Our Gargano adventure in numbers

I’m ending this series of posts sharing our experiences when we explored a small part of the Gargano Peninsula following a self-guided walking tour with a summary of our trip in numbers, for the geek in me.

So here goes

Some walking numbers*:

• Number of days walking: 7

• Number of miles walked: 57 1/2 miles

• Average number of steps: 21,562 steps

• Total number of steps: 150,940 steps

• Average pace: 25.69/mile (according to Strava) and

• the most challenging walk I’ve ever done, but also probably the most beautiful too.

* These numbers exclude airport travel days.

And some more numbers:

• 4 hotels

• 2 flights

• 4 taxis

• 580 photos taken

• 12 blog posts

• so many great memories and

• 1 fabulous holiday!

Gargano's gnarly olive trees

It was the day that we headed back down to the coast that we saw the most amazing olive trees on the sides of the road, and as we walked through olive groves. If you’d asked me beforehand I’d probably say that one olive tree is pretty much like any other, but I’d be wrong - and I was surrounded by the evidence on that walk! Of course there were many that looked similar but there were also many, and I’m only sharing a few here, that were the most gnarliest and stubborn trees I’ve ever seen.

I could have snapped so many more, but we as had a hotel to get find that was deemed to be the priority!

Once we started to notice the gnarly trunks of the olive trees, that became our challenge to spur us on as the temperature’s got warmer and we got tired-er, sort of like a grown up version of I-spy as it were.

Some where growing right up against the boundaries, and I couldn’t help but wonder if they’d really been grown like that from the off or if there was some kind of boundary change which caused this. It amused me that they were so close to the railings, and I couldn’t help but wonder if that was for our safety, or theirs.

Others had almost completely hollow trunks, which looked if they could easily hide a human - we didn’t try.

Others had walls build around them.

And more than one combined a number of the things I’ve been pointing out here.

Some even appearing to have grown ‘legs’.

For all the weird and wacky shaped olive trees, there were many more more uniform, and I guess younger trees to see, which made spotting the gnarly ones a real privilege.

Whatever their shape, whatever their size they truly are amazing aren’t they?

Celebrating flora in the Gargano Peninsula

One of the features and highlights across all of our walks exploring (a very small part of) the Gargano Peninsula was the flora we encountered along the way. In my posts from each walk I’ve shared some of that, but I’ve so much more to share and that’s what I’m going to touch on today. I’ve picked my absolute favourite photos from many, many more and while I don’t necessarily know what every plant is, I know they are all beautiful, sometimes quite different ways.

You’ll not be surprised to learn that the majority of my photos, and those in this post, come from the most challenging walk of the holiday - the one where we went down, up and up some more! But as hard as I found the walk, especially the last of the ups and I absolutely wouldn’t want to do it again, it was also amazing and I’m glad we did it. I’m even more glad we completed it before the rain came!

But it wasn’t just that walk, as we walked back down to the coast the next day these lilies growing alongside the roadside were stunning, as were the hibiscus growing through another wire mesh fence much later in the day.

Our last hotel also had impressive grounds, and glorious plants including long time favourites of mine, the passion flower and red hot pokers.

The scent too as we left the main complex and walked back to our room was absolutely divine. It’s true that many things make a great holiday, and this had everything we could have wanted, so if you get the chance to explore for yourself then most definitely go.