Trabocco? Trubacco? Trivago?
All about Trabocco - the strange and ancient fishing contraptions dotting THE ABRUZZO Coastline
A Trabocco off the East Coast of Italy
From Pescara the Adriatic coast of Italy swishes south with sandy or shingled beaches and all but endless ribbon development, based on case de vacanze, holiday homes, small hotels, and all the trappings of small seaside business. In summer as busy as a tower of termites, out of season, grey and quiet except for sunny weekends.
And then, round about Ortona, geography takes over. Cliffs and winds and sheer drops down to the rocky coast, winding hair-pin roads, staggering views, and here and there small harbours and bays. This is the Costa dei Trabocchi .
I’d read about these trabocchi, I’d seen pictures of them, but the first glimpse of one of these dramatic, outlandish constructions was still startling. A wooden platform, supported by a forest of wooden posts, arms and legs and many more limbs jutting out at wild angles. Dangling seawards a formidable net, that will be lowered into the sea, at optimum angle to gather up the fish. The whole wild construction, connected to land by a meandering wooden pathway. It’s like something out of a Tim Burton movie, except that the sun is shining and the sky and the sea are blue blue blue.
The fierce trabocco guardian
The fearsome looking creature heading my way, turns out to be the soppiest of dogs, meandering contendedly along the stone jetty that has turned the small bay into a porticciolo, a tiny port, with its shoal of parked up little fishing boats, and the scent of ozone and crab or lobster pots.
The place is deserted, and mildy unkempt, and all the more beautiful for it. Windy, sunny, fascinating. I can’t imagine that it ever gets overwhelmingly crowded (too small, too lacking in tourism honeypots) There’s a handful of restaurants looking across the sea, but this is not a place for a long stop-over. What you can do, if you have forethought enough, is to book a visit to the Trabocco, and savour lunch or supper on board. Inevitably, I wasn’t that smart, so after the stroll along the cliff to the next wild trabocco, I left.