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.