Looking for lava

On a trip to Sicily, Lucy Thornton takes in Mount Etna... but temperatures rise at the penis cafe

- VICKY LISSAMAN

Mamma Etna... what a cute name for such a volatile volcano. But she really is seen as a blessing by the people of Sicily.

Crops and vines thrive, and tourists flock to see this towering yet friendly inferno.

Just days before we visited, Mount Etna had one of its very frequent but frankly not too scary eruptions.

Black smoke billowed from one of Etna's several craters. But locals laughed as we told them the headlines about tourists running for their lives because, they say, the slow-moving lava poses little threat to life.

There is, more often than not, smoke coming from the craters and just like a Papal election: "White smoke good, black smoke bad," they point out.

The mountain is a truly powerful presence that draws the eye like a magnet from wherever you are on the Italian island. And the highlight of our trip was our expedition up her slopes.

We were on a week-long break with Titan Travel, who took the hassle out of those sometimes stressful journeys from your home to the airport by picking us and our luggage up from the doorstep.

"Adventure made effortless" they promise. They certainly delivered.

You can see why Titan Travel has been the UK's most awarded escorted tour operator for the past seven years.

From the moment they picked us up it was an enveloping experience, and we felt happily cocooned in our Titan Travel bubble with ever attentive tour manager Felicity. She kicked our hols off with a welcoming WhatsApp group (membership was not compulsory) to introduce 38 fellow travellers and give us a weather update.

She also reassured us, we were not going to die in a lava flow.

An example of how downright helpful she was, she warned us to get some snacks in the airport as the plane does not always do a trolley service and provided her picture so we wouldn't wander off with a stranger after landing.