It is still hot during the day, the sun bright and the skies blue. But the dews are becoming heavier, the forecast is for thunderstorms to roll in. It is time for The Last Swim of Summer.
I feel cheated, I had my first swim in Puglia, but apart from a dip in the tepid, sandy waters of Benidorm, we were too busy with the chaos of packing to do anything. It’s been the summer of no BBQs and no swims- a sandwich without the filling. I am itching to get in the water, but missing the fam who have always been with us before for the last swims.
You can’t go to Tellaro without breakfast at our favourite bar in “St Quidditch” so we turned onto the narrow, bendy road that skirts between the mountains and the drained marshes. Finding a car coming the other way, we came to a sudden halt at the narrowest bit with the steepest edge.
GS slowly backed up. Unbeknownst to us, the sight of a Land Rover discovery with British number plates had provoked a Damascene epiphany in the car coming the other way.
A hair’s breath between the cars, with breathed in as the oncoming car slid along side. And then the driver wound down his window. GS did the same, expecting a ‘Good morning, thank you’
‘Good morning!’ beams the driver. ‘Do you want to buy an Olive Grove?
‘What?’ says GS.
‘An olive grove!’
‘No, we’ve got one thanks’ say I
‘It’s on a hill- two hectares!’
‘Ours is on a hill behind the villa – he planted it’
‘Its the best olive oil! It has FIRM (he grumbled something under his breath which seemed to imply it wasn’t that firm) planning permission for an hotel/B&B!’
‘We are good for olive groves, thanks’ I said. (I trying to remember the word for ‘beehives’ in case he had any to off-load whilst half expecting a film crew to leap out of the bushes in case this was an episode of ‘The Apprentice’ and a motley collection of village idiots had been sent to Tuscany to try and sell olive groves to Brits (against the clock).
A car had drawn up behind him.
‘Wait!’ he said, and frantically searched his dashboard before pressing business cards and two pens into GS’s hands.
The name of his firm? ‘Tractor Affair’, his car having very sultry photographs of sexy tractors.
Only in Italy would you get pulled over by a farmer with a tractor thing trying to sell you an olive grove within sight of Filippo Berio groves.
We call Quiesa St Quidditch as a family joke due to the fact that the church is topped with a statue of St Stefano and it looks as if rather than slaying a poor dragon, he is about to jump on a broomstick.
With it being the first moments of autumn one or two leaves had fallen and so there were no less than six assorted little old ladies and chappies armed with brooms, sat on two benches chatting. I was desperate to ask for a photo from the Quidditch teams but GS said ‘NO’
Then we went to our favourite bar where the coffee, cornetti and ambiance were, as always, sublime.
There was an old man in tweeds in a hat curled over a walking stick sat by himself nodding on and off. When I walked by I said ‘Good morning’ and his face lit up. It was a face of intense character, old, old, old with blood hound eyes. I would love to have pulled up a chair and listened to his life story. I would have loved to asked him for a photo but GS said I can’t go around accosting people. But I hope to see him again. I miss my pa.
Then we drove to Tellaro, our little jewel on the coast.
Our favourite restaurant has changed hands which was disconcerting. Our new waiter was Neopolitan, the Cinque Terre an easy swap for the Amalfi coast. He wasn’t having any of this new fangled culinary rule breaking. A girl on the table behind us asked for cheese on her crab pasta. You would have thought she had sworn atrocities on his mother. ‘NO’ he boomed. ‘ No way – impossible! It will ruin it! I can ask someone else to bring you cheese but not in my presence’
GS leaned in, ‘Shall I ask him for cheese and a cappuccino?’ He asked mischievously.
‘Shush!’ I said, ‘He’ll kill you’
The sea was tepid, clear, gently moving. So salty that swimming is hardly needed, you can just stand up and float around. It was sad, though, I didn’t want it to be the last swim.
I had rather hoped that someone would spot I was a Brit in the sea, pop out of the water and offer me a ruin to renovate in Tellaro, but it didn’t happen.
Afterwards we climbed the steps and off we went in land to find a medieval hilltop town I had heard whispers of- Fosdinovo
Turns out my Italian isn’t that great as I confidently told GS that the posters were saying that ‘Rose Mystic’ was in town who I assumed was a Mystic Meg palm reader but in fact is an ancient legend around this Virgin Mary, that went missing for a short while in the 1700s. Despite my best endeavours and google translate I couldn’t get to the bottom of the legend.
We arrived fifteen minutes after the castle had closed for visitors so snuck in. It was formidable, dark and, like the rest of the village, empty.
‘We don’t want to get locked in’ said GS.
I rounded the corner and looked into a very dark cavernous passage.
I didn’t expect to see a dark figure loom out at me. The lady coming around the corner who had intended to boo her friend in the teashop didn’t expect to see me either.
WAAAA! She screamed.
WAAAAAA!!! I screamed a whole lot louder.
‘WHAT? WHAT?’ shouted GS who at right angles to me could see nothing.
A stiff drink was required.
Luckily, immediately outside the castle walls was the tiniest winery ever seen. It is vendimia season, the grape picking is underway and a tiny tractor was delivering tiny loads of bunches of grapes. Intrigued we approached and found a pair of disembodied legs seemingly in some parody of ancient grape treading moves. Soon we were talking to the wine maker http://poderelavandaro.it– 25000 bottles a year. Five minutes later they were six bottles of rose and white lighter (vintage 2022) and we left eating the sweetest grapes, Vermentino, it’s possible to imagine.
2 Comments
So romantic, so evocatively captured. Thank you for sharing your Italian loves and adventures Pia xx 🍇
Thank you Isy for taking the time to read and comment! I really appreciate it! Gone a bit mad recently after my quiet months… XOX P