As foreseen, the approach to Gargano is a piece of cake. Flat roads all along from Foggia.
On the way, I see some promising camping prospects:
In Gargano I'm somewhat disappointed to find the coast line again to often consist of overcrowded camping sites, but I'm lucky to find very small (and very run-down), inexpensive site near a rocky beach just a few km after passing Manfredonia. The first question the owner asks me upon arrival: "Sprechen Sie deutsch?"
As many times before, the site is cash-only. Showing documents isn't necessary ("it's a private site") and indeed there's only 2 other parties using the site right now.
I quickly hop into the sea. The water is warm though: almost too warm to swim in!
I'm staying for one night. When I want to leave the next morning the site owner, Michael, stops me and offers me cold water and locally grown figs.
- "Oh, you're growing figs yourself? On this property?" I ask
- "We got everything here, olives, figs... everything except money" is his answer
I learn that he's been working on this camp site for 40 years, living with his wife on spot every season: almost half of the year, when it was busy and nowadays only 3 months in Summer). The bungalows have long been torn down and he's now hoping for his son to take over the business and help it to new popularity.
I'm traveling further towards Vieste, camping in the wild and on an overcrowded camping site at the beach. -- the latter only because I understood the price to be 1/3 of What it actually was. Imagine my surprise the next morning :|
After a few days I have seen enough of the coastline and decide to take the path back through the forest, which is supposedly a much more comfortable path, providing shade from the relentless sun throughout the day and also with a steady, but very moderate incline.
The first few km in the sund until I reach the actual forest are quite hard, but having cycled through all of Tuscany that cannot scare me away and as soon as the sweaty mess that is me enters the forest a nice coolness surrounds me... until I hear the buzzing sound of flies, which quickly gets louder. Within seconds, I'm surrounded by dozens of flies which constantly bump against my ears.
It is infuriatingly annoying, but there is no escape for me: I'm stuck on the incline for the next 10km or so, and I can barely make 10 kph, let alone escape a swarm of flies. Some are even biting my legs, I think it might be horse flies that I'm attracing today. Either way, I'm not turning back now! So I pull a t-shirt over my ears (my buff cloth which I had lost a few days ago would've come in really handy now!), put some bug repellant on my uncovered body parts and work my way up that hill, sometimes one-handed trying to hit some flies in mid-air.
Camping in the forest later that night is another, whole new experience for me. Eerily quiet at first, many different noises, rattling and cracking, animal sounds add up to a concert of nature. And then in the morning, just at 6am -- I have already woken up and am contemplating to pack up -- I'm hearing someone making a lot of noise on their way through the forest.
At first I think it's park rangers or another human on their morning walk. Lurking out at the side of the tent however I can see 1 or 2 wild boars walking by, no more than 20m away from my tent!
I audibly clear my throat. The boar stops, sniffs heavily, and a split second later gallopps away from where it came.
Okay, really time to get up now! I pack up and follow the suggested trail downhill. Which goes from okay, to bad... to worse... to hardly doable.
And all of the sudden I'm finding myself on a small farm: cows to my left and ahead of me, and two dogs barking their souls out. It's not even 7 am and the farmer, half naked, stumbles outside, sleepy and wondering What's causing all the commotion.
When I put on my innocent "I'm just a foreigner please help me" face and show him the GPS, he vaguely waves to the left, where one can see someting resembling tire tracks in the grass. Oh well. Most of the cows now take noticable interest in me -- it seems I'm the first cyclist they meet.
Somehow I manage to find a road again a few minutes later and speed down the hills. Best part of the day: a small detour to the wild campsite of 2 nights ago reunites me with my buff.
A quick stop in the afternoon at the road side, where a farmer is selling grapes for only 1 EUR per kg. I cannot let this opportunity slide and devour most of the grapes right away, providing the farmer with an excellent marketing opportunity ("He travelled 2.500 km to taste my grapes!").
At night I find myself a spot close to an abandoned house on farmland, next to a huge vineyard. Having had too many grapes, I just try one: yes, those are ripe. I bet they're being harvested soon!
The night comes quick, and I sleep too well.
"Just a few minutes longer", I think every morning when I'm camping outside and the sun wakes me up. And of course that is exactly the opposite of the stealth camping rule #1: "Set up camp after dusk, leave before dawn".
And then, a bunch of cars pull up in the small, dead-end path in the middle of the vineyard, just 50m from me, which i had ignored....