D49 Ruvo do Puglia to Bari

Stayed in a rather suburban b and b last night with a me an gardening host who gave me a knowledgeable tour of his fruit and olive trees. Interestingly he suffered some olive pestlence from a ground dwelling insect that clambered up the trunk at night - he used a form of wool wrapped around the trunk.to arrest them. I was more interested in his strategy for olive fly which badly affected one of my three harvests to date but he couldn't lay his hands on the preventive substance he uses there.

I did eventually get going but then stopped in the next town Terlizzi which was as attractive as all these little Puglia towns for coffee. The Appian way goes right by here but I didn't detour to see some more Roman pavement, been there done that! However I did stop to admire this Dolmen chamber tomb from 3500Bc early Bronze age. Knowing that Neolithic agricultural settlement (which chamber tombs are related to.('our ancestors lived/still look out for us on this land')

I I stopped to take this shot as I thought it summed up Italy's transition from traditional to modern, agricultural to industrial, closed to open. Its been an education coming down this beautiful peninsula - more an agglomeration of regions than a nation state m.p.h.-maybe a model for  europe here?

 Then suddenly I'm entering Giovinazzo who trumpet  their olives but of more interest to me is on the seaside. And on what is a rather shallow shoregood.For seafood but not for swimming it possesses an old stone quay which solved the swimming problem.

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Lunch  had to be mussels served in what else but a tomatoe and pepper sauce that was delicious. As I mused on my last day in Italy over lunch I did have this nagging feeling that it was all going too well and the ferry booked for midnight might prove less straightforward that one might think.

My foreboding proved to be not without cause. The finAl cycle into Bariwhich should be a pleasant roll along the coast routes you on a bike instead inland via the airport an industrial belt and a bunch of flats which for some reason I struggled to battle through. When I did get to the port the ferry had been canCelled due to  a strike by Greek seamen.  So an unscheduled camp on  a lawn beside a bastion in Bari after teaming up with two Galatians Campbell and Gemma cycling from Bologna. But that's another story they tell  at

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