My sleep was shattered this morning by persistent, monotonous bell ringing, sounding like hammer blows: ‘You – will – get – up -now . You- will- go- to -church’. As Alan said, it was like mad monks ringing the bells. Clearly there was to be no peace for the wicked, time to get up. We’ve arrived in Ostuni, south of Brindisi in Puglia or Apulia as we say in the UK, Ostuni is the so called ‘white town’.
We wrenched ourselves away from Sicily and very easily and speedily, crossed to the Italian mainland to visit southern Italy. We decided to bypass Calabria: it’s a huge region, people were not terribly flattering about it, referring to sullen, reserved people and significant levels of organised crime (perhaps the two are connected?). So we jumped on a motorway and headed straight for Basilicata and Puglia, the arch of the foot of Italy, bypassing the toe…if you see what I mean. Sicily stretched her arm out towards us, she was ever so close as we headed up the road, past the opposing points of Scylla and Charybdis and I scratched my head trying to remember the Odyssey. Fleeting impressions of Calabria – cherry trees, bunches of chillies being sold everywhere, huge motorway viaducts and tunnels boring alongside and through the massive mountain ranges which headed right down to the sea.
After a pleasant, quiet night by yet another beach (I’ve probably spent more nights on rocky promontories than you’ve eaten….eggs Benedict), we found ourselves near Matera, an ancient town where cave dwellers lived. It’s called the city of stones in Italian. Trouble was, we were on the other side of the ravine, on which the city teetered. It was a lovely day and there was a bridge across the ravine so we decided to walk. Visions of India Jones sprang to mind but the bridge was only 30 metres, so I airily said I’d be fine, when asked if I suffered from vertigo. I rapidly began to realise that the vertigo question was in relation to the path itself, not the bridge. The footpath was little more than an unprotected goat track, full of those horrible little stones which make you slip. Never mind, we made it and then, to quote, the only way was up, baby…
We puffed our way into town, realising that everyone else we’d met on the track was under 40, hmmm, can’t think why that would be and fought our way through the barricade at the top designed to keep people out! After making this huge effort we found the museum closed for holidays until March. Great. We admired Matera, which is a fascinating place and persuaded a kind man to give us a lift back to the campsite. He talked about the weather all the way, so it’s not just the English and he was right, it was going to be Really Windy.
Important note at this point – do you remember Early Closing Days? In the London suburb where I grew up it was Thursday I think… shops closed at lunchtime and the town was dead. Strange to think of in the days of 24 hour shopping…..well, early closing, forget Mondays in Italy. You might as well write off the whole day. Many, if not most museums are closed, as are restaurants and shops. If you are planning a long weekend, come early! Lord knows how much revenue the tourism industry loses with all these closures! It may be better in the north but here in the south, you have lunchtime closures, Monday closures and ‘I think we’ll close for the day’ closures. Did I tell you about the lady in the Palermo tourist office who was skulking behind locked sliding doors, because she had a cold and couldn’t bear the draught? Seriously. I had to do the squashing face against the door act to get in………..So Matera museum was not a surprise, in fact it’s more of a surprise to find things open!
Talking of things not being open, it’s pretty obvious that the tourism industry, here in the south, is entirely seasonal and many camper stops are closed. So as we tootle round, growing increasingly ripe and fruity, looking for places to wash ourselves, our clothes, dispose of waste, we have to be more and more creative. We have got water from the coastguards, garages, public water fountains, taken to showering in the van and using launderettes. I won’t bother you with the black waste……but hey ho we’ve been enjoying ourselves nevertheless.
After windy Matera, we drove down the heel of Italy stopping overnight at Mottola, where we pigged out on take away pizza and a box of ice cream which we kept in the freezer (note – good idea in Italy, don’t mess around with cornettos!) on past Taranto to one of the many derelict watchtowers dotted along the coast (another eggs Benedict moment). It was the beautiful, sunny Ionian coast and I contemplated retirement there when I’m ….90? A funny place with an abandoned and overgrown lido and more unfinished houses, prickly pears and agave plants in abundance. Then on, ever southwards, stopping at the pretty old port of Gallipoli, to the very tip of the heel of Italy and its most eastern point Santa Maria de Leuca. I’d been expecting showers, washing machine, all the facilities but there was….nothing! So I had to make do with blagging some water from a handsome coastguard ( ‘young man’ a la Harry Enfield) and we continued on, turning the heel of Italy and now going up the Adriatic coast. The weather was variable, as it now appeared to be across Italy, we’d been lucky in February.
And now we were going north and the sun was rising over the sea, not setting over it! How very confusing. We had our first real day of rain in Otranto, which was another town with castle and port and a very pretty pedestrian area next to the sea, it must be lovely in the summer! To Lecce, called the Florence of the south. It was one of those towns, like Agrigento, which had a nice ‘feel’ to it. It reminded me of Cambridge, perhaps because it is a university town, though maybe, given its size, it is more like Oxford. I made the rather reserved lady in the biscuit shop giggle, as I told her in Italian, that we had ‘lost our hips’ and that there would be no need for a boat from Calais, as we would be bobbing back like two little barrels. Well, it’s true, what can you expect after weeks of good food, wine and ice cream? Mind you, she could have been laughing at my Italian: maybe, given that I lived here in the 70s, I sound like some ageing hippie using the equivalent words to ‘far out man’ and ‘groovy’ ?
And so on to Ostuni and the bells. A pretty town but today we are beset by thunderstorms, so we’ve been a bit restricted. Trulli at Alborobello tomorrow……so we will have done almost a full circle, passing within a few miles of Matera.