Cammino Materano Via Peuceta Day 7: Masseria Santa Maria - Masseria La Fiorita

Franco and Grazia, our hosts at Masseria Santa Maria, prepared us giant cups of cappuccino and piping hot croissants for breakfast, then we took a selfie outside the Masseria all together before starting the day's walk. 

About an hour later, we left behind the detour for Masseria Santa Maria and rejoined the main trail of the Cammino Materano where it emerges out of the Bosco della Difesa forest. 

My favourite road sign

Another admirable road sign

The protagonist of today's stage was definitely the sky. Though we are not in the plains, the sky felt particularly big! 

Or rather, we felt very small beneath it. 

We finally crossed from Puglia into Basilicata! There were no signs on our dirt road in the middle of the fields, but I noted the moment on Google maps. 😁

We passed a small village that went under the odd name of "Borgo Picciano B" and began the long climb up to the Sanctuary of Picciano, where we stamped our pilgrim passports and made a picnic lunch out of the fruit, nuts and biscuits we were carrying in our backpacks. 

Picciano has hosted a monastic community since 1219. The Knights of Malta eventually took over from the Benedictines, but were evicted in 1809; the site was then abandoned until the Benedictines returned and rebuilt the monastery in 1966. The shrine is traditionally frequented by shepherds from Abruzzo taking their sheep up and down from the mountain pastures in their annual transhumance. 

We left the Sanctuary and descended a steep paved road to the valley floor on the other side, where we came to the intersection of three different ways: the longer and more scenic 30 km route to Matera, a 17 km shortcut passing through the city's industrial zone, and the road to Masseria La Fiorita. We took the third option and walked for another hour on a paved road that took us gradually uphill, then steeply up the last 500 metres or so along Masseria La Fiorita's private drive. 

The word masseria means farmhouse, and Masseria La Fiorita is a working farm. Our hostess Marialaura explained to us that she was away working in the industrial northern city of Turin when her father announced that he was going to sell the family farm and retire. She couldn't let this happen, so she came back to take over the running of the farm. All the crops are grown using natural organic methods, with small numbers of animals roaming free in plenty of space on the farmland (five cows and one bull, as well as chickens and sheep). The buildings are heated by a boiler that burns waste from the farm such as olive pits and trimmings. Upstairs are a number of private rooms available for rent on a bed & breakfast basis, while downstairs is a hostel, and there are camping sites on the farm too! 

Marialaura's partner Pasquale showed us to our beds in the hostel and we showered and rested before gathering for dinner with the other guests: four more walkers - all women - and a French couple on holiday. We all sat together on homemade wooden chairs at a very long table and enjoyed some of the farm's fantastic organic produce. 

Masseria Santa Maria - Santuario di Picciano - Masseria La Fiorita 20.5 km

Cammino Materano Via Peuceta Day 6: Gravina in Puglia - Masseria Santa Maria

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