In which Sid and Doris maintain their long held dislike of Bari, cross Dog Turd Traverse but later cheer up with spaghetti in a pretty town square.
We look out of our (expensively-windowed) cabin to see rain falling and lightning flashing. We cannot hear the thunder. It is still raining as we get off the ferry. Bari in general has an Arabic attitude to drainage and we ride through small ponds to the port gates.
Here we have another of the moments when the world joins up. Overnight the boat stopped at Igoumenitsou to pick up and off load. Before we can get off we watch a car transporter carrying a small truck and another multi car trailer. They are Bulgarian registered. They have come to buy up cars that will not pass emissions tests or any other road worthiness check in the rest of Europe and take the smoking old clunkers to sell in Bulgaria. A) Jolly good they are being used, it is like recycling B) Yuck, they are poisoning Bulgaria.
Having selected Bari as our entry point in Italy we had not much idea of what next. Only this morning we chose the Adriatic coast road as it gives Northness. We also need Westing but did not want to risk a Bicitalia route yet as they look a bit mountain bike oriented.
Finding the usable old coast road was very difficult. The newish road built over the old road here is not viable on bikes. And this from Sid and Doris; that tells you it would be suicide – we have become more accustomed to riding on main roads with other traffic.
So we are looking at long work arounds through ex urban Bari. But Doris spots the Dog Turd Traverse to cross a small wadi, which saves five kilometres of dull riding. The first trick is to get the bikes down the slope without falling in the muck. The ground is made up of mud, rubbish bags, builders’ rubble and empty bottles though clearly has regular local foot traffic. The gunge does not sit well with cleats and pedals but we are underway again.
Having got that sorted out, we go through a succession of pretty little towns made of creamy-coloured stone. The culinary welcome to Italy happens in a sweet town square at Giovinazzo with lunch. We sit down at noon. The kitchen is not supposed to open for half an hour. We have chosen spaghetti with anchovy sauce. We are brought a cream cheese, mango and ham amuse guele (picture is of Sid having his guele jolly amused). The spag is al dente and tasty.
At this point we pick Barletta as our day’s destination and book a room that turns out to be over one of the town’s main drinking alleys, oh and has a ‘view’ of the cathedral. We have to wait for our landlady to let us in and discover the joys of Crodino, a non-alcoholic bitters drink which is not only super-tasty but also probably contains enough tartrazine to keep us hyperactive for a week. Sid finds you can buy it in 12-packs and so it is added to the pile of #virtualsouvenirs.
Finally into our room, with the window open and your head in exactly the right place you can see the top of the bell tower. View or glimpse. ‘A room with a glimpse’, not the stuff of Merchant Ivory romances.
Never mind, Barletta is an engaging town. We see the Colossus of Barletta, a four meter high bronze statue of a Roman soldier dating from about 500 AD. No one knows who it was (Ozymandias?). The town was probably founded by Phoenician sailor merchants. If Phoenicians land now they are most likely to be sent to a refugee camp. It was also a Greek and Roman port, and would be important as such again, though now it seems to be eclipsed by Bari.
Here is a direct quote from the Wiki Barletta entry. “During WW2 the city was the site of the first episode of Italian conflict with German troops, when a battalion of Fallschirmjager was sent from Foggia to Barletta to destroy the port before the British 8th Army could arrive, the Italian garrison surrendered after a brief struggle, thereby earning the Gold Medal of Military Valour and of Civiilian Merit.” Honest, I just copied it out.
Our AirBnB host organises us dinner in a place where, perhaps, Italians will eat later in the evening. We have pizza on a base whose starter (yeast mixture) has been going continually since 1947. These Italians take their pizza base seriously.We negotiate a move to a table on the main drag for the paseo – locals may not want that but we find it much more fascinating than an echoing cellar room.
After dinner we go back to the cathedral which has been busy all afternoon and still has people coming to sit for a bit. We sit for a quiet moment and then at 10.00pm there is a small service with plenty of action from the congregation.
Now we have maps we are happy. The Appenines look to be even more of a challenge than the Bulgarian ranges so we expect climb rather than distance to be our limiting factor for a few weeks. We are not afraid of the climbs but are not sure we can find places to stop, so quite similar to The Bulgarian Conundrum (available soon in paperback).