On the dead slopes of the volcano, Marian McGuinness meets a living legend.

There's just no other way of saying it. There is something eerie about Pompeii. It's not the meticulously planned but deserted streets. It's not the ancient columns standing like silent exclamation marks and it's not the plaster casts of cowering people who perished in the cataclysmic eruption of AD79.

No matter where we wandered we were being watched. Over every shoulder, out of every sideways glance there was a sense of foreboding.

Like a sleeping giant, Mount Vesuvius loomed as a god of all it surveyed. It was time to check out this legend. We bought our EUR8.60 ($14.50) return bus tickets from the tobacconist outside the ruins in Piazza Anfiteatro and waited for the local bus. Snaking up through the foothills of lava outcrops and earthy banks of citrus we passed vineyards and vegetable gardens that thickened into forests of oak and chestnut trees.

After about 45 minutes, the now barren landscape was seared by grey scars of lava that framed rashes of golden broom.

A three-metre-high bust of the puppet character Pulcinella had been carved out of lava and watched over the distant hazy Bay of Naples.

We reached the defunct chairlift station and the bus stopped at an isolated souvenir shop. A dapper old man wearing an Argyle-patterned jumper and leather cap climbed onto the bus and whispered to our driver.

There was bad news. A freak snowstorm in the night had destroyed the path to the crater's rim. The good news was that instead of driving us straight back to Pompeii, the driver would wait for half an hour so we could have a wander around.

As serendipity would have it, the owner of the green souvenir shop was Andrew - the Vesuvius keeper.

Stepping around the feral cats, we circled Andrew as he began his spiel in English, German and French. He held a book on Vesuvius and flipped through its pages showing the volcano in all its stages of glory and destruction.

"My town where I was born," he pointed. "Torre del Greco. Incredible, seven times destroyed in 400 years." He continued his potted history of the last 2000 years.

At 24 he had started as the ticket man for the chairlift and now he was 77. "I am the historical memory of Vesuvio, Andrew de Gregorio. The Vesuvius keeper."

With cameras clicking he quipped: "I am a movie star!"

The bus horn blared. After a quick squiz at the souvenirs and deciding not to buy a carved black lava cat sprinkled with glitter, we were back on board and winding our way down the volcano.

Disappointed at not climbing to the rim? Perhaps. But as I opened my newly purchased book, I smiled. Andrew had penned a sketch of the smoking volcano, written his website, stamped it "terrazzo del paradiso 780m" and signed his warmest wishes next to his blue inky thumbprint. What a legend.