Along the Acquadotto

Life seems on hold as I wait for news from Sue about her dad.  When I awoke this morning I was struck by the profound quiet of Contrada Papariello, punctuated by the very occasional car and, at this time of the year, the odd shotgun going off.  It's been a pleasant day, presided over by a watery sun and this afternoon I set off on my bicycle for a ride along the Acquadotto.

The Acquadotto Pugliese is a civil engineering marvel which transports fresh water from Campania on the other side of the Apennines all the way to the far south of Puglia.  It was begun at the beginning of the twentieth century and took decades to complete.  It's still a lifeline for Puglia's population and agriculture, but over the last few years it's also become an increasingly popular linear park and I frequently run or bicycle some of the more attractive local stretches, especially the section starting from the pumping station at Figazzano, a village a few kilometres away which was also Erminia's birthplace and where many members of her family still live.  As the photo shows it looks rather like a disused railway line and the path is actually a service road, which mostly runs immediately above the actual water main, although sometimes when the main is tunnelled through a hill the road takes a more roundabout course.

The light was great today so I took my camera.  The house opposite is only a couple of hundred metres from the path and I've always admired its compact solidity and the relationship it has with the surrounding fields and woodland.  The kind of place I'd like to live, if I had the time and money to do it up.

On the way back I took the panorama below which shows a great swathe of the Val d'Itria with the town of Martina Franca on the ridge in the distance, looking down over the patchwork of olive groves and vineyards that the area is famous for.  I guess one day we will repatriate when our acre of land and old stone house becomes too much for our old bones to manage, but it's hard to contemplate on a day like today.