Peschici

I took this photo last week lying on our bed in the afternoon in a lovely little hotel in the centre of Peschici, a small port and resort on the tip of the Gargano peninsula in the north of Puglia.

Since I got back to Puglia in early May we've been working hard getting our house and land ready for the summer, so we took a break for a few days to relax and recharge our batteries.

It's only our second time in the Gargano, the first time being a day trip with Old Paolo and Erminia to St Giovani Rotondo, the centre of the Padre Pio industry not long after we bought the house in 2004.

Although further north than our home it actually feels more remote, because it's far from the main autoroutes and regional airports.

At the centre of the peninsula is the Foresta Umbra, an ancient woodland of oak, beech and pine to which wolves were reintroduced a few years ago.  We took a stroll in it for a couple of hours, enjoying the shade and the peace and feeling strangely reminded of the Bornean rainforest.

But mainly we just strolled around the local seaside towns, taking in the views and the sunsets, dining on excellent seafood and eating ice cream.

It was however still early in the season and many of the locals were still frantically tarting the place up before the tourists arrive in greater numbers.  Unfortunately, this didn't extend to removing a rusty chunk of reinforcing bar attached to a lump of concrete buried on Peschici beach, which I managed to hook my foot under going for an early morning run sending me flying and burying my chin in the sand and bruising my ribs, which still hurt when I cough now more than ten days later.