast. A heatwave arrived on their last day.
Overnight ferry · day stop
Santa Teresa Gallura ferry port
The crossing to Bonifacio; the source does not name the port they used
Editor's note
The short hop to Bonifacio is the usual way off the top of Sardinia, and the one the dates fit, though the videos never say which port they sailed from. Their last night on the island is not recorded either. From here it was a fortnight in Corsica.
Finish the guide, earn 2,575 XP
9 challenges across 10 stops.
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