Peter gets out of the Fiat and hobbles painfully across the street. Between now and their trip to Australia he spent some time with Maurizio, climbing British gritstone. The limp is thanks to a 15-foot fall. His ankle is swollen blue, sticking over the top of his shoe. He’s in a foul mood.

We’re locked, or more precisely, they are locked out of their own lemon-colored house thanks to me. A neighbor walks and they talk to him in Italian, figuring out what to do short of calling the locksmith. A plan is hatched after we spot a metal ladder leading on top of neighbors house. Problem is, there is an angry German Shepard with one floppy ear guarding the yard below. Peter distracts it, and I climb over the stone fence. Then I drag the ladder on top of the other house and prop it up to the Lemon House. 

“Oh and you thought you’d be climbing rocks today, and now you’re climbing houses,” Anne says to Caroline, while they watch from below.

I gain entrance through the roof and open the door below. Then climb back up and lower the ladder to where it was above the still pissed-off dog. The piece of twine holding the ladder is so sun burnt it falls to pieces in my hand. Sadly, it is probably the most heroic bit of climbing I’ve yet done in Sardegna.

Despite Peter’s foot, he asks if he can catch a ride with us to the crags. Anne makes us promise we won’t make him climb too hard. So we venture up into the Campo dei Miracolo and the Ichnusa area overlooking Pedra Longa and the sea. It’s a beautiful spot, obviously, made more beautiful by the pigs we have come to know from coming here over last two weeks, and I suppose, named in part after the refreshingly good beer, which is in turn comes from the Greek word for foot. How the ancient sailors knew that from the coastline navigation alone is something we’ll probably never understand. But all this hardly matters as we spent a few hours together, goat bells ringing on the hillside above, the occasional fine snort of pig, the broad ocean below, and one move after another on another fine piece of limestone crag hanging there for no other reason or purpose than to climb somehow.