October 21, 2024
Monopoli
Leaving Ostuni, we expected a long descent to the sea. The route first took us across the town just below the old city wall with great views of the surrounding area. The weather had obviously improved, and was now a cool 17 C and mixed sun and clouds.
We did descend towards the coast, and I don't believe I rotated my pedals for the first six km. Awesome! We did not make a beeline for the ocean though, instead started to weave our way through the olive orchards.
They are not growing close together at all. When we see young trees, they are much closer. I speculate that they suck up the water from a large area around them which is how they can survive in this arrid climate. More on this topic in a minute, but first we had to climb an overpass to get seaside of some railroad tracks. It afforded a good long distance view of Ostuni in the distance.
Now we started to notice some olive trees not doing so well. We thought maybe bugs or disease or ...?
And then we saw, across on the other side of the road, perfectly healthy trees. Wait a minute....now we understand. It has been unusually dry here, and we started to see irrigation pipes being run everywhere. The ones that were already in had saved the trees from turning brown.
We were pretty proud of ourselves solving that mystery, when we turned a corner and saw our next obstacle - another herd of goats streaming towards us.
We were not sure how aggressive they might be, but it turned out they moved out of our way, especially when I started taking their picture.
I turned to see how Marjory was faring and see that she tucked in just behind my bike, in my "goat shadow" so to speak.
We got through the goats, when the new barrier arose. I had just said (maybe 5 km back) that this was the first year we hadn't been stopped in our tracks by road construction. And what do we see?
They are putting in a culvert it seems, and there is a big ditch running across both of the fields. We "spoke" to the guys, and in their rapid Italian and even more rapid hand gestures, we got the idea it was ok to walk into the olive orchards and manhandle the bikes thru the ditch. So we did.
Then through the field and back on the road.
We had been looking forward to seeing this "Dolmen", a Brit phrase for an ancient construction. We had seen one in Ireland many years ago, and this one was supposed to be 4.5-5,000 yr old. That's pretty cool.
This looks almost exactly like the one in Ireland. Two questions: how did it survive 5,000 yr, and how did they get that massive top piece lifted up there?
After our dolmen sighting, we are thinking lunch. The road takes a turn towards the sea, and we start riding through a series of very cute beach towns.
All of a sudden, we have choices! Lots of restaurants, but this one had a table practically over the water. Fantastic.
After lunch we continued to watch the ocean and listen to the waves. Something that travelling by car would never happen.
We were less than an hour now from Monopoli, even riding slowly. We had really taken our time today as we know our riding is coming to a close, and we are enjoying this weather and the ride immensely. After a few turns in the road, Monopoli comes into view.
As we wound our way along the craggy shore, we saw many tiny, "urban beaches" that were being well used. We might just have to try one tomorrow and get our feet wet.
We are now in Monopoli for 2 nights, and may go for a bit of a bike ride tomorrow. Or maybe not, this town looks fabulous to explore!
Today's ride: 55 km (34 miles)
Total: 552 km (343 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 6 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |