Saturday 16th May to Sunday 24th May 2026. Tiggiano, Specchia, Montesano Salentino, Casarano and Presicce Acquarica, Puglia, Italy
Well, what lazy monkeys we have been in the villa, and it was just what we wanted.
We are surrounded by little villages and hamlets, some we can walk to – for essentials that include cream cakes 
and further afield that we drove to in the van.
We only went out in the van twice and actually didn’t do that many miles as these places are so close.
They all have little things to see. In Specchia there are underground olive caves. Just by chance we checked with the tourist office and were lucky enough to get a free guided tour by a young Italian lady called Federica. She had taught herself English by listening to radio and watching TV! Bless her.
The caves are amazing.
Federica told us that a lot of the surrounding towns have very large olive caves under the streets and buildings. They were cheaper to dig out the soft local sandstone than to build on ground level.
This particular Olive cave in Specchia was started in the 15th century and used until the 18th century. To start with teams of workers and donkeys would do months’ long stints underground. This caused issues with sight for both the humans and the donkeys, and some people suffered agoraphobia when they came back out as a result.
As time progressed the mills were redesigned and donkeys were no longer necessary.
What we didn’t realise was that the underground olive caves were only used to produce oil for burning not eating. The sour olives that fell to the ground were used and by the 18th century other fuel sources were discovered making this process non viable. Wow, amazing what you stumble across.
In Montesano Salentino we saw a very strange outside chapel, called a Calvary, built for pilgrims along a devotional hiking route and a restored row of Palmenti – the structure where grapes were pressed by foot. Sadly the museum was closed indefinitely- this was one we really wanted to see.
Casarano had some lovely Baroque buildings including a really pretty column and bell tower.
Our last visit was to Presicce Acquarica.
Once again a sleepy little place, not quite open for the season yet. We came across a square with many grills in the floor – a tell tale sign of olive caves. The grills would have once been openings where the olives were dropped below to begin the process of making lamp oil.
Presicce was the prettiest of our visits this week, Baroque architecture mixed with some lovely mural painted front doors!
Meg and I did a bit of wandering ourselves. Though she had a huge garden full of elusive lizards to keep her on her toes, I took her on a couple of foraging excursions to the little villages closest to us. We had a purpose, to acquire bread and cornettos – croissants to you and I.
On one such excursion I was asked by a very friendly Italian gentleman if I would like a coffee – bless his heart. I don’t care if he was older than me, I’ll take the kind gesture for what it was 
, I declined his offer with a big smile on my face 
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Much to our surprise we have been given cakes and treats on a couple of occasions during our stay. The gardener comes early everyday, checking the pools and feeding the cats. He has hung a little bag filled with delights from the front door twice. How flipping sweet.
By the way, we were only supposed to be here a week, but we liked it that much we extended our stay by 3 days 
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Europe is experiencing the same heatwave as you guys are having. This does mean that for the next two weeks – hopefully it won’t last longer than that! – we will be scooting around Italy searching out shade.
Still we have nowhere else to be .
Enjoy the good weather and…in the words of Hill Street Blues – let’s be careful out there 
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