We checked in at the bike workshop at 9 AM. After a long wait while they got a Polish group of 18 ready to ride, Giorgio gave me a hurried tutorial on my ebike and we took off through town. It was very difficult for me. I had a bike I had never ridden before, in the city of Lecce which I did not know, a clunky Garmin that in the sun glared over the pink line that was supposed to show me the path through town, and Sunday morning Italian drivers through the streets and roundabouts. All that being said, we did get out of town, into the Puglian countryside, which was very peaceful and rural.
The ride was totally flat for 58 km. It wound through a nature wetlands preserve called Le Cesine, which was full of Sunday family visitors. It lies on an old road which has been closed to protect migrating birds, so we rode peacefully.
We rode through thousands of acres of dead olive trees. A bacteria has been killing them, the gnarled giant olives that are hundreds of years old, and they stand dried up and leafless. Some farms are pruning and burning to try to save the trees. Others are replanting new resistant varieties between the rows. It has been the death of a local industry and will take hundreds of years to replace them.
In the fields are stone huts similar to the trulli of Alberobello. They are called pajare and were used to store tools in the fields.
Joe’s day looked a little different. He rode around with Amelia and Giorgio in the Salento Bicitours van, picked up all the riders’ luggage from five locations, stacked it all in the van, and delivered it to three different hotels in Otranto. Joe got the luggage from each lobby and wheeled it out to Giorgio, who stacked it tightly in the van, and then they unloaded at the other end. We arrived tired and grouchy, but Joe had cold drinks and a snack ready for us. It was a good day’s work.