Puglia, June 2016

We flew from Stansted to Bari and arrived late at night for a drive in the dark to Trulli Angela which is just outside Locorotondo.

On arrival we were met by our excellent host - Rosanna. Trulli are circular limestone houses with conical roofs and the area around Locorotondo is endowed with thousands of them. Ours was superb...

Inside: kitchen, lounge, bathroom, two large bedrooms + a loft bedroom. Outside: a pool that we had to ourselves, large terrace, BBQ and pizza oven. The orchard next door provided us with fresh apricots.

Lovely and cool inside.

 The pizza oven.

 The loft - like sleeping inside an upturned empty ice-cream cone.

 This is how it used to be before the superb restoration work.

Locorotondo is not famous for anything that I know of, but it is a lovely hilltop town to wander around.

Alberobello. There are over 1500 trulli in this hilltop town. Lots of tourist shops but many quiet streets and alleyways and a good place to spend a few hours.

 We knocked but the Hobbits were not at home.

 Hobbit's dog in his kennel

We visited the ancient town of Matera to explore the sassi - the hillside caves lived in by families for hundreds of years until the 1950s, when the government decided that the sassi were a national shame and 15,000 people were re-housed.

The photos are of the Sasso Brisano - the old town. We then headed down into the river gorge to visit the caves in the cliffs. Having reached the bottom of the ravine, we got soaked in a thunderstorm and had to abort the trek. Back in the town, the ladies tried to dry out in 'the ladies' and I wrung my t-shirt out behind a pillar. We then took refuge in a cafe for coffee and pastries, whilst watching Lewis Hamilton battling his way through the field in the European Grand Prix.

Puglia is very much worth a visit - friendly people, good food and wine, there was plenty of sunshine and the sea was warm.