Pugnochiuso, homage to Oliver Rackham

Today I’m going to narrate you about an amazing place named Pugnochiuso, located in Gargano, north of Apulia.

I have been there one week on holiday.

Pugnochiuso represents for me the ideal place where to reinvigorating myself.

No cars around, an immense biodiversity, a green emerald sea. 

What else shall I ask for?!?

I know Pugnochiuso quite well as I have been working there for three years, just in summertime. It was a  seasonal job.

I was a shuttle driver.

I was paid to take tourists up and down the resort.

The air of Pugnochiuso is so balmy, so healthy due to the combination of pine trees and sea.

Each night I went to sleep, I used to leave the window opened because I enjoyed to wake up the next morning by the whistle of birds.

Indeed, I am fond of bird listening.

In the afternoon, I used to rest on the beach, or alternatively, reading my books.

While reading The Economist (March 14^th-20^th 2015), I have discovered the outstanding story of Oliver Rackham, an English plant pathologist and woodland archaeologist, who died in February 2015.

Oliver Rackham had helped in 1962 to save from destruction the Hayley Wood in Cambridgeshire, in UK.

He found out that the Hayley Wood had been there for at least 700 years.

The latest battle undertaken by Sir Oliver Rackham was against the trees being shipped around the world, taking their pathogens with them.

As outcome, the England’s elms had almost disappeared.

Beside that, horse chestnuts and alders are affected a lot in UK.    

We must not forget his lesson: love trees and plants, from which our life relies on.

Talking about plants, Pugnochiuso has a huge number of caper plants.

Eating capers with tomatoes and tuna drives me crazy!

I guess, I have collected around 6 kilos of capers.

I like to give a jar of capers to my family as well as to my friends.

Therefore, I have carried on in Pugnochiuso mainly eating what that place offered me: mussels and octopus.

Why? Because it reminds me the life during the Paleolithic, when human beings sustain themselves by hunting game and collecting fruits and roots.

The bay of Pugnochiuso is plentyful of fish and mussels.

Pugnochiuso resort has been created by Enrico Mattei, the glorious CEO of ENI.

It's common opinion that he was brutally killed by those who hated him and his strategies of buying oil directly from Middle-Eastern countries, by-passing the seven sisters.

Enrico Mattei fell in love with the Pugnochiuso bay.

Since more than a decade, Pugnochiuso is owned by Marcegaglia, of which the core business is steel.

I have heard that Marcegaglia would like to sell Pugnochiuso.

Well, I hope it will take place soon, because Pugnochiuso strongly needs to be re-launched in order to have more and more people enjoying this corner of Paradise on earth.