There are a number of different ways to divide up the last sixty kilometres on the Cammino Materano between Gravina in Puglia and Matera. You can walk two thirty-kilometre stages, stopping for the night at the Sanctuary of Picciano, which however offers only basic accommodations, strictly for people walking on a religious pilgrimage. Or you can walk three shorter stages and spend each night in a masseria, a traditional old stone farmhouse, enjoying the produce of the farm at dinner.
The choice was obvious, as far as I'm concerned!
We set out from Gravina in Puglia after a night in our cosy den, La Tana della Volpe, and a bit more wandering around the old town centre, to make sure we hadn't missed anything!
We crossed the acqueduct bridge over the ravine one more time, and turned back to enjoy the view of the old town of Gravina.
The path took us uphill and over a disused railway track, then, via a brief detour, to an abandoned archaeological site, where we came across open tombs among the olive groves, dry stone walls and a number of trulli in perfect condition.
A steep descent on a dirt track took us down to the valley floor, where we crossed under the highway via an underpass. Coming out of this amazing landscape, it was a shock to see mounds of litter all along the side of the service road beside highway.
When walking along a footpath one may occasionally come across a candy wrapper or tissue that fell out of someone's pocket by accident, but wherever motorists go, they leave behind a trail of cigarette packets and plastic water bottles intentionally tossed out the window, not to mention rubbish, and even items of furniture and appliances, which they have loaded into the car and carried all the way from home specifically to dump by the road!
This is a problem that is present not only in this part of Italy, but all over the world (with the possible exception of Switzerland?? I shall find out when I go walking there...).
But I shall spare you pictures of this and return to the beautiful landscapes we rediscovered on the other side of the highway.
We passed an abandoned farmhouse and outbuildings, all made of the blocks of beautiful beige stone characteristic of the area, we entered the Bosco della Difesa, one of the largest woodland areas in Puglia. Unfortunately the destructive human touch was visible here, too: in 2012, and again in 2017, forest fires burnt vast expanses of woodland. It felt like walking into Mordor!
New growth was visible under the burnt tree trunks, and hopefully the forest will soon be vigorous again.
I'm not sure if this is the reason for the name, but the Bosco della Difesa was, according to our guidebook, home to one of ten nuclear bases in the Puglia and Basilicata regions between 1960 and 1962, storing warheads 75 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The inhabitants of the area were never told about it, but more than once these bases were struck by lightning and there could easily have been a nuclear accident, affecting not only the local area but all of Italy and quite possibly all of Europe!
As soon as we came out of the burnt area we stopped for a lunch break with our new friends Maria and Maria Teresa, who were waiting for us in the shade under the trees. The woods were not actually as shady as we had expected them to be, and not only where the trees had been burnt: on much of this high plateau, the growth was more Mediterranean scrub than forest.
We found a "pilgrim diary" left in a small sheltering box on the path by a local scout troop, and left a record of our passing.
Shortly after this we came to a fork in the path: right for the Sanctuary of Picciano, left for Masseria Santa Maria. We said goodbye to the two Marias and promised to meet in Matera, then they took the right fork and we took the left.
We walked the final hour of the day along a scenic path through woods carpeted with purple cyclamens, stopping when we came out into the fields to admire the view of Gravina, still less than ten kilometres away - as the crow flies!
On the final stretch down toward the Masseria, the colours of the Cammino Materano were all around us: green grass and yellow wildflowers. Then we rounded a corner and our final destination came into view: the city of Matera, far off in the distance!
Just below us was our destination for the night:
Masseria Santa Maria. Our hosts Franco and Grazia welcomed us with cold water and bowls of fruit and showed us to our comfortable room. They mentioned that they were expecting two more guests, but imagine our surprise when, later in the evening, we heard voices in the next room and recognised them as belonging to our friends Maria and Maria Teresa, to whom we had said goodbye only a few hours earlier!
It turned out that the host who had arranged to pick them up at the Sanctuary and put them up for the night was the same one whose farmhouse we were staying in! So even though we has had walked different routes, we ended up in the same place, and enjoyed a fantastic dinner of healthy, delicious farm fare together, including a selection of appetisers and a dish of pasta with chickpeas and mushrooms.
Over dinner our hosts, Franco and Grazia, told us about the difficulties of surviving as farmers in today's economy, and explained that they had ended up hosting walkers after people who had lost the path ended up on their farm. Their niece is a friend of Rosa, who hosted us last night, and who suggested to them that they could rent rooms to walkers. And so a new branch of the Cammino Materano was created, a trail leading to their farm and allowing walkers to split up the stages of the walk in a way that keeps them all within a reasonable length.
We're glad things worked out this way!!!
Gravina in Puglia - Masseria Santa Maria 23 km
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