Cammino Materano Via Peuceta Day 1: Bari - Bitetto

Bari - Bitetto 17.5 km

Off we go! First day walking on the Cammino Materano between Bari and Matera with three friends: Mariella and Francesca from AperiLibri book club, and Daniela, whom I walked with on the final stages of Road to Rome 2021: Start again!, between Lecce and Santa Maria di Leuca. 

When in Bari, I always spend the night at Habari: a hostel run as a social enterprise providing not only inexpensive accommodation for walkers and other visitors to the city, but jobs for new immigrants to Italy and other people experiencing difficulty finding employment.

Here I not only met up with my friends, but met four more fellow walkers setting out on the Cammino Materano! 

In the morning the four of us set out expecting the worst: we knew we had two hours of slogging along the roadside through the suburbs and industrial zones of Bari before reaching the peace and quiet of the countryside. 

Leaving Bari

It being Sunday, however, there was little traffic on the roads, and the walk was better than we expected. Crossing the Ponte Adriatico bridge over the railway lines was quite dramatic!

On the other side of the bridge, more roadside walking awaited us. It is possible to skip these 8 km of urban/industrial roads by taking a train to Modugno, but we had agreed that we wanted to walk the whole way. Even if it meant wading through roadside litter at some points... 

Leaving behind the last (and messiest) of these roads, we finally reached the sanctuary of La Madonna della Grotta. 

A small wedding was taking place in this chapel dug into a cave, while a large group on a walking pilgrimage to the shrine gathered under the trees in the valley below and began to sing. We continued on our way, following the route the group had come from, through the olive groves, rather than walking on the road. We soon found ourselves back on the Cammino Materano route, where we passed a rest area for walkers, without stopping as we had just taken a break at the church, and then an estate with deer and llamas - both looking rather lost and out of place, as well as warm, under the hot sun of Puglia! 

We were ready for another break by the time we reached Casale di Balsignano: a fortified farming estate dating back to the tenth century!!! 

Here we were joined by Maria and Maria Teresa, whom we had met at Habari hostel in Bari, as well as a small group of university students (travelling by car, not on foot), and together we all had a guided tour of this thousand-year-old historic site. 

The complex includes a castle, a monastery where Benedictine monks lived for approximately two centuries after the year 1000, and a small church, all surrounded by two sets of walls. Up to 300 people lived within the complex, which the Benedictine monks ceded to the D'Anjou family in 1282. It then stood abandoned and crumbling for several centuries, but has now been restored and is open to visitors. An amazing place to stop, whether you are walking on the Cammino Materano or exploring the area by bicycle or by car! 

The castle 

Ivy: a symbol of fidelity and therefore faith

From here it was another five kilometres through the olive groves to Bitetto, our destination for the evening.

The name Bitetto is most likely a corruption of the Latin word Vitetum, meaning place with a lot of grapes! And our bed and breakfast, also named Vitetum, was on the outskirts of the town, so we were able to stop in right away and take a break before meeting up with Maria, Maria Teresa and four other pilgrims at the home of Ester, the "referente di tappa": contact person for this stage of the Cammino Materano. 

Ester offered us all an aperitivo of excellent primitivo wine and a sample of her own olives before taking us all on a whirlwind tour of Bitetto. 

The green room at B&B Vitetum

Relaxing over a glass of wine at Casa Ester

There was so much to see! We were glad we had got in touch with Ester, as she took us to see places we wouldn't have thought of going to see on our own - and some places that would have been shut and locked up even if we had tried to go. She seemed to have the keys to everything in Bitetto, or know someone who did. 

We walked right through the historic town centre and out the other side to the Santuario del Beato Giacomo, where the incorruptible remains of this local fifteenth-century holy man are preserved in a glass case. 

The sanctuary also houses a folk museum, the "museum of work and devotion", with a scene set up in each little room illustrating a traditional occupation or religious custom in the village. 

Back in the town centre, we stopped by the city's famous cathedral. 

Photo taken the next morning 

Our next stop was the oldest church in the town, Santa Maria la Veterana. During some work on the church only fifty years ago, it was discovered that beneath the layers and layers of whitewash that had been applied over the centuries lay some beautiful medieval frescoes. Scenes from the life of the Virgin, the life of Christ, and the Last Judgement covered practically the entire church. 

Photo taken next morning 

At the church we met up with Mino Marrone, who then took us to see his workshop. Mino makes miniature... things of all kinds, ostensibly for Christmas creche scenes, but, I suspect, mainly just for fun, out of recycled materials of all kinds: he reuses corks, olive pits, glass vials from pharmaceuticals, serpentine coils from the back of fridges.... 

Mino gave us each a souvenir bracelet in the colours of the Cammino Materano and we took a group photo together in his workshop. 

After thanking Ester and Mino for their tour of the town we said goodbye and went to the town square to get something to eat and catch some live pizzica music by i Tamburellisti di Torrepaduli. 

What a day! The Cammino Materano promises to be every bit as intense and eventful as the Via Francigena of the south was at this time last year!