It was hard to leave Agritourismo Scianna, but after promises to meet in London, Tuscany or for us to return another year, Flavianna gave us a jar of home made passata, a litre of their olive oil and bundles of apple and cream pasties, and other pastries to scoff on the way and we were back in the car.
We were supposed to be spending the day checking out trulli but the pottery Goddess from yesterday was calling and instead we headed back to Grottaglie.
We had been interested in a couple of lamps but the potter had wanted about 1200 euros for them so we weren’t sure it was going to be a wasted chase for a piece of handmade pottery with a sky high price tag but…she was calling us!
Having done exactly what we had done the day before, that is, spent too long over breakfast, and fighting our way through thunder storms, we arrived just after the potter had left and locked up for the afternoon pausa leaving us in a town which was in the process of shutting for lunch.
As it was a unique piece I cheekily asked the shop next door if they could help. He telephoned the potter who said he’d be back and in the meantime showed us how he made the lovely Pumo. These are local good luck symbols – buds for new starts. So we bought one, and a trick jug.
Finally the original potter arrived and we were delighted to find that she was affordable and coming home with us as a new treasure! I love her!
We got in the car and headed for Alberobello, one of the Trulli towns.
The landscape changed. One minute it was flat, with fici d’india, and dead/alive fig trees, masseria and square stone boxes in the fields. The next we were in rolling fields, with low walls, oak trees and trulli everywhere. If it wasn’t for the truly you could have been in the Cotswolds.
We had a walk around picture postcard pretty Alberobello. Storms clouds were once more darkening the sky and knowing how quickly it can go from baking hot to deluge, we pottered around and then, fortified by an ice cream, trotted back with one eye on the growling clouds and strapped in for the next leg. Having driven roughly a thousand miles with only 5 CDs I was thrilled to be in charge of Spotify. There’s only so much of Natalie Cole’s ‘Unforgettable’ you can listen to.
I had promised GS Matera, but we had missed it on our quick sojourn in La Rabatana. It felt a bit naughty nipping back over the border into Basilicata on our ‘Puglia’ road trip, especially giving up more Trulli and so many of the other fabulous locations we would miss – Ostuni, Polignano, the entirety of Gargano- but there is something about Matera.
I first went to Matera with a very dear friend of mine back in the mid 90s. It was September and I had promised him my favourite places on the Amalfi coast without the crowds and a nip over to Matera. It was a lovely long road trip, but the end of summer storms had been ferocious. It wasn’t the same sitting in the rain in my favourite little seaside taverna and I feared he wasn’t getting the experience I had lured him to Italy for.
We had then driven for hours and hours past fields of water melons to get to Matera. We arrived in what seemed a big, unremarkable town. So unremarkable that three dogs were passed out asleep at major traffic lights. We were thinking of bailing when we came to the lips of the ravine and there before us was the ghost town of Matera.
We stayed in one of the Sassi hotels, in a room carved from rock, and spent the days wandering around the abandoned houses thousands of years old. The windows were empty dark unseeing sockets. You could walk through abandoned baroque doors to caves at the back. At night to walk home across up and down the ravine under a single string of lamp lights was to be entirely submerged in the company of ghosts. It was amazing, atmospheric and you felt it could not last, that give it a couple of years and it would be turned into Positano. Almost three decades, a European culture capital, and a Bond movie have passed since.
It’s amazing what an injection of money can do to a place. The modern city is now lively bars, exclusive brands and traffic jams. It’s buskers playing in the squares and a piano left for some to tinkle. It’s aperol sprintz and great coffee. Never have I seen somewhere so revived, it’s on its way to becoming the Forte del Marmi of the south.
As we tried to find our parking I feared what would have happened to the ghostly Sassi.
But all was okay.
Yes, its changed. There are shutters and plants, bars, for soft jazz covers- the style of music which has followed us on on trip- restaurants whose tables have spilt onto the stone pathways. Courtyards have been corralled off, taken possession of, lights glow from behind glazed windows. But it still had that Matera feel, the ghosts fading into the noise and light.
Basilicatans please don’t renovate, restore with a curators gentle hand, brush the dust away but leave footprints of the past in the stone.
Our hotel was in the Sassi, a Hotel Diffuso, which is an increasing concept in old historic centres – old houses, rooms brought under the umbrella of a hotel but spread out. We were assigned an old church.
It seems sacrilegious somehow to sleep in an old church, the bathroom where the alter once was, especially in a cave that was probably inhabited a few thousand years before Christianity.
Basilicata is bleaching hot and dry and in order to live here, water was collected, cisterns filled and the overflow sent back out into the river. Our hotel had taken its cisterns and turned them into a swimming pool and spa area dedicated to Medusa- the goddess that could turn you to stone.
We had it to ourselves- swimming in blood temperature water in under ground caverns carved out thousands of years ago.
Then it was more calices of negroamaro rose’ – in the north we ask for ‘a glass’ – a bicchiere– here in the south they ask for a calice- a chalice or goblet of wine.
And somehow so appropriate. We love the friendliness of both Puglia and Basilicata but GS and I agreed that there is a lovely ancient formality to Basilicata. We were addressed with the formal ‘Lei’.
There are only half a million Basilicatans, four million Puglians. Matera has put Basilicata firmly on the map. It has been a privilege to touch down in both areas while they are still unspoilt. Unlike us. I hope we will be back, and not after a near thirty year gap.
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