Month: June 2026

A short circuit around Casoli’s wonderful scenery

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I have waxed poetic about Ambruzzo’s wonderful scenery over the past few weeks, so now I’m going to let the camera take the lead in showing off the region’s glorious landscapes. Just to say that this short circular route of 47 km provides a kaleidoscope of shape & pattern & colour with every bend twisting the tube to reveal a new arrangement of land & uses. The drive is further enhanced by numerous small settlements, on the road or in the distance, which provide interest & history to the land we’re passing through.

Much of the drive is on the back roads that run along the many ridges that cross this land, falling away on either side to valley bottoms & distant neighbours. Every now & then the road drops down to a settlement huddled on stream or a dried river bed, only to rise on the far, seeking safety along the top of another spine. All the time, the high peaks of the Maiella Mountains provide an angry backdrop, always threatening but never delivering until it gives up, exhausted, & returns us to the heat of another day.

Our journey starts, & ends, at the small hamlet of Macchie. A couple of houses & a bus stop look down on Lake Casoli, the mountains tower behind.

The original, medieval village of Gessopalena lies on a high, sharp ridge.

With 360° views of the surrounding countryside, you can see why such a position was chosen in the 9th century. Much of this ancient settlement remains with ruins of homes & farms & businesses, a wine press & a bakery, still operating in the 1960s. During WWII it was the scene of serious clashes between the Allies who had made their command centre in Casali & the Germans who had set a defensive line in the mountains. When the latter retreated they destroyed the village & local inhabitants who had allied with the invaders.

A new town has emerged next door, but the dusty ruins of another time still remain.

In Roccascalegna, a high, medieval castle powers it over the village.

Altiho looks so impressive from a distance.

A quick drop into Casoli for supplies.

Then it is a few bends back to Macchie & home.

Just 47 km of wonderful scenery, fascinating history & amazing views.

A hidden delight in Castelpetroso, Molise

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It’s time to leave the baked plains of Puglia, with its stretched horizons of wheat, some fields standing tall in the blazing sun with a harvester churning a dusty way through it, some fields in transition, straw lying out in scruffy lines awaiting rotation or baling or collection, & some fields shaved bald, so close, the crop has been completely cleared up by huge lorries & tractors & machines and taken off to giant grain silos which will then take off for far away mills & processing plants. In the far distance lines of wind turbines catch the breeze & wave a fond farewell as we belt through the heat on the autostrade.

As much as the coastal towns have provided colour & interest & culture, much of inland Puglia is hot & dry, severe & harsh, the harvested fields disturbed by endless, stiff lines of uniform regiments of olive trees & within, the hard cheese grater of thousands of cicadas sounding off 24/7 & drowning out any semblance of gentleness.

Molise is a small region on our journey northwards. We are through it in a few hours. The landscape starts to change. The fields are smaller, returning to our beloved, kaleidoscope of colour & shape, fewer olives, more deciduous woodland, more vines and….. more hills are mushrooming up ahead. The edges & borders are more precise, sharper, like driving through the freshly-groomed face of a client of a Turkish barber. With this rolling country we realise what we’ve missed out on further south – towns & villages on every hilltop, birdsong, greenery, a calmness in the land & the heat.

Castelpetroso is one such Milisano hamlet. We see it amongst the wooded hills & decide to turn off. First impressions: very quiet, very sleepy, very old. A handful of cars hog the shade in the square. A slope leads up into the core. There is little evidence of any life. A distant chatter of voices comes from an open window suggests a gathering is coming to an end, two guys working a gable end taking a break in the shade… & that is it.

Then there is this really narrow alley; a couple of upturned barrels are set up outside a small door; a large, barking dog raises the alarm & a woman appears. ‘coffee?’ ‘of course, we are a restaurant. Come in & I’ll show you around’ in sign-languaged English. So we enter the smallest, cave restaurant in Italy. Cantina 1807 (Google it – only 5* reviews!).

So proud of her restaurant; open every day from 1300 to 0100. She lives on 4 tiny floors with her husband, her 2 boys & her grown up brother, 2 cats & dog. She proudly shows the bill of sale from 1943 when hubby’s parents first bought it, & played the music that the old folk would sing & dance to on the wind-up gramophone in the snug. So welcoming, so proud. Sadly not open for lunch but we did see her really cramped kitchen & the day’s menu of four simple pasta dishes.

The village is also famous for a wonderful Gothic structure just outside in the woods – the Shrine for Our Lady of Sorrows.

The coast of Gargano National Park

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San Giovani Rotunda is our base for exploring this part of northern Puglia & the especially the coastline of the Gargano National Park. This ordinary town is our home for the week. It lies on the edge of the vast, flat, sun-blasted plain of harvested wheat, in amongst the first lines of the olive regiments, at the bottom of a line of steep, rolling hills that necklace across the neck of this lump of hills & crags that has attached itself to the side of Italy, bulging out into the Adriatic.

The regiments of olive trees play host to thousands of cicadas. Whereas before, our days we were accompanied by a huge variety of calming bird song, here our insect pals set up a machinery of hard garating & grinding & heavy scratching on erratically patterned cheese graters to obliterate every other sound that might be considered attractive. Once up through the hills & out of the olive zone, the road winds & bends & roller-coasts through crags & rocks, tall pines & cedars, following the coastline around this lump of land & revealing glimpses of the so-turquoise sea through slight gaps in the tight vegetation.

Occasionally, haphazardly parked up cars on the side of the road are a clue to a rocky descent to an isolated cove or a pull-off provides a view point to a more organised private beach with the patterns of umbrellas occupying the sands.

Dotted around the coast of the Gargano NP is a necklace, bejewelled with ancient fishing ports & defensive forts. I’m giving you three here. All three have historical centres, usually facing out to sea, backed up by a modernised area of shops, cafés, bars & restaurants providing sustenance & entertainment. In June is spring season. So although all the tables are out and the smart boutiques are mostly open, the crowds have not arrived yet. There is no problem with parking, it is easy to get a table, & the streets are empty of foreign tourists. A great time to visit this attractive part of Puglia, where history & culture & weather all meet.

When in Ambruzzo we visited Vasto. The next largish, port town down the Adriatic coast is Termoli, in the Molise region. Full of memorabilia about WWII, this was an important, strategic objective in the Allied advance up Italy.

Peschici

Vieste

Three Regions in one day

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Heading south from Citta Sant’Angelo, through Ambruzzo’s rolling hills with snow-flashed mountains in the distance, it is easy to forget that this is a region of honest, hardworking people who work their land to produce food to generate an income. Throughout history they have left their mark on the landscape in a mosaic of colours & shapes. Tans & pale yellows of fields that have relinquished their crops of oats & wheat, contrast with others where farmers have ploughed back any goodness to reveal clumped lines of bare-browned earth. The tinted greens of vineyards combine with scattered olive groves to add a further dimension to the view, along with the occasional wooded valley & stoned, hilltop settlement.

Sulmona is a brief respite, happy to show off its vast piazza where, throughout July, the town’s neighbourhood’s march off against each in flag-throwing competitions. As if this was not enough, the square is lined with ancient churches, a duomo, medieval buildings, an aqueduct & a crescent of stone steps that leads up to even more historic delights. These include several producers of candy-covered ‘confetti’. It is an Italian custom to present guests at weddings, birthday & communion celebrations & anniversaries a small box containing these multi-coloured favours.

Molise is a small region further to the south. Here the landscape begins to change with more, larger fields of oats & wheat & fewer lines of vines & scattered olive trees. The harvested land looks exhausted & fed up, cropped out & blasted by the sun. There are larger clumps of deciduous woodlands & even proper woods which gradually die out to be replaced by a flatter land of soft rolling hills.

Campobosso, the region’s capital, is situated on one of these. Having spent time in the historic centre, I’m going to rename it ‘Steep Stepped Basso’ ‘cause there are a lot of them laddering up to the top.

Once into Puglia, the landscape changes again. This must be the bread basket or ‘the pizza dough basket’ of Italy. Any hills have been squashed down onto a vast flat plain where oats & wheat are being combined into huge waiting trailers & enormous super-vehicles, raring to convoy them out to vast grain silos & on to mills & production areas.

Across the flatness of the dusty plain, the land rises again. It’s as if a line has been drawn in the sand; the yellow, dusty plain comes to an abrupt end where regiments of ancient olive trees take over, standing to attention at the foot of, & up the slopes of, the hills that hide San Giovanni Rotonda & other settlements.

A meeting with the Angel of Death

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Atri is a short drive from the house. It is small-town atop a hill, with the familiar medieval core of narrow cobbled streets, several ancient churches & a duomo, a couple of piazzas lined with a few bars & cafés and a couple of restaurants. A quiet, authentic Italian town.

Our journey there should have given us a clue about what was to follow. Setting the sat nav, the route took us down narrow, sunken lanes over hills & down tracks, past fields of harvested oats, black-trunked olives & grasping vines in this glorious landscape. In places, the road surface was reasonable, but in many spots there were dips & ridges & potholes of differing depths, hazardous at the best of times.

On a previous occasion we took a left too early and having driven for 2km down a rutted track ended up doing a U turn in a field of alfalfa to retrace our drive back up again.

Feeling mellow & replete after a wander, a beer & a splendid fish/spaghetti supper, we returned to the car. We sought to find an easier route home. But our three separate navigation devises failed to really register. So we sort of followed one out of town & waited for one other to follow & confirm our journey. Disappointed, we realised we were on the same road we came in on, but hey……..the next lane we’re told to take may be a bit narrow but it’s heading in the right direction.

Spirits began to sag as the road became a track & the surface deteriorated until the potholes merged together to create a scab encrusted, dry river bed surface up & down these hills & gullies – through a pepper grinder of a surface. This went on for kilometre after kilometre. Having descended gullies & climbed up the far side, headlights bouncing off overhanging vegetation, motor revving, tyres spinning for grip, stones & pebbles cracking the undercarriage, flashing yellow lights fleetingly appear in the far distance & then are gone – an obstruction? Warning of a deep hole?

Up one more Waltzer of a hill climb and suddenly the Angel of Death appears out of the darkness – a blazing Transformer rears above, at least eight headlight eyes on full beam blazing down on the car. This giant tractor ain’t moving. It edges forward, it threatens, it menaces. Its wheels are so high up there, piercing the blackness, chugging its throaty menace at the tiny black beetle that dares to enter its domain. The impersonal driver from up on high, obviously expects me to do the reversing into black darkness of hell.. with no effective reversing light! But this is what has to be done – nudging backwards along the track while my tormentor roars his engine & then, glibbly, with a final roar if rage, he clatters his way through the neighbouring field, leaving my world behind in silent darkness.Thankfully home is five minutes away. The stuff of nightmares!!

A day down the Trabocchi Coast

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Penne marks the spot where we hit the Adriatic. Set back a few km from the sea, this is another ancient, hilltop village/town carrying the scars of the 2009 earthquake.

Once around Pescara, rebuilt following WWII, Ortona marks the start of the Trabocchi Coast. It was here in 1943, that Allied forces, working their way up through Italy, battled it out with Axis forces defending the Gustav Line that stretched across the width of Italy. In the resulting attack by Canadian troops, the town was obliterated so that all you see today, from the duomo to the tall, blocks of apartments, is a reconstruction of this historical port.

On the outskirts, the road hugs the coast with the railway, the main road & the dual carriageways way running through rich farmland of harvested oats, ancient olive groves & tall, trellises of grasping vines. Beach clubs, bathing areas, & mediocre holiday accommodation & assorted bars & cafes are evidence of the tourist holiday season.

The only saving grace is the Trabocchi that line this part of the coast. These are ancient fishing machines, set on stilts and attached to the land by long walkways. Antennae hold up a huge net which is winched down to the water and then back up, with the catch held within it.

It is unclear how they originated but one theory is that the local farmers built them to bring in & take out produce & equipment. When times got hard, they used these structures & nets to catch fish to supplement their land income. Many have now been converted into restaurants but these tend to be rather expensive tourist traps. We ate at one on terra firma – cuttlefish & chilli starter, grilled anchovies, seabream, clams & octopus spaghetti…oh yes!! Top of the world.

Our journey finishes at Vasto, a charming, historic town with loads of character & little evidence of earthquake or war damage. The duomo, palaces, castles, piazzas all have ancient origins. One small church down on the cliffs, has just one wall holding on to solid ground after the rest slid into the sea during a landslide in 1956.

The land of a thousand cranes

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Two places on the journey over are worth particular mention. In line with most settlements in the area, they were both affected by the terrible earthquake of 2009. L’Aquila was at the epicentre. 35 to 37 thousand people were made homeless & over 100,000 buildings destroyed. 309 people died, many children, & there were over 1500 casualties when the ‘quake hit in the early hours of the 6th April.

Today, there remains ample if evidence of this night. High cranes still dominate the skyline, giant preying mantises overhang scaffolded medieval buildings, Some appear pristine with freshly painted plaster coating reconstructed facades to the public, especially around the newly laid Piazza di Duomo, & others like the cathedral itself are just an empty shell of destruction.

Despite the renovation of many, much still remains to be done with hundreds of ancient buildings held up by stout timbers or thick, metal frames. Despite this, or maybe because of it, L’Aquila remains a fascination place to visit.

An important medieval town, within ancient walls, it has been an important centre for hundreds of years & is now the capital of the region. The Fountain of 99 Spouts, built in the 13th century, represented the number of powerful houses & estates in the area at the time.

It was chosen as the 2026 Centre of Culture in recognition of its cultural & historical importance. A university town, it has an exciting buzz to it after dark. With piazzas & streets echoing with laughter & conversation.

Santo Stefano di Sessanio is like chalk to L’Aquila’s cheese. A tiny village clinging to the crags & qcliffs of the Grand Sasso d’Italia, it is ancient in every respect but for the yellow framework of tall cranes performing similar work on devastated buildings. Nevertheless, it’s narrow, cobbled alleyways, scratching darkened routes around ancient stones, studded doorways & shuttered windows, give it a real medieval feel. Everything is in miniature, from the church to the café, from the tiny, dark gift shops to the small grocers & verandered restaurant. A special place with a special, timeless feel.

Sunday lunch in Ambruzzo

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It’s Sunday. We arrived at our beautiful, traditional farmhouse yesterday, meeting up with our pals C&D. This is situated along a narrow track through mixed arable farmland with glorious views across to a chequerboard landscape of clean cut, but compact fields of harvested wheat, bubbles of olive groves, lines of vines, model railway buildings & even a couple of fishing lakes with the Adriatic beckoning in the far distance.

We are delighted to hear that just 10 minutes walk down our track is Starinieri Agriturismo, a special farm offering rooms, and meals at a weekend…and yes, they can fit us in tomorrow for lunch.Under clear blue skies, we wander the track, absorbing the smells of the Ambruzzo countryside, taking in the mosaic of colour, texture & shape around us & sharing the joys of life & friendship, we arrive at the farm.

On the lawn rows of tables are laid out beneath & between billowing white cotton sheets that gently whisper to each other in the lightest of breezes. The great thing about this place is that though there is limited choice, what there is, is home reared & home grown, high quality ingredients & local produce, all from the farm & all very tasty. We shared three starters of lentil salad, cheese & charcuterie & delicious cheese balls in tomato sauce; Primo was either spaghetti with mini meatballs or asparagus & bacon ravioli; Secundo: lamb chops & sausages with potato; cheesecake or tiramisu.

It also helped that the other tables were taken by locals, a child’s birthday party & a large communion party, both of the latter setting the atmosphere & creating an ambiance of family & joy that we were quickly involved in.

And the very best was the farm’s wine – excellent Montepulciano Ambruzzo, sold at 4€ a jug which holds one litre. Such a bargain. We consumed 3 such jugs. After 5 hours at the table – excellent food, excellent service, excellent company, excellent ambiance, we shuffled our way home, feeling very happy & very content and fit for little else for the rest of the evening.

The route that keeps giving

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From Rome in the west, the autostrade rises into the Appenine Mountains. These stretch all the way down the Italian peninsula, the spine on which the nation depends. It means that most regions, & Ambruzzo is no exception, stamp their identity on coast, the Adriatic in this case, & crag alike. The commerce & industry of the suburbs soon relinquishes its grip on the land & the road gently rises through heavily wooded ridges of deciduous oak & ash & chestnut & walnut & countless other species I am unable to name. Ancient hilltop villages & stretched valley settlements, dusty & stoned, with a modernist halo of buildings around a historic core, appear at regular intervals, providing intrinsic interest to an already inspiring landscape.

The road continues to rise & travel through several dark, troll-favoured tunnels, the longest being 4 km in length. Each time we emerge & new scene greets us until we are truly in mountain land with truncated, helmet shaped peaks competing for height & reputation, bare of any real vegetation with only rough screed slopes trying to keep alive some scruffy bits of grass & an occasional stunted, spindly tree. It is like driving through a congregation of monks, moving through circular tonsures onto bald pates & soft rises.

Then it is out into the true Grand Sasso d’Italia revealing the true glory of Italy’s mountain core. Traversing lumpy peaks & trascending valleys on intestinal roads lined with abundant yellow gorse, the sight of ancient villages peering from balloons of foliage or tucked into the shelter of a valley side, becomes common place. The sat nav takes us down a slalom of a country lane. As the heavy, silver lined sky combines with the grey lumps of mountains, the yellow-brick road leads down through time, to the broad valley bottom.

Time stands still – it could be Roman times through rich woodland, the occasional small patch of tilled earth hosting a small olive grove or a handful of almond trees. No vehicles, no buildings. Just interacting with the scene & the place.Eventually the trip is complete. We descend from the heights of the Appennine passes to the coastal strip of the Adriatic.

Back to reality – out of town shopping centres, scruffy developments, uninspiring landscapes. But what a glorious journey between the two seas.