Sue Style, Food, Wine and Travel Writer

WALKING AND THINKING IN MARATEA

‘A sedentary life is the real sin against the Holy Spirit’ observed Nietzsche. ‘Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.’

If you’re one for pensive perambulation, you could be up for a walking holiday. Maybe you’ve already fingered some of the many tempting brochures on the market, but you have a sneaking horror of being trapped on a narrow track in deepest Tuscany with a bunch of folk who may not necessarily share your sense of humour, political views or taste in footgear. They may even turn out to be the kind of people who want to talk at breakfast, for goodness’ sake.

By far the best option is to get together with a friend (or three) and take an independent, unescorted walking trip, as organised by companies like On Foot Holidays, a small, UK-based tour operator founded by Simon Scutt. Your only task is to get yourself to the walk’s starting point (often strategically placed close to a low-cost airline destination), travelling on the day, date and time that suit you. On Foot looks after the rest. Accommodation, often selected for character rather than luxury and including small hostels and farmhouse B & Bs, is booked. The route, tested specifically with reasonably fit, fairly adventurous, 40-plus empty-nesters in mind, is mapped out for you. Most importantly, the impedimenta are taken care of.

I fell into step with Simon recently in Maratea (Basilicata), a tiny gem of a resort a couple of hours south of Naples on the Bay of Policastro, to learn how a walk takes shape. Just inland is a breathtakingly wild and beautiful national park that seems to rear straight up out of an aquamarine sea.

After a night in an erstwhile convent, now a delightful hotel perched high among the tiled rooftops of the medieval town, we set off for the hinterland with Pompeo, a local guide and veteran hiker. At first there were leafy, shaded paths lined with nodding wild cyclamens of palest mauve. Later as the terrain opened out, we met hardy, nimble Podolico cattle scrambling over the steep, scrubby hillsides. Nourished on wild herbs, flowers and grasses, their milk is rich and fragrant and goes to make local cheeses. Their meat, however, is tough and chewy. (‘Good business for dentists!’ grinned Pompeo.)

Right on cue we passed a simple smallholding where cheese was being made in the little dairy adjoining the house. To our delight we were beckoned in to watch the cheesemaker, Signora Felicia, at work. She tipped the curds from last night’s milk into rush baskets to drain, then sliced the curd, kneading and stretching it vigorously with gnarled old hands till perfectly smooth.

One batch was plaited into tiny braids of mozzarella for immediate consumption, a second batch was coaxed into a balloon-like shape to make caciocavallo, the typical stretched curd cheese of the region that is hung up in pairs to mature, as if slung over the withers of a horse (‘cavallo’). Signora Felicia worked with an extraordinary dexterity and deftness of touch – practice, we suspected, makes perfect. We asked how long she’d been making such cheeses. Flashing a grin through gappy teeth, she scrunched up her eyes, did a quick calculation and ventured a guess of about 40 years.

In front of the house brilliant red chile peppers were spread out to dry on rush mats and trays, making a lurid splash against the scrubby, brown hillside. They would be used to perfume the local soppressata sausage, or taken down to the market where they would play a key part in the simple, robust and spicy dishes of the Basilicata area.

By the time we staggered up to l’Aia dei Cappellani, an agriturismo (farmhouse restaurant) earmarked by Pompeo, tongues were hanging out and boots were gladly loosened. Through the kitchen window we could see the cook rolling and cutting dough for pasta. Now and again she’d stop and push a wayward strand of hair back inside her white cap. Each successive piece of pasta was painstakingly rolled around a large skewer and pressed together to seal into home-made fusilli. All this just for our lunch, we reflected in grateful wonder.

Antipasti included home-made salami and coppa, peppers roasted and peeled with a breadcrumb topping, a fragile frittata, Signora Felicia’s mozzarella braids and a startlingly good dish of pumpkin, thinly sliced, blanched in acidulated water and put up in oil with garlic and tons of mint. It was intensely tasty, honest food, a fine incentive for walkers. Simon noted the address as a potential stop-off.

Fortified with a ristretto so dense you could have trotted the proverbial mouse over it, we set off again. The walking was good, on working farm tracks lined sometimes with dry stone walls, sometimes by trellised vines or fields of maize. Distinctive landmarks - a stone cross, a ruined building, a quirky tree – were noted for inclusion in the route map. Each time the horizon melted away to reveal yet another landscape. We saw hardly another soul, and certainly no other walkers. Occasionally we passed an isolated farmhouse where we were greeted with warm curiosity and plied with samplings of freshly baked cake or cups of rough wine.

We walked on towards our evening destination, drinking in the scenery, the smells, the peace and quiet. And we thought – about the contentedness and hospitality of simple country people, about our mad, bad lives back home, about real food that reflects the land in which it is made, about how good dinner would be when we got to our little hotel in Viggianello, and whether our luggage would have made it.

They weren’t the kind of thoughts to pass muster with the great Nietzsche. But he surely would have noted with approval our abandonment of the sedentary life.

Mondo Maratour, www.mondomaratea.it, info@mondomaratea.it
On Foot Holidays offers unescorted walking holidays to various European destinations (though not Maratea, yet...). Castle Mews, 29a Castle Street, Salisbury, Wiltshire, SP1 1TT, Tel. +44 (0)1722 322 652, www.onfootholidays.co.uk, walks@onfootholidays.co.uk