The Maronti shore and the Sorgeto coves

The Maronti is the longest beach on Ischia, running east from Sant'Angelo below Barano for about three kilometres. The sand is grey volcanic grit rather than gold, the cliffs behind it are pale and constantly eroding, and at the Cava Scura end steam still comes out of the ground and the sand is hot enough underfoot to cook in — the fumaroles are a working geothermal feature, not a display.

As a location it gives you space, which is the one thing the rest of the island does not have: room to walk, an uninterrupted line of sand, and a backdrop of cliffs instead of buildings. A long lens down the beach compresses the whole thing into layers of haze.

Round the headland to the west, below Panza, the Sorgeto cove is the other extreme: a small rocky inlet where hot springs run into the sea and pools of hot and cold water sit next to each other among the boulders. It is free and open all year, and people swim there in January, which makes it a genuinely different winter picture.

Sorgeto is reached down a long flight of steps — a couple of hundred of them, and the climb back is real — or by taxi boat from Sant'Angelo, which is the sensible option with a bag of gear. Both places are rock and shingle underfoot; the water at Sorgeto is hot enough to scald right at the spring, so keep clear of the source itself.