If you’ve been following along so far then you’ll know we started today on the outskirts of Brindisi, being woken by the dogs that sent us to sleep last night.
We have 2449 km on the SatNav to get us home. But today we’re going to be heading away from that route and heading south.
So after our 6:30 wake-up call and the starting up of the winery after that, we were up, showered and out by 8:30.
As we left the property I was whatsapp’ing the hosts to say we were off and the room tax was left in the room.
But the property manager told us to wait and then came rushing out to the car park brandishing a free bottle of their wine… which goes a little way towards offsetting the early wake-up.
There’s a big difference between staying the night in a vineyard vs a winery! 🤣
Our first stop today was Lecce. We thought we’d do the old town, find a local campsite and then move on in the morning. But in the end we decided to push on to Gallipoli, since we’d managed such an early start and wandered the old town so quickly.
But first we needed to get to Lecce and find somewhere to park.
And as I think I’ve mentioned before (ad nauseam), these southern Italian roads are sh*t. You can knock along at 60 (100kmh) on the dual carriageways, but in the slow lane that’s about your limit. And on non duals, you can be down to 20mph at points. But we weren’t in a rush, so you’ve just gotta go with the flow.
Parking in Lecce was a nightmare!
We did loads of research and had looked at loads of possible car parks before we arrived. But the three we selected were all rammed, with many people doing the Italian wait… I.e. not waiting!.. and shouting or honking their horns at each other. We saw at least 3 car park spaces being “stolen” from the internationally acknowledged standard parking etiquette of “first come, first to park”! There were cars weaving in and out of queues, people reversing straight into the flow of traffic… chaos!
To be fair… when we passed a couple of these car parks later on the way out, there were a few more camper vans in them and perhaps a few spaces. Maybe 9am was just the wrong time to be trying to park 🤷♂️
So we headed out of town a bit trying to find a quieter car park. And after a few minutes we found a back street with a parking spot big enough for us and the bikes.
I hate parking the car in a place where I don’t know:
- what the parking permissions are and
- don’t know how safe it is.
I’d far rather pay an extortionate parking fee for a proper car park than have to worry about the van all day. But needs must, and it was either this space or miss Lecce.
We scoured all the road signs in the vicinity of the van, but nothing seemed to indicate we’d be towed if we left the car there for a few hours. And we were parked opposite a school and beside a vets, so hopefully not anywhere where we’d come back to bricks holding the axles off the ground rather than wheels!
You’ve gotta go with the flow!
We’d got to the first car park around Lecce Centre by about 9:10, but hadn’t parked until 10! Grrr!
But anyway, we had about a 20 minute walk into the old town, where we entered through the Napoli Gate.
Much of the old town seems to have been originally Roman, but then built upon over the centuries and especially in the 16th century by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. There are a number of fantastic baroque churches from around that time and endless streets to explore.
It seems that a number of the significant Roman buildings (amphitheater and theater) were only rediscovered a few years ago.
Somehow, Lecce doesn’t seem to have succumbed to the endless tourist shops, like say Dubrovnik, but still feels as though people are living there. There’s nowhere near as many cafes as Dubrovnik, Trogir or Corfu Town for instance. However, there are endless tour parties strolling the streets. Each with their tour guide holding an emblem aloft and talking into a radio mic, which is then relayed onto each participant’s ear.
Here’s some pictures from our 4 hour wander around the town…
We didn’t pay the fee to go around the castle.
Most of the big historic attractions like the Cathedral and Campanile (bell tower) were ticket only admissions. We bought a €21 each ticket that got us into all the ticketed places.
The cathedral had an amazingly huge crypt.
By 1:30 we were done in. The plan of getting to Lecce early, getting a parking spot and getting out before the heat set in had back fired when we realized getting there by 9 for parking just wasn’t early enough… by a long way.
So, we headed back to the van to plan the rest of the day.
It was still relatively early, so we decided not to stop near Lecce but to head to Gallipoli… south west of Lecce, and not entirely on our way home!
After another 30km of awful main roads we got to a campsite that had the better of the reviews we could find – Torre Sabea in Calamate, just north of Gallipoli.
The campsite is a little tired, but the loos are clean, even if they don’t have loo seats or toilet paper. There’s a pool that looked really good and a newly reopened restaurant. The site also has four washing machines, €6 wash.
We initially thought we’d use the restaurant this evening, and even enquired about a reservation, only to be told just turn up after 7.
But it was early so we decided to see if we could find the Famila supermarket close by. And it was literally 5 minutes walk and a really well stocked supermarket… somewhere between a Tesco and Waitrose. So we bought some salad and burgers for our traditional meat and salad!
We’ve booked the 9AM shuttle from the campsite to Gallipoli for the morning, so we’ll see what that town has to offer tomorrow.
Here’s our route today…
And lest we forget, we were 2449km from home at the start of the day. Now we’re at 2521km from home, 72km further away, at end of the day. Something’s not adding up on our attempt at a “homeward leg”.
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