On the East Coast

Hello again, hope you are all keeping well. Glad to hear that the weather is improving in England, though how long that will last given it is Wimbledon.... I’ not going to mention the weather here as it appears that I am getting little sympathy, just to say that Kye has been having trouble adjusting – seems to spend most of his time asleep, so no difference there then!

Talking of sport- the last night in Gallipoli was the Euro 2012 match between England and Italy. I happened to be at the bar checking my emails when they were setting up a big screen and lots of people started to arrive, so being curious ( and not having seen a tv since I left) I went over to see what was happening. Sat down and started to watch then realised that I was outnumbered about 400 to 1 so decided that discretion was the better part of valour, wished the lads well and beat a retreat.  Found out the result the next night and decided it had been the right move.

 I left Gallipoli on Monday morning and headed off towards Lecce which is supposed to have a wonderful Baroque centre- took me a lot longer than I had anticipated and arrived to discover a very large and very busy city, round and round I went looking for the old part, got very hot, frazzled, lost so decided I had seen a lot of baroque in the past weeks and left- sometimes I’m not the greatest sightseer. But I did have a destination in mind- a very old town called Matera which I reached just in time to find my overnight stop.

Matera is famous for its old town called the sassi – houses cut into caves, people were still living in these caves up to the 1950’s and not through choice, it was one of the poorest places and malaria ridden areas in the country, there was such an outrage about children dying of the disease that the government of the day was forced to do something. It is really quite fascinating and has an interesting energy/feel to it. Wandering around one could get a sense of a real community, the part I was in had a number of music academies so there were sounds of different instruments wafting in the air, quite entrancing.

My overnight stop was at an agrotourism site, only took 10 campers but outside town with horses, goats, peacocks and no cicadas much to Kyes relief. To my relief they had hot showers – the first for 5 days – lovely! Oh and a nice restaurant where they only served local dishes – no pizzeria here.

The last couple of nights I have been on a very relaxed, and relaxing site just outside Paestum, south of Naples. The site opens directly onto a lovely long sandy beach with good sea – big rollers and surf.

Went to visit the site today, Paestum has one of the largest Greek temple complexes outside of Greece , 2 of the temples are in great condition and the museum has explanations in English which makes it so much more interesting- had heard about it a long time ago and has been on my list – it did not disappoint!

So tomorrow on my way to Naples, well, just outside to meet good pal Weeze who is coming over for a few nights. She has booked us into a dog friendly b and b, not sure which I’m looking forward to the most, seeing her or sleeping in a bed (only joking Weeze) both are going to be great. Am sure we will fit in some sightseeing as well as lots of chat.

With that I’ll sign off. Hope that Andy Murray isn’t causing too much stress no doubt the papers are full of will he won’t he, lets hope he does.

Ciao from a cold and wet Italy. (and if you believe that you’ll believe anything!)