My Second Favorite View

I come to this place several times a week to go running or to walk Milly. On each occasion I try to spend a few moments taking in the scene and the weather. Every day something is different. On some days the sky is so blue and the sea so serene that you can make out trails in the sea where the faintest puff of wind has disturbed the glassy sheen of the water. On other days the sky is full of racing clouds and my face is blasted by a gale roaring down the Adriatic from far away Venice. This wind is called the “bora” and it sends with it big white capped waves that can be spotted even from this ridge several miles from the coast.

If you half close your eyes it is easy to go back in time and imagine this vista over a thousand years ago. Not much has changed, maybe some of the big olive trees down on the coastal plain were little bushes then. The Roman road running through the centre of the plain had already been built as had the little towns clustered long it which still retain their Roman street layout. Dotted all over the plain are large farmhouses many of which must have evolved from Roman villas.

Down there was a kind of artery which connected Italy and Greece in ancient times. Brindisi, thirty miles up the coast, is a fantastic natural harbour perfect for galleys and Corfu is only a hundred miles across the water. Thousands of years ago the Greeks colonised the heel of Italy which is now called “Puglia”. Then the Romans pushed out the Greeks. Later came many other conquerors and brigands – Hannibal, the Normans, the Swabians, the Spanish and the French. Bands of crusaders marched this way to find a boat to take them to the Holy Land and in the nineteenth century the coast was terrorised by Arab pirates. Just sixty-odd years ago the German army became an occupying force when their Italian allies suddenly agreed an armistice with the British and Americans, who in turn pushed the Germans back up north. Even more recently than that the Americans used the airbase at Brindisi to bomb Serbia, a short flight across the Adriatic.

So many tribes have been this way and left their mark on the topography and the people of this region. And yet the view from up here has hardly changed since the Romans built their road, the great sweep of European history having as much impact on the landscape as the shadows of the passing clouds.