Trulli Unique
“How can the headline be spelled
wrong?” I hear my learned audience cry!
Because it’s actually spelled
correctly – yes, Trulli are a particular type of house which is unique to the
Puglia region of Southern Italy. They’re
funny looking little dwellings with conical stone roofs making you think they
may be inhabited by a gnome or an elf. For
those of you who don’t know, Puglia is the region of Italy that is the ‘heel of
the boot’ and in many places you’ll see these little Trulli houses as you drive
about the countryside. The most famous
town for Trulli is Alberobello where there are several hundred of them, well
justifying the town’s UNESCO World Heritage Status.
This edition will be a little
different as we attempt to provide some insights into life on the road with the
Travelling Woodies. Since our last blog we
have visited some very special places however for many of them, the photos tell
the story. I’ll be sure to provide locations
in each caption so you can treat this edition as a photo diary however for now,
this is Adventures with Harvey coming to you with a slightly different flavour.
We decided our first night on the
mainland would be in Reggio Calabria but how do we choose where to stay each
night? With the use of our favourite app
which is called Park4Night which it is an indispensable tool for we motorhomers. You can search any town or region and on the
map, a variety of symbols will appear, each denoting a different type of parking
spot. E.g. Black circle with a tent is a
camp ground, red with a motorhome is a paying motorhome area often with
optional electricity and showers/toilets, these typically cost between €8-25
per night. Green dot with a motorhome is
rare but best, these are free dedicated motorhome areas provided by the city and
will almost always have waste and water services available. Then you have a blue circle with a P which is
a carpark that some other motorhomer has found and registered with the site and
usually at least one of these will be suitable.
The app provides a good description of each site, how many spaces, if
there is a cost, what services are available etc and also users get to leave
reviews giving 1-5 stars and provide a comment.
All of which means you can easily figure out whether a place is safe,
quiet, free, and often info about access to public transport and other useful info. If you really hit the jackpot you’ll find a
free carpark right by the ocean which we have been fortunate enough to do every
so often. We find a free spot 5-6 nights
per week on average, paying is only necessary if there is nowhere free or
perhaps in cities with a high crime rate in which case a paying area will always
be more secure than a random carpark.
The app also tells you where to find a laundromat which we use about every
10-14 days, as well as dedicated dump stations and water faucets.
Happily we found a free spot in Reggio
Calabria which was an enormous carpark on the waterfront near the port which
was used by truckies to park up for a few hours or overnight. Like almost all of southern Italy it was
filthy with piles of garbage everywhere however we had a peaceful night there
(once the couple of carloads of youngsters had cleared out around 10pm). Our view was back across the water to Sicily
and, if we’d had some binoculars, we would have been able to see the carpark on
the other side where we spent our last night on the island. The highlight of Reggio Calabria was a couple
of life-sized Greek bronze statues in the archaeological museum, these pieces having
been discovered in 1972 by a local chemist snorkelling and date back to the 5th
century BC. No-one knows who these fine
naked specimens are, and the museum keeps them in an atmosphere controlled room
(3 minutes in an air-gap was needed prior to entry). Anita, being a fan of earl grey tea, also went
to the bergamot museum which was a celebration of all things related to said citrus
fruit.
Several people have asked how Harvey
goes with negotiating the skinny little European roads. The answer is surprisingly well most of the
time however Italy has been the most difficult country so far mainly due to the
poor quality and maintenance of the roads.
Many streets in and around the centre of small European towns weren’t
designed with Harveys in mind and for this reason, we try and avoid CBD areas. If you have a medieval hilltop town for
example, there will usually be a Park4Night outside the town and you’re able to
walk or cycle up to do your exploring. The
same applies with larger towns and cities, we usually park somewhere on the
outskirts and cycle in or use public transport.
Before setting off each driving day we peruse the route using Google
maps to make sure there’s nothing particularly nasty looking and also to select
the most suitable route. We always take
toll roads if they’re available because they’re usually shorter and flatter, always
much easier on Harvey, and we think you save at least as much on LPG and other
wear & tear as you pay on the tolls.
Google satellite view is also very useful, especially if we’re planning
some supermarket shopping – you can zoom in on the carpark and see if it’s
suitable for a Harvey or not (obviously underground or rooftop carparks are a no-go).
However occasionally things go wrong as
they did on our way to Tropea, this town being a good example of one to park on
the outskirts, however the approach to our selected parking area took us around
the edge of town and included 3-4 tight hairpin bends. Harvey can deal with hairpins most of the
time, it just takes a 3 to 7 point turn and some excellent assistance from our
lovely navigator who gets out to help and also directs traffic as required. However at Tropea things went wrong when one
of the hairpins was also particularly steep and, with Harvey’s large bum
(overhang over the rear axle) he actually got stuck. Yep, his left front bumper was up against the
barrier and his right rear had scraped on the road and the old chap was caste…
and there was a decent queue of traffic forming. In the end we were able to put him into
reverse, give it some wellie, and scrape our way backwards for a short distance,
realign the turn and we were away… but it was slightly traumatic for all
concerned (particularly poor Harvey).
Your author’s favourite thing about
Tropea (apart from the stunning views) was 2 unexploded bombs from WWII, both
of which hit the church in town but failed to explode. They are now on permanent exhibition and are
something you don’t see inside a church every day! The Travelling Woodies spent a couple of delightful
hours on the beach in the afternoon, your author had his first swim in the Med,
and we befriended a young Belgian couple, Jasper and Nathalie, who later joined
us for a refreshment at a local seaside bar as we watched the sun go down and
exchanged travel stories.
Please be sure to look out for the
next blog as your author has a most interesting story to tell. It’s a bit like a story within a story and it
starts at Taranto so, I’ll save my report of that town for the next edition when
all will be revealed.
You’ve heard us say that one of the
most memorable aspects of this trip has been the people that we’ve met and
befriended and top of that list are Jacqueline and Hendrik. We first met them in January in Marbella,
Spain. Then our paths crossed just north
of Napoli and we spent a few days exploring that area together (you may
remember they were with us at the strawberry farm). They headed in a different direction to us
after that and were in Puglia for a week or so while we were in Sicily. They are shortly heading north to take up a
summer job in France so there was only one night where our travels intersected again
and that was in Polignano a Mare.
Hendrik is a big supporter of the Dutch football team Feyenoord and they
were playing a game that evening, which if they won, meant they were champions
of the league. So Hendrik and I settled
in with a refreshment or two to watch the game on the laptop while Anita and
Jacqueline hung out in Frankie, their motorhome. Feyenoord won the game which was very exciting
and we spent a lovely evening thereafter with our young friends – go well guys,
it’s been a blast travelling Europe with you.
Harvey and Frankie (their motorhome) are certainly going to miss each
other ☹
One of Anita’s challenges on this trip
has been hair maintenance. Fortunately my
choice of hairstyle needs little attention but Anita, having tried a similar
haircut a few years ago, prefers to keep hers slightly longer 😊. Apparently good hairdressers tend to be
booked up well in advance and so finding somewhere that can fit you in, and
then communicating the technical details of what you want done to someone who
doesn’t speak English has been somewhat challenging for those of us with hair. Google Translate is helpful but such terms as
“light ash blonde” and “fine foils” tend to get a little confusing for everyone
and have led to mixed results. In
Polignano a Mare however, Anita found some helpful folk to assist and so she visited
the hair salon while your author cycled to the town of Monopoli which was
around 10km down the road. Next morning
it was a pedicure for those in the pink corner so now we’re all set for the
summer when jandals will be the predominant footwear!
One of the reasons we selected Harvey
in the first place was his large water and waste tanks. To conserve water we shower every second day
which means we can last up to a week between fills and empties, however
sometimes some additional tank maintenance is needed and we’ve actually been a
little slack at that. I know we’re
amongst friends here so let me be a little forthright… lately Harvey was beginning to stink! At the end of a travelling day, especially if
the roads had been bumpy, the old guy was smelling like the inside of an out
house! Our stop at Cisternino was one of
those lovely green symbols on Park4Night and when we arrived, the carpark turned
out to be the size of a football field and we were pretty much the only ones
there. What excellent timing! That afternoon we got to work giving all the
tanks a jolly good flush out and by the time we were done everything was nice
and clean and, more importantly, fresh smelling. Next morning we again made use of the water and
lack of other motorhomes and gave Harvey and the bikes a good clean. Usually washing motorhomes is forbidden at such
places, and the amount of time we spent on the cleaning and tank flushing also
would normally have led to a long queue and some very grumpy fellow
campers. It was excellent to take the opportunity
and get Harvey’s maintenance up to date in time for the busy summer ahead including
2 lots of visitors which we’re extremely excited about!!!
One of our very big expenses on this
trip is LPG and Harvey certainly is quite a thirsty chap! The lovely Anita has developed a superpower
and that is finding cheap gas using an app called myLPG.eu. Also included is how much the gas costs,
users are also able to update the app so you know how recently the price was
verified. Harvey takes around 210 litres
from empty and the range of prices we’ve paid on this trip varies from €0.64 to
€1.20/litre, however thankfully Italy is one of the cheapest countries and we’ve
been able to spend no more than €0.66 here although those cheap ones still need
to be sniffed out, most of the stations here are selling it between €0.75 to €0.85/litre. There can be a huge variation between
countries which we guess must come down to taxation rates so, in the few days
before crossing a border, Anita gets on the app and finds out which country has
the cheaper gas, that way we can buy either before or after crossing the
border, whichever is more cost effective.
In addition to the main tank, there is a separate built in LPG cylinder
which runs all the on-board systems: cooker, fridge (when not plugged into shore
power), hot water and the furnace when it’s cold. That second cylinder lasts more than a month
in summer and 2-3 weeks in winter when we’re using the furnace more.
We eat most meals in Harvey or take
lunch in our backpack. Groceries are our
second biggest expense after LPG, and shopping for supplies had been one of the
pleasures for Anita on this trip. She
likes nothing more than to research and sample local specialties. The Woodies love shopping at markets so will
do this wherever possible and there are plenty of shops in these little tourist
towns that will sell you a packet or jar of the local delicacy. But the supermarkets are also a delight, just
the variety of foods available and the fun of experimenting with unknown flavours. Even for your author, trying the regional
tastes and specialties has been a wonderful highlight, and even more so for the
foodie sitting next to me.
Ostuni was our next hilltop medieval
town – both we Woodies are in our happy place exploring tiny cobbled alleyways,
where around every corner pots of brightly coloured petunias or cascading bougainvillea
contrast with the white-washed buildings, and tourist tat is peddled by little
old ladies while handsome Italian men zip by on Vespas.
We loved our stop in Lecce which is
where we realised that tourist season is about to begin! Travelling in the off-season means you don’t
always have the best weather however the good thing is the lack of other
tourists. However in Lecce hoards of
them seemed to appear from nowhere – bus load after bus load of mainly older Italian
travellers following their guide around with their earpieces turned up full
volume. At this time there seem to be
very few American or Asian travellers however we expect to see them appearing
in droves once the summer arrives. We have
about another 2 weeks of relatively peace because by the time we hit Rome in
June it will probably be total chaos.
Which we’ll also love!!!
Our final stop this edition is at the
beautiful seaside town of Otranto which has a memorial to a very sad (relatively)
recent event. In 1997 a boat load of
Albanian refugees collided with an Italian coastguard resulting in the loss of
at least 84 lives. The ship on which
they were travelling has been turned into a giant sculpture on the waterfront by
a local artist and is a permanent reminder that sometimes the desperation of people
fleeing adversity can lead to tragedy.
So on that sombre note Adventures with
Harvey will bid you farewell for another edition – thanks again for keeping us
company and don’t forget to look out for the next instalment which will contain
a historical story with a very personal meaning for your Europe correspondent.
With much love as always.
Dave & Anita
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This edition coming to you from Puglia in Southern Italy |
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The church on top of this hill in Tropea used to be on an island |
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unexploded bomb inside the church in Tropea |
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picturesque Tropea |
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relaxing at the beach, Tropea
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watching the sunset with our friends Jasper and Nathalie |
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one of the famous bronze statues from Reggio Calabria - found by a snorkeller in 1972, no-one knows who he is or sculpted him |
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bergamot museum, Reggio Calabria
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in Italy they don't see the need for a sign telling how low a bridge is, making it trial and error. Harvey didn't fit under this bridge |
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Harvey's parking spot at Polignano a Mere, sadly it's probably the last time he'll see his friend Frankie :-( |
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Polignano a Mare |
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Anita after spending 2.5 hours with the hairdresser who spoke not a word of English... and ending up with big Italian hair
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the bronze mimic is back |
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this wine merchant sells his product by the litre - and a very nice drop it was too! |
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the waterfront at Monopoli |
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Alberobello and a sea of Trulli houses |
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Alberobello #2 |
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Trulli houses in the countryside
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Cisternino has swings and wall art everywhere |
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Harvey and the bikes getting some much needed TLC |
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Overnight parking spot at Ostuni |
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these little 3-wheeled vehicles are everywhere - mostly they're the world's smallest ute but other times they become a tuk tuk |
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three level restaurant at Ostuni... |
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... and yes, we did have a refreshment there. Anita's favourite is limoncello spritz |
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there are olive trees everywhere including some with the most enormous gnarly trunks |
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red onions are a specialty of the area
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church at Lecce |
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inside a different church at Lecce (the town has 44 of them!) |
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amphitheatre at Lecce |
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castle at Otranto |
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the Otranto waterfront |
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the Martyrs of Otranto - this room contains the bones of 813 people who died for their faith |
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dinner with my favourite person at sunset on the Otranto waterfront |
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our travels this blog |
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