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FOOD

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Comfortable shoes and plenty of layers.

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n the very edge of night, when the air is of a misty purplish hue and cool enough to provoke shivers, I pedal past meadow after field filled with monstrous, twisted forms. Above me, stars falter as birds muster, their early morning song a reassuring melody at this moody hour. Red rust dirt flies up to fleck my legs, connecting me to the land below my wheels. It’s now just a matter of minutes before the sun tiptoes over the horizon to warm Puglia’s Val d’Itria and its ancient olive groves. I half expect to see the age-old trees rise to stretch and yawn.

It’s easy to embrace anthropomorphism and let your imagination soar – many of these gnarled olive trees are 2,000 years old, planted by Roman hands. I’m reminded of the forests that fuelled my childhood imagination, of those found in the land of Oz and in books by Enid Blyton. I see hunched wizards with cracked grey faces, and the contorted arms of witches reaching out to me.

‘It’s not the trees’ age that has made them crooked. It was the Chelidonium winds that bent them when they were first planted,’ Niko, my cycling guide explains, as we sit on a dry limestone wall to snack on Tarallucci, salty ring-shaped crackers made with olive oil. In the tiny notebook I carry everywhere, I scribble the word Chelidonium down, hungry for any poetic morsel Niko gives me. Oh, and what a gem it is: this beautiful adjective comes from the Greek word for the swallow, khelidon, because the winds, like the birds, return in spring. The olive groves are now protected for their cultural heritage by UNESCO and Italian law – not very long ago, single trees were sold for up to €50,000.

Between the trees, now glowing in the velvety tones of daybreak, are fields planted with fennel, radicchio, artichoke, asparagus, broccoli and cauliflower. The last two, warmed by the risen sun, send up rich aromas to stoke dormant memories of my grandpa’s allotment and being told to ‘eat up’ during childhood teatimes. Farm dogs bark a warning to their masters as we cycle past, who, although busy hoeing, watering, and tending to their plots, never fail to offer a polite ‘Buongiorno’. With little mechanical intervention, this is labourintensive work, and we cease our pedalling to watch the rough shaking of an olive tree by three men poised on ladders, the fruit from

which lands with a small bounce on the net spread wide at the foot of the 4ft-thick tree.

It’s not so very long ago (fifteen years or thereabouts) that Puglia was considered down at heel, which is rather apt given where it sits: at the very bottom of Italy’s shapely boot. Although it may have shrugged off its poor southern cousin image, travel here remains low key, and is less about ticking off tourist sights (with the exception of Alberobello), and more about soaking up the culture in a gentle way.

The Val d’Itria stretches from Putignano in the north to Ostuni in the south and the valley bit of it isn’t deep, more of a slight karstic depression, running between the towns of Locorotondo, Cisternino and Martina Franca. Awash with vineyards, wheat fields, vegetable plots, cherry orchards, almond and olive groves (which produce around 40% of Italy’s olive oil), it’s like cruising through a pantry, dotted with trulli, the small, white, limestone, conicalroofed dwellings that many would argue have put Puglia on the map. I’ve heard these iconic Pugliese houses described as many things – cupcakes, upside-down ice-cream cones, hobbit houses, and, worst of all, Smurf domes – all far too twee and disrespectful for their ancient history, but I too fall into the trap of judging them on their fairy-tale qualities when I arrive in UNESCO-protected Alberobello (its name meaning beautiful tree), which, with over 1,400 trulli, has the highest concentration of all the valley’s towns.

‘Oh, this is the cutest place I’ve ever seen,’

I gush. Mimmo, my guide, whose family has lived here for several generations stops in his tracks and frowns. ‘But more importantly,’ he says to me, ‘is that you understand the history and why the town was built this way and how ingenious is the design.’ From then on, I’m teacher’s pet, lapping up every detail of the town’s chequered history, that stretches from the Middle Ages. The conical roof, which has

OPPOSITE a small opening at its pinnacle (each topped with the mark of the stonemason), was cleverly constructed as no taxes could be levied on a dwelling that was not considered finished (hence the hole) and the houses were built a secco (without mortar) so that they could be demolished quickly in case of royal inspection. Constructed below the oak treeline, the folk here didn’t wish to be bothered as they felled trees to secretly supply Italy’s growing ship-building industry, and rough brutes were stationed in the woods to deal with any of the king’s men who came sni ng around.

Medieval murder aside, what Mimmo describes of his own childhood sounds idyllic.

‘I used to sleep in the cone,’ he tells me. ‘Most trulli have a child’s room up there that can be reached by a ladder. Our cat used to stare at me through the tiny window, and behind the cat were the stars. These were the best years of my life.’

Once the tour buses have left, I stick around to enjoy the town in relative quiet, watching the swallows swoop over tapering roofs painted with Christian symbols such as the sun, cross and Mary’s heart, which give thanks to a church that arrived in the early 1900s to support to an impoverished community. An almond is the backdrop in the painting of Christ on the cross in Alberobello’s Church of Saint Anthony of Padua because the church provided schooling for the children while their parents made a fresh start in clearing the land and planting almond groves. Mimo tells me it was the saving of the place. A rosy glow of contentment falls over me as I sit on a bench in an area of the town where UNESCO has forbidden any commercial use of trulli, save for a handful of bed and breakfast accommodation. The light fades, the day disappears, and in the few flaps of a wing, the swallows swoop is gone, as if they are charged only by the sun.

Although Alberobello is the pin-up for tourism in the area, there are other lesser known citta biancha (white towns) to explore. I spy Cisternino from a distance, often referred to as the kasbah of Puglia because of its warren of narrow streets with buildings that tumble from the hilltop like a spill of sugar cubes. The outside staircases on the white-washed houses remind me more of homes I’ve seen in Greece and Turkey (no small wonder as Puglia’s past is one of serial occupations, first becoming a Greek colony in the seventh century BC). I poke my nose into inner courtyard gardens filled with blue pots sprouting cacti, where bougainvilleadripping trellises give scant shade to basking cats and washing hung from windows flaps idly in the breeze. I’m happily losing hours to what the Italians term as la dolce far niente (‘the

sweetness of idleness’), on my way to buy my lunch from a fornella (a kind of butcher’s shop come trattoria, unique to Cisternino) where bombette (parcels of meat, usually pork mince, stuffed with local caciocavallo cheese and spices) is their forte.

‘Da portare via [to carry away]?’ the butcher chef asks me, and I nod as he flips my bombette onto his grill. My plan is to ferry it to the gardens near the 13th-century Chiesa Matrice, for views over rolling olive groves, where counting the tips of trulli houses peeping out from the green will be my fun. Hot through its wrapper, I swap my lunch from hand to hand, bringing the parcel to my nose again and again, to smell the meaty, herby aroma. First bite, and the penny drops over the name bombette, due to the explosion of flavour.

Puglia has a skinny waif-like geography, so you’re never far from the coast. Travel east and you arrive at the Adriatic; go west and the Ionian laps the shore. In Monopoli, on the Adriatic coast, I sit a while on the quay to watch a fisherman, recently returned from an olivegreen sea, wash his haul of small white octopi (it is the Latin spelling I favour, as we are in Italy). Over and over, he swills the slippery polpi in a bucket, then lays each gently on the deck. I have no doubt that there’s devotion in the quiet repetition of the act. ‘Bellissima,’ I shout when one is held up with pride for me to see.

From here, I wander down to Monopoli’s 16th-century Carlo V Castle – a brick bastion, licked by the waves; past small coves where red halter-neck swimsuit- and speedoclad Italian sunworshippers provide a 1950s cinematic scene. Slender, white-washed streets, festooned with straw hats strung on bunting, lead me to the town’s grandiose cathedral Maria Santissima della Madia, built in 1772 (although a church has been on this site since the 11th century), which soars up to diminish all around it, but has a soft centre of candy pink and white marble.

Just a little further along the coast, Polignano a Mare is ever-popular with Italian holidaymakers, who, in summer months, pack like sardines on Lama Monachile, a white pebble beach hugged by the steep cliffs that divers throw themselves from during the annual Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series. In autumn, it’s a less hectic scene, with room to spread my towel, before I take a gentle leap into the crystal-clear aquamarine waters (still averaging 25 degrees) from the lower rock ledges, swimming out to view a coastline riddled with caves and rock formations sculpted by the ceaseless crashing of water.

Back on the beach, melodic, expressive banter from multi-generational Italian families mixes with the lap of the sea to lull me to sleep, and I wake up ravenous, ready to seek out a dinner of linguine ai di mare (sea urchin linguine), which I find on the terrace of Fly just above the beach. In keeping with the time I have on my hands, I want to eat slow food, of which there is plenty. Not only sea urchins, but the carote di Polignano, a much-extolled local carrot with hues of yellow to dark purple. The waiter humours my strange order, while grinning and shaking his head.

Back in the valley, I pick my way through the sparse Greco-Roman ruins at the Parco Archeologico di Egnazia, close to the fishing village of Savelletri di Fasano. Dusty roads, bordered by prickly pear, have led me to this spot, where a vivid imagination is required to conjure images of a once commercial fourthcentury settlement, with origins that go back as far as the Bronze Age. Lizards dart over foundations of Roman houses and ruins of Messapian tombs, and I’m back in a land of make believe, feeling that it’s the least I can do to conjure up scenes of grandeur for this graveyard of a town: a child drawing water from a well, an artist rendering a pomegranate (a symbol of afterlife that is found in chambers here), and a soldier kneeling to pray at the altar of a temple dedicated to Venus, built in the second-century AD under Emporer Trajan. Now is the hour, caught between day and night, when anything is possible.

As the sun drops into the ocean I leave the ghosts behind, the wheels of my bike serving as a reminder of life’s full circles as I head back towards Puglia’s enchanted olive trees, where nothing ever changes.

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Direct international flights arrive from Europe into both Bari and Brindisi airports.

March to June and September to October for warm temperatures and fewer crowds – perfect for cycling and walking.

CURRENCY Euro

TIME ZONE GMT +1

In Puglia, it’s all about cucina povera, so-called ‘poor cuisine’, although all the best restaurants dish it up and it’s delicious. Fresh, seasonal and inexpensive are the rules. Specialities include orecchiette pasta served with tomatoes and ricotta; broad bean and chicory puree; and an abundance of fish and seafood including ricci di mare (sea urchins). Don’t miss pancotto – fish soup thickened with bread.

WHERE TO STAY

Luxury splurge: Borgo Egnazia in Savelletri. Boutique Trullo stay: Trulli e Puglia in Alberobello.

The best way to explore the region is by bike and car, both of which can be easily hired locally.

MUST-PACK ITEM

Insect repellent and comfortable trainers.

WHY GO

Interesting culture, lovely countryside and incredible food. This is the perfect region in which to practise slow travel and to connect with the people and culture in an unhurried way.

Kate Wickers’ family travel memoir Shape of a Boy: My family & Other Adventures is available through Amazon and all good bookshops. For more details go to jrnymag.com/ kate.