Last Sunday Sue booked us on a guided walk among the olive trees near Ostuni, starting near the sixteenth century Masseria D'Agnano (opposite). Discretely beautiful and in a fabulous location on the edge of the Murghe, it's being renovated. The perfect hideaway for a Russian billionaire perhaps, or for me if I had the money.
Our guide was a young local man who is a member of a group devoted to the preservation of the ancient olive groves of the coastal plain, some of which he confirmed are thousands of years old. Looking out over the trees below, he came up with the interesting insight that these were the oilfields of the Roman Empire, oil which was prized not primarily for cooking, but for keeping Rome lit at night.
Later he took us to this cave, which his group had cleared and where everyone took this shot. I tried to resist but sometimes you just have to add to your collection of pictures framed by cavemouths and the view was great, looking out across the olive groves to the seaside town of Torre Canne with its distinctive lighthouse.
On returning to where our cars were parked our guide then led us through some trees and to a small cave which contained a massive grinding stone. He explained that a donkey would pull another big stone, mounted on a wooden beam, which pivoted from a depression in the centre of the base stone to crush the olives to a paste, the first stage in the production of olive oil. This primitive olive mill was documented as having been abandoned in the seventeenth century and could have been created hundreds of years before that. There is no signpost to this deeply atmospheric spot, but now we know where it is we will be back.
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