If you choose a walking holiday, then you could do worse than choose one where the guide takes you to the top of the hill and walks you back down again. Unlike the Grand Old Duke of York we were bussed to the top of the hill, and then marched down at our own speed.

We walked from this pretty hilltop village back down across open countryside, this area being fields and hedges, rather than olive groves. It could have been almost an English landscape but for the dryness of the land and the slightly less green vegetation.

I thought these thistles particularly pretty and they made a great home for snails.

We were near to the end of our week in Puglia, walking with 14 other people all from a wide variety of backgrounds. ‘House Rules’ seem to emerge where the ‘B’ word was hardly mentioned in the entire week, which meant that we could all get on with each other without politics creeping in.

Great week.