Our First Olive Harvest

Since moving into the house in August we had been led to expect that the olives would be ready for harvesting in late November or December. We had also decided that we would probably not harvest this year given everything that needed to be done on the house. However, our developing love affair with the land and the enthusiasm of our 78-year-old neighbours Erminia and Paolo soon made us change our minds. In the event, Erminia, who we are also discovering is a bit of a wind up merchant, looked into the sky one morning in early November and said “the harvest is early this year, I’ve made an appointment at the olive mill, would you like me to make one for you too.” So, we found ourselves with an appointment at the Mill for ten days later with no clear idea what to do. Unsure of exactly how much work was involved we invited two Swedish and two American friends who were over wintering in the Venetian Lagoon to come and join us for a few days.

Erminia offered to give us some instruction on the picking of olives, but we thought the best thing was to turn out one morning and give Erminia and Paolo a hand with their trees. Erminia’s face lit up when we arrived in our wellies and old clothes and we learned an incredible amount that day. Harvesting styles vary throughout the Med but basically fall into three categories – sticking nets under all your trees and waiting for the olives to drop (easy, but doesn’t produce especially good oil as many of the olives are old and rotten by the time they are collected) – beating the crap out of your trees with big sticks (produces fresher olives, but doesn’t do the trees a lot of good and is probably very satisfying if you hate olive trees) – picking by hand (produces the best olives but is f***ing hard work). Commercially, olives are also harvested by using tractor mounted shaking machines, which clamp onto the trunk and vibrate the whole tree, perfect is you have a few thousand euros to spare, although there are smaller versions which just shake individual branches and cost a couple of thousand euros. The region of Puglia alone produces half of Italy’s olive oil and about 5% of the world’s oil and most of this I guess will actually have been harvested by shaking machines.

Anyway, with Erminia and Paolo we experienced the local peasant farmer method of harvesting, which is basically picking by hand (aka f***ing hard work). Generally you lay a couple of large rectangular nets under a single tree to cover the whole area beneath the tree. Then one or two people ascend ladders to pick the fruit and carry out any major pruning. Final pruning is carried out in March or April, but I guess the theory is that if there are any big branches to be pruned you do them at harvest time to save effort. Meanwhile one or two people on the ground pick the lower branches and beat the crap out of any pruned branches that fall from above. The olives are picked by running your hand along each branch and pinging the fruit off onto the ground. Occasionally less accessible branches are beaten with a stick or a pruning saw, but this kind of feels like cheating. When the tree is clear of fruit the nets are gathered and the fruit tipped from them into big plastic bins. Back at the house the olives are then cleaned by tipping them into a sieve about the size of kitchen drawer (actually Erminia and Paolo’s appears to be an adapted kitchen drawer) and shaking them to remove dirt while at the same time picking out dead leaves, twigs, stones and mud.

While waiting for our friends to arrive we set about buying equipment, basically four stout nets, two wooden fruit tree ladders and a bunch of plastic bins. We also started to pick some of our smaller trees to give an impression of progress. When our friends Ann, Mats, Bill and Linda arrived we set about picking in earnest. Our target was to harvest around 250 kg of olives for our appointment with the Olive Mill (“Frantoio” in Italian). Local Mills process olives in 230-270 kg batches, so 250 kg is a good batch load.

Conditions for the harvest were not great as the weather was wet and cold and the house barely habitable with all the building work and no heating apart from one open fire and a couple of electric heaters. Ann and Mats stayed with us while Bill and Linda stayed in the luxury of our friends Jane and Claude’s house. Despite the rain we put in three days of fairly intensive harvesting with Jane also helping (Claude having cunningly removed himself to the UK for a couple of weeks). Claude and Jane’s dog “Lucky” also lent a hand, helpfully stealing gloves and a plastic plate full of Parmesan cheese. Each plastic bin when full contains 30-35 kg of olives, so when we reached seven and a half bins we called a halt. We then spent an evening cleaning them in the Cantina with Erminia and Paolo’s sieve. I have to say at this stage we were a bit precious with our cleaning with six people scrutinising the sieve – “stop I can see a speck of mud!”

Next morning old Paolo stumped round on his walking stick to inspect our crop and decided to add confusion as is sometimes his way. We had already begun to load the olives into sacks when Paolo insisted we put them back into the bins to check the quantity. We had not been filling the bins quite high enough and Paolo was doubtful whether we had the minimum 230 kg. Anyway we reloaded the olives into sacks and onto the back of Paolo’s old Ape three-wheeler, along with a big stainless steel “Bidone” (the container for the oil which looks like a milk churn). Young Paolo, old Paolo’s grandson and our builder, drove the load to the Mill, while we followed in two hire cars like expectant parents.

I think I’ve mentioned that virtually all our neighbours have the surname “Convertini”, as did the man who came to inspect our gas boiler and sundry other trades people. Unsurprisingly, the Mill on the outskirts of Locorotondo where Erminia had made our appointment was owned by Senor Donato … Convertini. Running an Olive Mill must be good for your peace of mind because Donato is a gentle, unruffled man, whose presence is a calming influence on everyone. Foreigners harvesting their olives is still a rare event down here and Mr Convertini kindly allowed us to wander round the Mill taking photos while he explained the process. The Mill itself is spotless and as you approach it there is the all pervading perfumed smell of freshly milled olives. Our sacks were emptied into a very large plastic crate, then weighed and labelled. Old Paolo was right our load came in at 229 kg. At this stage Mr Convertini asked us if we were registered growers. “Er … no.” It turns out that had we registered we would receive a State subsidy of about €30 per load, which would more than cover the €25 fee for processing. We put the load down under Erminia’s name, so she will get the subsidy. When it is paid I’m sure she will want to give us our share, but we’d be happy for her to keep it for all the help she has given us.

Many people brings their loads on spec without making a booking and there are crates and crates stacked everywhere awaiting processing. Because we have booked, our crate is taken straight for processing. Firstly, the olives are macerated then tipped into the mill – a great vat which has three millstones, like fat coins balanced on their edges, which revolve around the vat and crush the olives and any remaining leaves, twigs and mud into a green pulp. Secondly, the pulp is spread about two centimetres thick onto steel discs about 70cm in diameter. The discs are stacked into a pressing machine to a height of about two metres, where they are placed under massive hydraulic pressure for an hour or two, until the stack is no more than a few centimetres deep. During this process you can see the oil dribbling from the stack like the grease from a donner kebab spit. There are four of these machines, each labelled with the name of the owner of the load. Finally, the raw oil is passed through a separator to remove any water and then dribbles into the Bidone. Each Bidone has the name of the owner written on it. In our case it was sufficient for us to write “l’Inglesi” on the side – “the English”.

Mr Convertini told us to return for our oil in about four hours, so we went for a leisurely lunch in Locorotondo. On our return our Bidone was waiting and was then carried to the scales for weighing. It came to 30 kg, about 33 litres, a yield of about 13%. Oil yields can be up to about 20%, but this year the olive crop is abundant, but the water content is high. Inevitably, we unscrewed the lid of the Bidone to take a look at our product, later at the house we drew off a jarful to have a good sniff and a taste. Young, home produced olive oil looks very little like the clear, fairly sterile stuff you buy in the supermarket. It is a deep cloudy green with a pungent smell and a peppery aftertaste. It tastes delicious.

After we said “goodbye” to our friends we began to take stock. Our first load was the product of just fourteen trees out of sixty, admittedly some quite big ones. On this basis we had the capacity for another two or three loads – mainly on our own. We decided to do at least two more. What we had envisaged as a short, sharp week or two of hard work was actually a slog of five weeks or so. Most mornings we descended into the field while the building work continued, dragging nets and ladders. Sometimes Claude, Jane and Lucky came over to lend a hand. By the time we finished our third load we were knackered and seeing olives in our sleep. Because it was a bumper harvest for everyone appointments at the Mill became harder and harder to book and by our third visit Mr Convertini and his staff looked exhausted too, with olive crates stacked everywhere and in sacks and bins in odd corners. 

We decided to do a final load because it didn’t seem right to leave any of the trees unharvested and in some ways this last load turned out to be the most rewarding. While we had been harvesting our olives Erminia and Paolo had been working on theirs. In the time we took to collect three loads they had managed eight, admittedly with a little help from the family and from time to time the small shaking machine owned by their son Georgio. As well as collecting their olives Erminia was also engaged in the mass production of cheese. At five thirty every morning for two or three weeks old Paolo drove down to the local Masseria (basically a large farm) to collect 75 litres of milk, which Erminia processed into five big cheeses each day, plus countless pots of Ricotta, cooking the cheese in a great cauldron over an open fire in her kitchen. Most mornings she would bring us a container of Ricotta (basically a bye product of the cheese-making), plus sometimes a bowl of warm curds and whey to be eaten with fresh bread – great if you like the taste (me, sort of) and vomit-making if you don’t (Sue definitely).

Not content with harvesting their own olives they came to give us a hand with our last load. At the same time the weather improved and we spent several happy days in the sunshine with the two of them. Paolo is not a well man, we think he has angina and he has a worrying tendency to turn blue after a period of extended effort, he also does not have the full use of one side of his body, we think following a stroke. Erminia has the constitution of an ox, but suffers considerably with aches and pains, we guess she is probably due one or possibly two hip replacements having worn them out during a lifetime of more or less unremitting toil. Paolo, a tiny man, is at his most happy at the top of a ladder with a saw in his hand, scanning the tree for the right cuts to make. I carry the ladder and watch from below while he tries to communicate his method, not easy given my still poor Italian and the fact that he often speaks in dialect and is as deaf as a post. For him the situation is ideal because he has someone new to pass his knowledge to and to do the heavy carrying, while he gets on with what he loves. Up a tree he looks thirty years younger, whereas down below he often looks old and tired out. During this last period our productivity doubled as we struggled to keep up the pace set by the old ones. I can’t be 100% certain that I fully understand anything old Paolo says, his sentences are peppered with dialect and old sayings, but one time I think he said something like – “just like we would be lost on a boat and you have a compass to guide you, we are your compass on the land”.

So, we had picked about 1000 kg of olives and have about 130 litres of our own oil. Next year will be a poor harvest everybody tells us, because this year was an exceptional one and a bad one inevitably follows a good one and we have also pruned the trees quite hard as they had not been properly looked after for several years. Given that olive oil has a shelf life of about two years that means even if we don’t harvest next year we have a litre of oil a week to consume, about three times our usual consumption. We are thinking of flogging it to paying guests, but any novel ideas for using olive oil are more than welcome. The locals assume that we will be able to give the surplus to our families. They have been amazed that England has no olive trees and have visions of hordes of English folk wringing their hands in anguish crying “where in God’s name can we get some olive oil!”

A Pretend Peasant is Born

Is it possible to really fall in love with a piece of land? We now own about an acre of Southern Italy and every day, much to my surprise I love it more. We have about sixty mainly mature olive trees and a similar number of assorted fruit and nut trees, including ten fig trees, which over the summer produced handfuls of sticky sweet black and green figs every day. Right up to the end of September I could wander through our grove and pick the Sun warmed fruit, eating samples as I went and dropping the skins onto the rich earth. In late July we bought a second-hand rotovator. In Italian it is called a “motozappa”, a perfect name for a device that is basically an engine which thumps the ground. It’s a heavy old beast with a seven and a half horsepower two-stroke engine. I’ve run the machine once over our acre and it converted the soil into something with the texture and colour of finely ground coffee. I didn’t know earth could look so good. However, the process took four days and each lunchtime I’d emerge from the field covered in brown dust, deafened and shaking like a Parkinson’s victim.

 Every night before we go to bed we see the Sun go down over the nearby hill and watch the shadows lengthen in our olive grove. We can hear the faint jingling of cow bells from a grazing herd a couple of fields away and the occasional thud as some fruit drops onto our terrace from one of our trees. We’re in high country, about a thousand feet above sea level and when I go out onto the terrace in the morning the sky is usually a deep azure. Often there is breeze blowing from the Adriatic which sets up a whooshing sound in the big pine tree which grows at the edge of our terrace and every now and then sends light fluffy clouds spilling over our heads. Now Winter is coming on sometimes the clouds take on a more threatening aspect, dark, heavy and pregnant with rain, moving across the sky like big blobs of ink dropped into a tank of water. In the height of the Summer there were swallows perched on the nearby telephone wires from where they would fly in dizzying circles over our land and down the winding country lane which runs past our house. In August, by lunchtime the temperature usually climbed to around thirty-five or forty degrees Celsius, so there was nothing to be done but to take a siesta inside the cool and thick protecting stone of the house. Now the midday temperature is usually a temperate twenty five to thirty degrees. Occasionally the quiet is punctuated by the whining of a scooter or an Ape (the little Italian three-wheeled trucks) as a local farmer goes home for lunch.

Our First Grape Harvest

Paolo and Ermenia refer to our neighbours, the Bari architects, rather dismissively as the “Barese” (the people from Bari). This is because they are townies who only come down to the house for Summer weekends, are keen to put fences up around their property and are trying to get the locals interested in having mains water connected. By contrast we seem to have been adopted by Paolo and Ermenia and their extended family. I think because we are here most of the time and are willing to get stuck into tending our land, however ham fistedly. The surest sign of this came when we were invited to help bring in Paolo’s grape harvest along with their two sons, their wives and various grandchildren and friends. The grapes were ready to be harvested in early October. Sadly this Summer the weather has been very hot but also quite wet and Paolo’s vines have been attacked by mould and disease and his grapes rejected by the Cantina Sociale, so the whole crop is to be processed by the family for their own consumption of wine and grape juice. We spent a morning in the fields with the family and selected friends, cutting grapes, sampling some and laughing and joking. The harvested grapes were then taken to Paolo and Ermenia’s “cantina” for crushing. We have a “cantina” just like theirs and it was fascinating to see it put to its proper use as a wine-processing centre. Basically the “cantina” is a stone chamber under which there is a large cistern with a grating over it. The grapes are first macerated and then put twice through a grape press, with all the juices flowing through the grating and into the cistern. Afterwards fourteen of sat round for lunch in Paolo and Ermenia’s small living room. Ermenia had prepared a rabbit stew in a cauldron over an open fire. First we consumed the juice from the stew, served with homemade “orecchiette”, a Pugliese form of pasta shaped like little ears, hence the name. Then for our second course we had the rabbit itself, all washed down with beer and homemade wine. Our reward for helping out was several litres of fresh grape juice, which we were told to keep refrigerated and to drink for our health. The first sip is like nectar, unfortunately this is followed by a savage aftertaste of cold stewed tea.

 Paolo and Ermenia’s grandson has now started work on the house and we hope to have all modern conveniences, including two decent bathrooms and a modern kitchen complete with dishwasher early in the new year. Last week we moved “La Fulica” from Taranto the 150 odd miles round the bottom of the heel of Italy to a boatyard in Brindisi, where she will spend the winter out of the water. Also, slowly and falteringly we are beginning to develop ideas for making money. Sue will start to look for teaching work in a few weeks and we plan to turn part of the house into a separate apartment which we can rent to holidaymakers. In addition I am thinking of buying one of the conical Trulli houses to convert into further accommodation for holiday rental. We shall see.

The Black Well

Having lived here so long Ermenia knows everything about the house and its history. On an early tour of inspection she wrinkled her nose up at the rather naff plastic concertina doors at one end of our kitchen. “You want to get rid of those,” she said, “there’s a nice wooden door that goes there down in the cellar”, which of course there was. She also solved the mystery of our septic tank, in Italian “pozzo nero”, literally “black well”. The estate agents insisted that a rather sad looking stone chamber in the grounds with a broken pipe leading into it was the pozzo nero. In an early experiment we poured a bucket of water down the toilet and waited for it to flow through the broken pipe and saw and heard nothing. I gingerly removed the bit of old tin and pile of stones covering the lid to the stone chamber, sending a horde of small scorpions and wood lice running for cover and found the interior dry and clean. “Are you sure that’s the pozzo nero in the grounds?” We asked Pierot the estate agent a couple of days later and he insisted that it was. Later we asked Ermenia. She laughed, “no that’s the pozzo nero for the washing machine, see, you can put a washing machine in that outhouse and you can supply it with water by connecting up this hose. The real pozzo nero is under the car park over here. It’s very deep underground. Mrs Convertini was a hairdresser and used loads of water, but they never had a problem with it.” Well, so far she had been proved right, our waste water gurgles away happily with no sign of a problem, although I’m also aware that every lifestyle book I’ve ever read includes a septic tank crisis at some point in the narrative.

Erminia and Paolo

Erminia and her husband Paolo, both seventy-eight, live in the house over the road. The second day after we bought the house an aged crone in a floral dress and perhaps three or four teeth, hailed us with a raucous cry. Our Italian is still by no means perfect and Ermenia sometimes speaks in local dialect, which sounds incidentally a bit like Orkish, “Locorotondo” our local town being called something like “Oroondoosh”. But Erminia speaks loudly and clearly on account of Paolo being deaf as a post and I think what she said was something like, “hello, pleased to meet you. You are English? It feels like the whole world is coming to stay in my country (this said with a proud smile). Any time you need anything just pop in and ask. You must meet my Grandson, he’s building the house next to mine to live in with his fiancée. Come and have a look. He’s an electrician and does plumbing and building as well, he can fix your place up no problem.” With that we got the guided tour of the Grandson’s place, then were introduced to Paolo and given biscuits and Limoncello (basically alcoholic Lemsip).

To understand our relationship with Erminia I need to provide a little bit of history and geography. Our house and the one next door owned by the family of architects from Bari, face south over our respective olive groves. At the back of the two houses there is a dirt farm track, which the Bari architects also use to give access to their house (our house has its own drive onto the lane). On the other side of the farm track is Erminia and Paolo’s house and next to it the one being built by the Grandson. The small windows at the back of our house therefore look straight over at Erminia and Paolo’s house. Ermenia and Paolo are Convertinis and other members of the family, including one of Ermenia’s sons, own some of the other houses around. The Bari architects’ house was sold to them by a Convertini, as was ours, so before the recent sales the houses around the farm track were something of a Convertini family compound, although I suspect that relationships between the different branches of the family were not always good. Our house and the Bari architects’ house were built around 1940 of local stone using traditional local methods and Ermenia must have moved here not long after. Paolo, who would have been about fourteen at the time actually worked as the builder’s mate.

Even in this very rural area Erminia and Paolo are I suspect an anachronism, living off the land in the way that people here have for centuries. Paolo has some land planted with vines in the area where he grows grapes for the Cantina Sociale in Locorotondo, a large local wine producer which makes good quality and fashionable white wines for the Italian market. Paolo is a tiny man with a stick and a straw hat who carries himself like someone who has had a stroke down one side of his body. Some mornings the Grandson helps him into his ancient Ape at five or six in the morning. Paolo then launches the Ape with a fearsome roar of its puny engine onto the local roads. The first time I heard this I nearly fell out of bed.

Erminia spends her day working around the house and in her vegetable garden. Outside the house on the edge of the farm track she has a wood fired cooking stove improvised from an old oil drum with a stovepipe sticking out of the side. A couple of days after we moved in Erminia invited us to come and watch the annual family passata making session. Every year they buy in industrial quantities of good Italian tomatoes. These are boiled with a little water and a lot of salt in the oil drum/cooker and then run through a machine which reduces the pulp to a fine mush and ejects the skins at one end. Paolo turns the machine by hand while he and Erminia argue at the top of their voices, one of their sons and his wife and daughter looking on with a mixture of indulgence and exasperation.

Most mornings Erminia brings us something from her garden or storeroom – a bottle or two of passata, homemade wine, fresh pears, tomatoes, green peppers or courgettes. If our little bedroom window is open she will pop her head in and hail Sue. She starts with a sotto voce, “La Signora?”. Four seconds later she says again, a little louder “La Signora!”. Followed by a cry at full belt “LA SIGNORA!!”. We then have a short chat and she passes over her goodies. Most evenings she drops round for a sit down and a chat. Usually about what a hot day it has been and about the family and what they do or are doing. She only stays for ten or fifteen minutes and she likes to leaven the conversation with a little tragedy – a neighbour down the road has cancer or there has been a car crash in Martina Franca. This is usually followed up with a sigh and a comment such as “e una bruta vita” (literally “it’s an ugly life”). One of the first times we met here she told us about one of her grandchildren who was run over and killed by a car in the lane outside our houses about nine years ago. The memory is clearly still very raw for her.

Erminia has also introduced us to what passes for social services around here. The bread van calls every day at about noon. The fruit and veg van comes twice a week and the ice-cream van and the cleaning materials van once a week. This latter announces its arrival with rock music blaring from a loudspeaker, so you can hear its coming all the way from Locorotondo, about three miles distant. However, not all in the garden is really so rosy for Erminia and Paolo. They are approaching eighty and doggedly sticking to the lifestyle they have probably pursued all their married lives, but the strain is beginning to show. Paolo can hardly climb into the cab of his Ape without assistance and we can often hear Erminia crying with frustration at him. She is also not as good on her legs as she used to be and often complains of the searing summer heat. I suspect they may be only a crisis away from a major change in their lives.

C’e un problema

We arrived at the house one morning at the same time as an Enel van. A fat sweaty bloke got out of the van and inspected our electric meter and external wiring. Drawing in a breath he then said the words you never want to hear in Italy: “C’e un problema.” It turned out that the electric had been cut off many years ago and in the interim the house next door had been completely rewired and the old cable running from our house, across the neighbour’s house to the nearest electricity pole had been completely removed. This meant we needed to get the permission of the neighbours to run a new cable and have an external cabin built for our new electricity meter. Paranoia struck again and I envisaged years of bitter argument while we sorted out our power supply.

However, despite the power problem we decided to move into the house anyway. We could draw buckets of water from the cisterns and we went out and bought a job lot of oil lamps. This turned out to our advantage as it considerably increased the pressure on our neighbours, a family of architects from Bari who bought the house last year and use it very occasionally as a summer retreat, to help us sort something out quickly. Anyway, with the help of our estate agents we got the agreement of the neighbours to run the power cable over their land and an electrician to install our new cabin.

Within a week the fat sweaty bloke had returned with two other Enel men and had installed our cable and meter. Martino our electrician returned the same afternoon and connected up our supply to the house. The house has old-fashioned wiring with no earth, appropriately enough called “salva vita” or “life saver” in Italian, so I was relieved when Martino connected the power and the trip switch didn’t blow. He also soon got our electric water pump working, pumping out spurts of rusty water into the bath. So, after two weeks in the house we had running water, electricity, a fridge and an improvised kitchen, also a couple of mattresses. There are no taps in the kitchen, no hot water and mysteriously no sink in the bathroom, so I have the novel experience of having a wash and shave in the bidet. But after the privations of the first week it seems like luxury.

The Act

Last time I wrote we were staying with our friends Claude and Jane while waiting to complete on the house. The completion, which in Italian is called literally “the Act”, was finally set for 10am on the 28th July at the Notary’s office in Martina Franca. After the formality of the meeting to sign the Sale and Purchase Agreement three months before, I was a little disappointed to find it was a very casual affair. Pierot and Immanuelle from our Estate Agents were dressed in suits, but the Notary wore jeans and trainers. Mr Convertini, the vendor, was dressed in chinos and a polo shirt and had the demeanour of a man about to receive €66,000 in negotiable cheques. His son came with him, thoughtfully attired in a Union Jack T shirt. We suspected that Mrs Convertini had sent the lad to make sure the old man didn’t do anything impetuous with the dosh before returning to their flat in Bari. We had a different translator this time, a young Swedish woman who rendered the Completion Contract into interesting but more or less understandable English. The Notary read the Contract in Italian and then the translator read it in English and that was it really, please sign here. I actually had a few questions, but I thought “oh sod, it, let’s go with the flow” and Sue and I signed on the dotted line.

The contract included a statement by the Notary along the lines of “the parties have told me that the selling price is €60,000”, although actually we paid Mr Convertini a total of €73,000. This arrangement saved us about €1,000 in taxes and the Convertinis presumably gained as well. Half way through the Completion meeting the Notary popped out “to do some photocopying”, at which point Immanuelle, the more spivvy of our two estate agents got up and said “perhaps this would be a good time to exchange the cash and the keys?” Thus the actual cash was exchanged with the Notary out of the room and theoretically none the wiser.

After the meeting Sue and I drove straight to the house. For me paranoia immediately started to kick in with a vengeance. I imagined arriving to find a pile of smoking ruins, picked bare, with a queue of angry creditors lined up outside the door. Of course, the house was just as we’d last seen it three days before, although seeming a little more damp, musty and neglected, as is always the way after actually buying the house of your dreams. We wandered around in a daze. For a townie like me an acre is a lot of land and what the hell were we going to do with all these trees? The house had not been used by the Convertinis for several years and so the electricity had been cut off, this also meant there was no water as the house is not on the mains and water is supplied from two very large cisterns and a powerful electric pump. The estate agents arranged for the electricity company, Enel, to visit and reconnect the power in a few days and in the meantime we stayed at Jane and Claude’s while visiting the house each day to start the process of cleaning and tidying.

Martina Franca

Our final stop before Taranto was meant to be Sibari, a six hundred berth Marina and apartment complex where we had more Calabrian adventures. We found the entry channel using our GPS and then slowly motored towards the entrance as depths were reported to be shallow. At the mouth of a canal which leads into the marina we were practically aground, so I called the marina on the VHF, to which there was no response. I then called them on the mobile ‘phone and got a reply. “Where are you?”, a charming woman asked in excellent English. “Outside the marina,” I replied. “Ah, you can’t enter I’m afraid, maybe next week”. It turned out that the port authorities had closed the marina, one of the largest in Southern Italy, because the entrance had not been dredged. This was even more baffling because a number of foreign boats had over-wintered here last year and we had already met one boat on our travels planning to stay this coming winter. “Yup, nothing really does work in Calabria”, I thought to myself. That night we anchored off a beach and at five the next morning set off for Taranto. In the afternoon the wind picked up and we had a really good sail right into Taranto harbour and up to the marina where our friend Claude was waiting to meet us. While under sail Sue hooked a fifteen pound Dolphin Fish (Claud says it was more like 20 pounds -Sue), which I struggled to haul in and some of which we ate with Claude that evening, along with a string of mussels given to him by one of the marina hands at Taranto.

 For the last few days we have been staying with Jane and Claude and waiting on the house. All the paperwork is ready now, so we are told, and we are just waiting for a date for our final meeting with the Public Notary. In the meantime we have been helping Claude with decorating, eating and taking siestas. Two nights ago Claude’s builder, Donato and his wife Maria called in for a barbecue. We cooked the rest of the Dolphin Fish and Donato and Maria brought fresh peaches and five litres of the strong local red wine. Donato is about sixty and worked in Belgium for twenty years and prefers to speak French with Claude and Jane. Maria is a wonderful woman of about forty five, big and full of energy, who mainly speaks Martinesh, the local dialect of the nearby town of Martina Franca. She works as a farm labourer getting up at three in the morning and working for maybe four or five euros an hour. Donato is also quite deaf, so communication was a bit difficult on the whole, although their generosity and good humour was easy to understand.

 Last night Donato and Maria took us all to see the big procession in Martina Franca for Saint Carmello, whom one of Martina’s churches is dedicated to. The towns around here are all have elegant medieval centres, with stone flagged streets and alleys and whitewashed walls under the azure sky. There was a long procession with bands, the local mayor, an image of the Madonna and lots of old men in flowing white, almost Arabic costumes and women with lace headdresses. At intervals there were loudspeakers broadcasting the priest’s sermon from the church. There were also fireworks and decorations and stalls, mainly run by Moroccans. Afterwards, we went to a country restaurant where we ate a table full of antipasti, stuffed mussels and pizza. Despite Claude and Jane’s protests Maria insisted on paying the fifty euro bill (about £7 per head). Donato also says he knows where we can buy a cheap Rotavator.

Le Castella

We spent three days in Rocella, then headed for our next port of call, Le Castella. There are only a few places to get diesel on the Ionian coast of Calabria and as we were running low I dipped the tank every hour. Unfortunately, my dipstick didn’t take account of the fact that the tank is an odd shape and with ten miles to go to our destination I found we had no more than a few minutes of fuel left. I switched the engine off immediately to give us a small reserve and we got the sails up. It was a hot, hot nearly windless afternoon and it took us three hours to cover four miles. With the sun beginning to set the wind picked up and we started coasting along at four knots. At about the same time Sue noticed some splashing in the water around us and then spotted four Riso’s Dolphins swimming under our bow. These are some of the biggest dolphins in the Med, with big snub noses and white scar-like markings. They were joined by a large pod of smaller dolphins which they chased away while playing under our bow for about half an hour. The water in the Ionian is very clear and we could see them diving down to ten metres and more. Sue got a soaking from the water out of their blow holes and every now and then one would pass so close that they bumped their top fin on the bobstay, the chain that holds our bowsprit down. Occasionally one of them would give La Fulica’s hull a playful bump with its tailfin before swimming off.

As darkness fell the dolphins disappeared and we sailed slowly and cautiously up to Le Castella’s rock-strewn harbour mouth. I started the engine in the harbour entrance and made a dash for safety, just making it into a small yacht basin when simultaneously we ran aground and the engine stopped. Helping hands soon appeared and a small fishing boat towed us to a mooring, the guys smelling of aftershave have just got ready for a night out. As soon as we were safe they jumped into a car and disappeared into town. Next morning it turned out that one of our helpers was Mario Gentile, the marina hand, who drove me three miles to pick up diesel, without charge. We stayed for a couple of days in this laid back little seaside town complete with Aragonese Castle, dining at a restaurant recommended by the Marina’s secretary, appropriately enough called Marina. She insisted on giving us her ‘phone number so we could call and say hello when we were settled in Puglia.

Bandit Country

One we passed through the Straits of Messina we were in new territory in the far south of Calabria.  There is a saying in Italy that “nothing works in Calabria” and we found plenty of evidence to support this claim.  About twenty miles South of the Straits, at the end of Italy’s big toe is the port of Saline Joniche.  It’s a small industrial port with a railway station, built a couple of decades ago for no obvious purpose other than to provide kickbacks to corrupt politicians and Mafia bosses.  We arrived there on a blisteringly hot afternoon and motored cautiously up to the harbour.  None of the industry is working and the harbour mouth is now completely blocked by a sandbank.  Rather than dredge the entrance some enterprising soul has blasted a hole through the harbour wall to allow passage to the few small local fishing boats and cruisers that use it.  Inside, through the rubble of the improvised entrance it looked hot and dead, so we decided to move on.  The hills around this area have a reputation as bandit country where kidnappers hide their hostages and the Carabinieri only patrol with armoured cars and helicopters.

The next day we sailed to Rocella Ionica, a marina completed a couple of years ago.  It’s one of the best equipped in Italy, with space for five or six hundred yachts on smart finger pontoons with lots of power and water outlets, a restaurant and new marina offices.  However, since it was completed no one has been appointed to run it and the power isn’t connected.  As a result visiting yachts can just come and stay and fill up with water for no charge.  Inside we found a fleet of foreign yachts on passage to and from Greece and Turkey, making use of the free facilities which most of them would have been happy to pay for.

Scilla

After the Aolies we anchored at the mouth of the Straits of Messina at a fishing village called Scilla, named after the legendary monster with many arms which the Greeks said lived in the Straits and dragged ships to their doom.  It is a heart-achingly beautiful spot.  The water in the little harbour is crystal clear and the old stone houses are set on a steep slope down to the waters edge.  Outside every little terrace of houses there is a slipway with small fishing boats pulled up literally at each front door, with weather beaten old men mending their nets.  Going ashore we walked the networks of tiny alleys, which every now and then gave a view down steep stone steps to the clear water of the harbour.  Like much of Calabria the place has a Victorian juxtaposition between wealth and poverty, with expensive harbour side restaurants cheek by jowl with decaying cottages ripe with the smell of damp and mould.  In the harbour we were able to take a closer look at the sword fishing boats, with their tall pylon-like masts and improbably long gantry-like bowsprits, which are actually longer than the hulls.  The blokes who fish from these things are built like rugby forwards and I suspect may be the elite of the fishing industry.  Atop the masts there is a platform on which four of these hairy-arsed gorillas sit on plastic chairs lashed to the guard rail.  Next morning we saw one of the boats catch a swordfish.  The gantry was manoeuvred over what I presume was the sleeping fish, which one of the gorillas speared manually with a harpoon, before bounding down the gantry like an olympic runner and helping the rest of the crew haul in their catch.

Under the Volcano

South of the bay of Naples we visited the Aolie Islands, which are a fashionable watering place for rich Italians.  Because the seas were smooth and the weather settled we anchored one night off Stromboli, the most easterly of the Aolies and an active volcano.  Going ashore we were a little disconcerted to find signs everywhere saying “if you hear the warning siren leave the coast immediately and go to the assembly areas.”  Apparently there is a risk of an underwater volcanic eruption which could generate a massive tidal wave or Tsunami.

Next morning we motored slowly around the coast of Stromboli watching the lava flows, before going on to Vulcano, another of the Aolies.  If you ever get the chance to visit this island, don’t bother unless you have a strong stomach.  All over the island are volcanically heated pools in which bloated middle aged Italians cover themselves in green and evil smelling mud.  The whole place stinks of rotten eggs and it’s hard to find a restaurant far enough away from the stench to be able to eat without gagging.

Cruisers

Being a cruiser is like belonging to a tribe, but there are many sub-tribes. My least favourite sub-tribe is the “CV cruisers”. People who in mid-career take off with a boat for a year or so, get as far as they can and then head back to home waters to resume their old lives. Many in this group bring with them the deadline orientation of their working lives and simply seem to race from one place to another. Their objective is to complete an “adventurous episode” to add to their CV – their focus more on the next thing than the now. My favourite sub-tribe might be called the “so what?” brigade. People who when faced with all or any of the following objections from well meaning friends and family say “so what? – I don’t see why that should stop us going cruising”:

• You haven’t got any money.
• You can’t sail.
• You’ve got a secure job.
• She’s half your age.
• You’ve only got one leg.

Allied to this tribe are what might be called the pure eccentrics – like David and Eli. When I stuck my head out of the companionway on the morning of 1st November it was grey and stormy. Waves were crashing onto the harbour walls and the wind was blowing a fine salt spray over the whole marina. Suddenly a couple of marina staff with crackling portable VHF radios stationed themselves at the berth next to ours awaiting the arrival of a boat. The entrance to the port here is very shallow and in strong winds there are dangerous breaking waves across it. “What kind of nutter is trying to come in here today?” I thought to myself. A few minutes later a small and venerable catamaran motored its way up to the berth, with a wild-eyed middle-aged bloke at the wheel, his long strands of greasy hair being whipped around in the wind. At the bow was a woman in her mid-thirties with long blond streaked hair, dressed more for an afternoon’s shopping at Camden Lock than for sailing. As they began tidying up their lines I called across and asked “would you like a cup of tea?” “No thanks, after coming through that entrance I think a large Scotch would be more in order”, he replied, disappearing below.

A few days after their arrival David and Eli rigged up a large striped tent over their after deck and announced an impromptu fancy-dress party to celebrate. Sue and I dressed as pirates, unable to find a parrot Sue put a carrot on her shoulder instead. David was dressed in a leather jerkin, I’m not sure what he was meant to be, Harold Steptoe, possibly. And Eli dressed in a tight orange corset with black laces and a flowing skirt looked like Moll Flanders. Their boat, Kilovar II, is a floating junk shop of 1960s memorabilia. On one of the cabin walls is a picture of a Turkish gunboat. It’s a little known fact that every year the Turks organise an East Med yacht rally which visits Syria, the Lebanon, Israel and Egypt, escorted by a gunboat and blithely ignoring the restrictions on sailing direct between some of these countries. A couple of years back David and Eli joined the rally and decided to get married, having a Christian ceremony on a Muslim gunboat in an Israeli harbour.

I could probably write a book about the many other interesting characters around the port, but I will confine myself to one other couple, who I admire more than most – Jude and Peter. They are Americans in their mid-fifties I would guess and they live on a small nine-metre boat called “Flight”, which they bought new about thirty years ago. Jude is a teacher and artist and Peter has been many things, including a professional swimmer, teacher, artist, photographer and insurance salesman. Jude has recently been made a Professor and usually teaches for about half the year in a college in New England. The rest of their time they spend sailing “Flight” around the Eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada, the Caribbean and the Med. On New Years Day Jude rigged up an exhibition of her recent watercolours in the room the marina lets us use and it was a great fun to wander around looking at many places that were familiar to us from our Summer cruise whilst nursing a thumping hangover. I wrote a short story based on one of her pictures, which Peter recorded to play back to Jude’s students. Jude and Sue have conducted a two woman campaign to try to rid the marina of the sexism that exists among so many of our fellow cruisers. I guess what I admire about them is that they appear to be spending their lives being themselves and trying to live by their own standards and values rather than by those imposed by others. I think this is what David and Eli do too, but perhaps less self-consciously.

Porto di Roma

Now we’ve been in the Med for well over a year I think I can say I’m getting truly acclimatised. This has a downside. I can’t cope with cold weather any more. Italy is at this moment in the grip of a cold spell. There is snow from the Alps to Sicily and the TV news has pictures of frozen tailbacks full of juggernauts from one end of the country to the other. I’m writing this in the early morning in my berth watching my breath condense all over the laptop screen. Our fan heater is going full belt, I’m wrapped in a duvet and I’m wearing track suit bottoms, a sweater and thick socks. Here on the coast the temperature is actually at this moment a couple of degrees above freezing, a normal English winter morning which a couple of years ago I would have thought nothing about. The trouble is ... I’m bloody freezing!

When I wrote in October there were thirty odd cruising yachts here already and they continued to roll in steadily through October and November, so that there is now a community of more than sixty over-wintering boats. Many of the boats are from the UK and there is a sizeable US contingent, some Antipodeans and a scattering of Dutch, German and other European nationalities. At any one time well over half the boats are occupied and there is a very busy, sometimes too busy, social life. Every morning there is a VHF radio “net” during which we all exchange information about medical needs, parts for sale or wanted, forthcoming social events and the next transport strike. The marina have given us use of a large room and every week a social is held there and a range of other activities. Sue and I go to Yoga and Italian lessons twice a week each and I play bridge and attend a writers group as well. Once per week there are “destination seminars”, where people get together to share information about their favourite cruising grounds, Greece, Turkey, the Black Sea and the like. Also, Ruth, from one of the big American boats is an experienced piano accompanist and sometimes I learn to sing new songs and perform them to my fellow cruisers.

If you think this all sounds like a multi-national, middle-aged and middle-class version of Butlins - you’d probably be right. But it suits us for this winter and we’ve learnt a lot about cruising and cruisers. It’s a broad church, ranging from the seriously rich to the dirt-poor, from the dedicated to the dilettante. I enjoy getting along with people, but I also like to take a dislike to some. I feel it’s only when I find someone I dislike that I actually bring into sharper focus what I like about people. Finding someone to dislike has been a real problem this winter. I fix on someone and decide “yes, I really don’t like you”, only to find on subsequent contact that actually they’re alright. I guess I’ve never been in a community where I feel more at home. Why is this? I think it’s because the people here are all, in one way or another – doers. Folk who don’t just dream about what they want, but try to do something about it. For sure, many of the cruisers here are retired and don’t have to worry too much about where the next buck comes from, but it still takes bottle to buy a boat and up sticks and find your way around foreign seas, foreign ports and foreign countries.