Dip your toes into the foot of Italy: With new direct flights and Mafia members being locked up, could Calabria become the new Tuscany?

In the early 19th Century, the Scottish traveller Patrick Brydone was weighing up how to get to Sicily from the Italian mainland.

He could sail down the coast to Messina – or travel on land through Calabria. 

He chose the boat – and wrote to a friend: ‘The danger from the banditti is so great, the accommodation so wretched and inconvenience of every kind so numerous... that we soon relinquished that scheme.’

And that, pretty much, is how tourists have seen the land at the ‘toe’ of Italy’s ‘foot’ ever since: poor, Mafia-infested, with nowhere decent to stay.

But all that is changing. Ryanair has launched a weekly flight from Stansted to Lamezia Terme, a city in the heart of Calabria, and easyJet is starting one from Gatwick. There are new and updated coastal resorts, ‘agriturismo’ farm-stays and rural B&Bs starting up in the mountains. 

On a trip to Calabria, Italy, Mark Jones visits the award-winning town of Tropea (pictured)

Above is Tropea's spectacular Santa Maria dell’Isola cathedral, perched atop a rocky cliff surrounded by the Tyrrhenian Sea

Happily, authorities have also been busy locking up leading members of the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta gang’, so there’s good reason to feel safer. 

Best of all, Calabria is cheap compared to the Amalfi coast or even its neighbour Puglia – and the beaches and scenery are more than a match. The food isn’t bad, either.

I’ve given myself a week to drive between the far north in Pollino National Park to the town of Reggio Calabria at the southern tip – then followed by east to west, facing Greece and then Sicily.

Mark says Calabria's beaches rival the Amalfi coast. Above is the Michelino Beach near Tropea 

It turns out to be both great fun and hugely interesting. But you know what Italian drivers are like. Hundreds of miles with someone just inches from your back bumper takes its toll.

Fortunately, you can have a wonderful time making a base near the town of Tropea without needing the hire car at all.

It’s been named one of the most beautiful ‘borghi’ (villages) in Italy, with a historic centre perched high above the Med.

Panorama: Mark checks into an 'agriturismo' farm-stay in the town of Morano, which is framed by the Pollino mountains 

Calabria is known as the 'toe' of Italy's peninsula 

With my wife, Annie, I head to the viewpoint next to the house of Francesco Mottola, a priest from Tropea who died in 1969, and has since been beatified. Below, the emerald sea is clear, sunbathers dot the shore, while less hedonistic types tramp up to the Santa Maria dell’Isola cathedral.

We drive south to the Baia del Sole resort. The weather is sultry but the meadows are full of wildflowers. Bumping along the ill-made roads, we could be on a Caribbean island – all the more so as we enter the resort, with its round huts and lush gardens lined with palm trees.

Baia del Sole is a family property, while its sister resort along the coast, Capovaticano, is more geared to couples seeking cocktails, spa treatments and fine sunset views. From a grassy bank we watch the sun sink behind the volcano island of Stromboli. Next day I take a cycle tour. With my guide Alessandro, we wind up fertile hills of olive groves to the village of Spilinga, celebrated as the birthplace of the spicy salami, ’nduja. Every August they have a festival – a pretty hot occasion.

Then we ride back to the outskirts of Tropea. Here, Marco, who also works in tourism, his fiancée and sister, meet us by his family smallholding. They grow a Tropea speciality: sweet red onions. But Marco has also gone into winemaking and we end the day sipping rosés and whites between the vines. It’s charming, homemade and quirky – a bit like Calabria itself.

We then go to the swanky de’Minimi restaurant in town for a seriously long tasting menu. You can do swish, upmarket things in Calabria – though our favourite experience is anything but.

Golden sands: The beach at the Capovaticano resort, which is 'geared to couples seeking cocktails, spa treatments and fine sunset views'

Mark finishes his trip in the mountain village of Santa Severina (pictured)

The Locanda del Parco is an agriturismo in farmland below the spectacular mountain village of Morano (topped, as so many Calabrian villages incongruously are, with a Norman castle). It’s slightly bonkers. Outside, there’s a black London cab being used as a flowerbed. The bar by the pool is inside a giant lemon. Inside, we make fresh pasta and polenta, serenaded by local musicians.

We finish the trip on the other coast and another mountain range – La Sila – via the mountain village of Santa Severina, and another superb, value-for-money agriturismo hotel and restaurant, Le Puzelle. On this quiet, rockier coast, we spend the last night enjoying the kind of hospitality Calabria has been crying out for since Patrick Brydone’s time: the Praia Art resort.

The rooms are arranged neighbourhood-style around an empty beach, the combined sounds of waves and wind in the pines soothing you to sleep after dinner at the super-healthy, stylish Pietramare restaurant. Calabria just seems to be getting better all the time.