October 2020 From Caserta to Vieste

On Tuesday morning we are in the car for 7.30 and heading on the motorway for Manfredonia in Puglia. The motorway is two lanes, has lots of bends, roadworks and speed traps but is splendid after the chaos of the ordinary roads around Caserta. The landscape is green, perhaps because of the recent rain, and we make good if cautious progress through the hills of cultivated fields and often dark earth towards Puglia where the landscape changes.

The Santa Restituta local market in Manfredonia is as splendid as we remembered. Here in season fruit and vegetables such as pears and prickly figs, tomatoes and aubergines come €1 for two kilos and the choice of fish is enormous and costs half what it did in San Felice. We buy 2 kilos each of red and green camone tomatoes, aubergines, friarielli, prickly pears, pears, grapes and vanilla caki, two ricciole, a one kilo octopus and another kilo of totani, 1€ of chips and a large chunk of bread for €0.80 and calculate we should be able to survive in Vieste for 6 days.

The panoramic road along the coast to Vieste is possibly more panoramic than I remembered, white cliffs and an incredibly blue green sea. 

After the troubled and worrying roads of Campania it's also an easy drive. We stop on the roadside at a viewpoint to drink some coffee from the flask and eat a couple of rizze from the day before and then ring the residence in Vieste to say we'll be arriving at about quarter to one. Not possible, they close at 12.30. Grr. The idea of waiting until two o'clock in a hot car with several kilos of fresh produce does not appeal. Google maps says if we don't stop again we'll arrive at 12.27, the receptionist says he can't promise someone will still be there at 12.27. Driving here on the windy roads isn't so different from driving in the mountains but I'm quite pleased with myself as I turn into the drive of the residence at 12.20. It's ok, perhaps a bit too cool and shady and gloomy for October, it must be delightful in summer. We are soon installed with all our stuff and food on the table.

In the afternoon we go for a walk along the splendidly beautiful Scialara beach, every bit as nice as we remembered, fantastic sea, space, just a few walkers, foresta Umbra behind us. Vieste!