Trulli madly deeply

A trullo (plural, trulli) is a traditional stone dwelling with a conical roof. Trulli are found in and around the seven main towns of the beautiful Valle d'Itria - though most tourists head for Alberobello, a Unesco World Heritage site.

That was just fine for us, as we were based just outside the far less touristy town of Martina Franca - but first we had to get there.

Ryanair doesn't help by timing its (very popular and thus full) flights to leave Stansted just after 5pm. This means arriving at Bari (or Brindisi - the area lies midway between them: flights go on alternate days) after 9pm.

Thereafter it is a good hour's drive (this in turn means the flights back to the UK leave even later - but the return to the shambles that is Stansted passport control was far from our minds).

When, in the pitch darkness, we eventually found our house, with its turning off a narrow lane, everything started to go very well indeed.

Most trulli - originally made as dwellings or storehouses - have one room under each conical roof: a multi-roomed trullo house has many cones.

Traditionally trulli were built without any mortar and this style of construction can be seen across the surrounding countryside, where most of the fields are separated by dry-stone walls (rather like in the Cotswolds, there is an ample supply of limestone).

On top of a trullo's cone there is usually a symbolic pinnacle; additionally, the cone itself may have a symbol painted on it - these may include signs of the zodiac, the malochio (evil eye), the cross, a heart, or a star and crescent.

As soon as we started exploring, it was clear that the foreign tourist is still not a common sight in much of Puglia - albeit that the locals have known about it for years as a holiday destination.

That was also just fine, though, as it all added to the wonderfully different atmosphere. But it did mean that some knowledge of basic Italian came in handy. We quickly settled in to the gentle pace of life - watching swallows and housemartins dipping into the pool against the rural backdrop of small fields (and lots more trulli).

From our terrace we could look across to the little town Locorotondo on its hilltop setting (its name means round place - obvious when you get there).

On our first morning, we drove to Ostuni (La Citta Bianca or White City).

This is one of the hidden gems of Europe - sprinkled with churches and palazzi.

It was once a highly-prized settlement, subject to violent tugs-of-war (one involving Hannibal - yes, he of the elephants).

Now you look down through Venetian archways across the flat coastal strip to the sea, as you wander the maze of cobblestone lanes and dead-ends (originally intended to confuse invaders, they say).

An added attraction on this Saturday morning was the huge market spreading across the main square and the surrounding streets.

Everything was astonishingly cheap - the prices still aimed at the locals, with not an eye towards the more affluent visitor. Wonderful fruit and vegetables were piled high on stall after stall - this is the garden of Italy.

Puglia also catches most of the country's fish, produces most of Europe's pasta (the local speciality is orrechiette - little ears), and presses most of Italy's olive oil; it makes enough wine that, if it were a country, it would be the sixth- biggest winemaker in the world.

Everywhere you go you can sample these delights in restaurants that are nearly all family-run and often so unpretentious that they look closed.

On Sunday, still growing accustomed to this, we were searching for somewhere for a late lunch - and stumbled across a place that was hosting not just one but two Confirmation lunches, both with families spanning every age.

No-one minded that we slipped in to a table in one corner; the proprietor sent out the member of staff who spoke the best English - learned, he claimed, as he grew up in Luton.

Later in the week we found ourselves trying to negotiate the crossroads just outside this place - now teeming with traffic: we'd already seen some of the astonishing habits of southern Italian drivers, for whom all the strictly-enforced regulations that we face at home seem merely advisory - red lights were ignored, seatbelts seldom used and as for driving while using a mobile phone...

Often we saw animated conversations at the wheel, phone clamped to ear while the other gesticulated wildly, holding the obligatory cigarette.

We had to go to Alborebello, where the massed ranks of about 1,000 trulli - they have all been protected since 1797 - include many that have been filled by local entrepreneurs with trulli-shaped trinkets (bedside lamp shaped like an igloo, anyone?).

We escaped the tourist hordes and went in search of the simple tranquillity that was the port of Monopoli, where we ate wonderful seafood in a harbourside restaurant created, the proprietor was keen to tell us, out of a former cinema.

At Castellana Grotte we descended deep into a series of astonishing caves, claimed by the locals to be the most beautiful in all Italy.

The deepest section of the grotto tour, called caverna bianca (white cave), is a glistening collection of thousands of glassy stalactites.

Our guide described how in August, 1,000 Italians per hour push and shove their way past each other down there.

From Martina Franca, we trundled gently to Lecce - the loveliest Baroque city in the Mediterranean according to the Cadogan Guide - on the tired but game local FSE train.

Almost all the city is built of warm sandstone, pietra di Lecce, of which there was an inexhaustible supply from which to craft and carve the stunning architecture.

We lingered over a coffee in a little cafe looking out over the Piazza del Duomo, as workmen painstakingly raised a restored panel to its place on the cathedral facade under the priest's watchful eye.

An almost throwaway line in the Cadogan Guide took us to Grottaglie, the ceramics capital of south-east Italy (we had to go twice: on a Sunday everything was very firmly chiuso - closed).

The town's potters continue a tradition unbroken since at least the Middle Ages: we were given a warm welcome everywhere as we wandered round the many workshops and when we made our purchases no effort was spared to ensure our packages both looked wonderful and would survive the flight home.

Lunch at Convivium Ristorante was sublime - and amazingly reasonable: if they opened in North Oxford they could double their prices and still clean up.

An unforgettable week that passed all too quickly. As well as just being a great place to relax, Puglia offers some of Europe's finest Romanesque cathedrals (including Santa Claus's tomb in Bari), arrow-straight Roman roads across the plain and charming hill towns - often covered in gleaming whitewash that would be more at home in Greece or North Africa.

I cannot recommend it highly enough: go soon - but don't tell the others.