Leaving Palermo for Agrigento is a ride that begins in noise and ends in silence. The first few kilometres are the city at its most insistent, with scooters, fumes, a market spilling onto the road and a strong chance of being cut up by a delivery van. Persevere. Once you are through the western suburbs and onto the road south, the island begins to open out into the great rolling interior that most visitors never see: hills of wheat, scrubby ridges, hilltop villages, and long, empty views to ranges blue in the distance.
The road crosses a country that once powered the Mediterranean economy. Sicily was the granary of Rome, and the old sulphur mines around Lercara Friddi supplied much of the world's sulphur in the nineteenth century, a story of brutal labour and sudden wealth. The old estates, the masserie, still stand in the fields, and in spring the slopes are green and scattered with red poppies and yellow broom. By late summer the same land turns the colour of toast.
At the end of the road is the Valley of the Temples, which is not really a valley but a ridge above the sea, where the Greek colonists of Akragas built a line of Doric temples in the sixth and fifth centuries BC. The Temple of Concordia is one of the best-preserved Greek temples anywhere, standing almost intact because it was later used as a church. The scale and the golden stone of the site are striking, and the sunset light on the columns is something to plan for.
Practically, the ride is around a hundred and thirty kilometres each way, and you should plan an early start and a long day. Palermo has fuel everywhere, and so do the towns along the route, but pick up a litre or two of water before the interior stretches. In summer the heat in the afternoon is intense, and the best months are April to June and late September. A sandwich with fresh ricotta in a village bar on the way is a small pleasure.