Exploring the Vieste coast on foot

It’s been a while since I shared some of where we visited on our trip to Italy’s Gargano Peninsular last year - I know a whole year already! - so I thought it’s about time I shared more. On our first day’s walking we headed along the Vieste coast on a walk that was billed as following ‘the low-lying shoreline for virtually all of its route’. And it was mostly flat, though some walking and in places scrambling across rocks didn’t help my tender ankle, which I’d somehow turned walking on flat ground through the airport somewhere! But it wasn’t until much later in the day that I realised this.

Our walk started by going across the car park at the marina, which is not quite the auspicious start you imagine is it?! But as we headed towards the jetty the view improved, and I was happily snapping the flowering succulents.

It wasn’t long before we got our first view of the beach, and what a beach. Sadly though we had most of a 10.7km and four hour walk ahead of us, so no time to stop.

At the end of the beach we joined the narrow path just to the right of the wooden balustrades and followed that around the coastline. Then we got our first view of a Trabucchi, or more precisely the Trabucco San Lorenzo.

TRABUCCO SAN LORENZO

Trabucchi are widespread along this stretch of coast - and our walk would take us up close to three of them. They are fantastic constructions made with Aleppo Pine which is very resistant to salt water. This local tradition dates back to the Phoenicians and consists of wooden poles in the rocks which hold a very large fishing net in the clear coastal waters.

After a brief stop, we were on our way and then we paused and looked back to where we came from - I think this view trumps that of the beach at the start of the walk.

LOOKING BACK TO TRABUCCO SAN LORENZO

The views ahead of us though were equally spectacular, especially as we walked through this pined section.

At the next sandy bay our route took a turn upwards, and the plants changed too - a particularly dog-earred prickly pear caught my eye.

And with a bit of here and there-ing, and a walk along the road and climbing over the crash barrier the next trabucchi, the Trabucco Punta Lungo, was in sight, looking very similar to the one we’d already passed - but no less amazing.

TRABUCCO PUNTA LUNGO

Again we paused to admire the view, and look to see where we’d been, and where we were heading to. And to breathe in the fresh air, even now these photos bring that right back to me.

The trabucchi are essentially a small pier with a complex architectural structure, anchored to the rock, with arms jutting over the water with ropes attached to huge nets underneath. It usually took a four-person crew to manoeuvre these fishing machines, two to operate the winch, one in charge of the net and one to monitor the shoals of fish.

LOOKING BACK TO TRABUCCO SAN LORENZO

AND LOOKING AHEAD TO TRABUCCO MOLINELLA

Although we were keen to get on, it was also good to stop and admire the coastal plants, such as this creeping sour fig with its bright flowers. Not that I knew its name at the time, a more recent phone update enables me to look up the names of plants from the photos, and that’s so very welcome.

Having reached halfway - and the final trebucco on our walk - we stopped to eat our picnic lunch; we’d bought rolls, cheese and sliced meat and some fruit in the supermarket near our hotel before we set out. It was quite the lunch with quite the view, but little did we know that there’d be many more lunches with views as special over the next few days on our trip. I mean we hoped, but we didn’t know for sure.

The trabucchi are no longer actively used by the fishing industry, but they are of immense cultural and historical interest and are protected by the Gargano National Park. There are restoration projects in place and some of the trabucchi offer organised visits and fishing experiences, which is a great way to ensure their history is not forgotten.

TRABUCCO MOLINELLA

The return leg of this walk was the same but in reverse, we managed this much more quickly as we were retracing our steps, and because we’d already taken the pictures we’d wanted. But isn’t it strange how walking the same picturesque route can at times look so, so different.

Our incentive to get back was an ice cream and a beer in one of the bars we’d spotted in the town the previous evening, and to suss out a potential restaurant for that evening. As the evening went on though, my ankle started to swell a little which was a little concerning with a week’s walking ahead of me.

Maybe a night’s rest would sort it out…

The Barbican's Community Garden

On a sunny day in April I was down in London with some time on my hands and so I had a wander, and found myself coming out of yet another undiscovered part of the Barbican. I’m sure every time I go I find another way in or out, and so I wasn’t disappointed!

This time though I stumbled across the Moor Lane Clean Air Pop-Up Community Garden created in 2017 as part of the Low Emission Neighbourhood, and completely new to me. The garden intended to raise awareness of air quality in the City and to encourage pedestrians to take low emission routes to the Barbican station, the Barbican Centre and towards Guildhall using the Podium walkways.

Designed by three young landscape designers known as Studio xmpl, they worked pro bono with Friends of City Gardeners a City-based community group of garden volunteers, who now jointly maintain the garden along with the City of London Corporation’s City Gardens team.

The garden has been constructed from 57 galvanised steel pipes and all plants were chosen for their ability to trap particulates and improve air quality, as well as provided cover and forage for birds and nectar-rich flowers for pollinators.

In 2020 poet Kit Finnie and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama worked with local community groups to create poems which reflected on this garden, the pandemic and what the city means to them.

you have the power
to break something.
a common truth but
still. it comes to you
like ice water gulped
at 3am. joy that
streams freely from
the tap and cupped
hands to catch it in.
the air around your
body. all the london
beyond. beyond
that. another truth.
home is the thing
that settles round
your most beloved
person when they’re
still.

It was a garden full of structure, texture and shape with lush greenery and luckily on the day I visited sunlight glinting off the City offices behind. No doubt a great spot for City workers to eat their lunch.

I loved the poetry too, and wished I’d known about this place before - though of course I stopped working in the City in 2014, so a few years before this was created. But it’s the kind of place I’d have loved to escape to with colleagues, or alone, for lunch.

a distant hush is
an opportunity for
abundance. so is
a pigeon. a seed.
a baby animal. a
stranger biking to
the office. the sound
of a drill. a city fox. a
decision to attend.
a steady beat. a
gentle nudge. a
pavement.
new shoes. the
future. therapy. a
crush. printer paper.
wandering. the
climate crisis. your
inhale. your exhale.
this.

Somehow it seemed fitting that one of the ever increasing e-bikes parked up in the garden was green and labelled forest, less so that the building behind was a car park - but as with everything - balance!

inhale. exhale.
resilience is a
circle. a thread that
never ends. later.
you’ll savour this
encounter with
delight as fresh as
aloe. its audacity.
beating green in the
grey heart of your
city. feral moment
in your familiar day.
it will remind you
of the parts of
yourself that are
also a garden. a
poem. a breath. a
single leaf among
many.

I love discovering places like this, isn’t it great?

Quilts at The Workhouse

Over Easter we visited The Workhouse, a National Trust property in near to us Southwell. It was our first visit to our nearest National Trust property, and it turned out to be a hugely educational visit too. It was unlike other properties that we’d visited owned by the trust, and as you’d expect that was largely down to the original nature of the property.

I may share more about the property and its original use in a future post, and it’s a topic that deserves sharing, but for today I’m sharing some pictures and information about some of the quilts on display.

They too have a story, and are part of a community project highlighting the impact of domestic violence.

The information sheet alongside this first cushion quilt above says that ‘each square commemorates a women who was killed by a current or former partner’ and that there are two further quilts and cushion as part of this project.

That any quilt like this needs to exist is wrong, but it’s not the first commemorative quilt that I’ve seen either, sadly. Each square has been sewn with love and I’m sure fierce determination that these women won’t be forgotten, and the hope that no further quilts are needed.

I am questioning though if this would be more correctly categorised as gender based violence, which is also completely unacceptable. While I don’t know of each case represented in these quilts, I do have some knowledge of Sabina Nessa, who was murdered in Greenwich close to where we used to live. Sabina was killed by a man unknown to her, rather than a current or former partner, who is now serving a life sentence for her murder.

The Leighann Wightman quilt above is a tribute to her by her stepmother who wanted to use her time during lockdown to create a quilt as a tribute to women who lost their lives to domestic violence from 2016-2020.

The two cushions on display, made later, represent the women who lost their lives between 2020 and 2022.

The quilt below - The Women’s Quilt - pieces together five hundred and ninety-eight women each of whom were connected by a single thread. Every name is included, along with stars, birds, moons and hearts; their names are stitched in the colours of their eyes, the embroidered loops and waves in the hues of their hair. The poignancy in this detail was hard to miss.

All of the exhibits on show were humbling, and a sober reminder of the world we live in today, and as one of the exhibition boards said ‘the most beautiful project that shouldn’t exist’.