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.