To the lighthouse!

Once a week when I am home I usually take a morning ride to this lighthouse. I have to drop down about 1000 feet off the ridge on which we live, then across the coastal plain to the little resort of Torre Canne. This only takes about half an hour, but it then takes me over an hour to grind my way back up again.

During the ride I travel through three different worlds. The limestone plateau called the Murghe, which is a patchwork quilt of little stone houses and small holdings, the plain below, a good five centigrade warmer most of the year and dominated by large estates of majestic olive trees, then the coastal strip, full of camper vans and holiday makers in the Summer season.

The climb back is a good antidote to life's petty frustrations such as "will the part I have ordered from the UK to get my motorbike back on the road ever arrive?" I seem to spend a lot of my life waiting for things at the moment, but out on the bike there is just the one hill to climb. From the plain the Murgh looks very like the North Downs, the intercostal muscle that separates London from its lungs - the counties of Kent and Surrey. As I look at the band of green stretching in front of me I often think of my Mum, who when my Dad or I would point out the Downs while out on a Sunday drive would cry anxiously, "where, what are you looking at?" She would stare blankly at the line of hills and simply not see them as a separate entity.

I only bought the bike about a year ago, the first new one I have ever owned and the steepest part of the climb is a measure of my increasing fitness, as over the months I have tackled it in successively higher gears. I get back home after a couple of hours, hot, sweaty and ready for breakfast and the day ahead.

Stranded in Puglia

This is my motorbike, gassed up and ready to go to England yesterday morning. I'd been dithering for several days about whether to ride back to the UK for the bike's annual inspection and finally got my act together after Sue and her friend Barbara set off for a weekend in Prague.

It was a lovely sunny morning when I set off with the intention of staying in Rimini on Friday evening before tackling the Alps. I took a scenic road to Bari and was tooling along happily when bam, the bike lost all power and glided to halt on the roadside with all the electrics dead.

After a desultory attempt to find the problem, with trucks and lorries thundering past within a few inches, I gave it up as a bad job and hitched a lift to the nearest town. I was picked up by the classic Pugliese peasant farmer or "contadino" driving a battered hatchback. "Where are you from then?" "London eh? My son lives in Manchester." "So you've got a place here in Puglia?Here's my card, you need fruit, veg, wine or oil, you just call me."

So Giovanni drove me to Putignano where he found a mechanic who found a motorbike mechanic who came out and picked up my bike. So now my beloved Suzuki Bandit, which I have owned since 1998 lies in a garage twenty miles from home awaiting a part which will maybe see me on my way to England next week or maybe not. On this particular day I guess it was Italy 1, Japan nil.

The Cathedral at Ostuni

Sue's Australian friend Barbara came to stay this week and so we did the sightseeing thing. I'm proud of my adopted home and enjoy showing people around, especially as it allows one to look with fresh eyes at familiar things.

Today we went to the "White City" of Ostuni, which sits on the edge of the limestone plateau on which we live, surveying the Adriatic Sea and the coastal plain several hundred feet below. Your man on the left is Saint Oronzo, who stands on a tall column in the town centre. He's the local early Christian martyr and miracle worker credited with saving a nearby town from the plague.

Ostuni is a tourist ghetto, but it also has a sleepy southern italian dignity.

After wandering around the gift shops we climbed up the hill to the medieval cathedral. Barbara is a catholic and so I guess it had a special resonance for her. I mooched around on my own, playing with my camera, while Sue and Barbara read the guide and peered quizzically at the artefacts.

We were the only people there and after a while I began to feel a sense of peace and melancholy as I gazed at the doe-eyed Madonnas and the images of Saint Oronzo, most of which register the mild suprise one sees on the face of so many saints.

Sue asked me if I was feeling OK and I smiled and said "fine", before we emerged blinking into the evening sunshine to wander the lime-washed alleys for a little longer until it was time for dinner.