As darkness arrived last night, gradually all the other motorhomes and cars left our free parking spot next to the sea and we were left alone. This was our first wildcamp where we were on our own – and we were in the middle of nowhere! When we stepped out of Basil’s protective walls to give the dogs their late night walk, it was pitch black and a little eerie.

The night passed peacefully, with just the sound of gently breaking waves for company. As dawn broke our solitude was ended as numerous fisherman arrived with their cars to launch their small boats and as we breakfasted we could see these boats bobbing on the ocean, not far out, fishing presumably outside of any EU quotas.

We spent the morning driving to Matera. First alongside the mediterranean. Now the weekend is behind, all the seaside towns are once again dead. Eventually we reached the city of Taranto and skirted around it’s heavily industrialised centre. The guidebooks do not sing Taranto’s praises and this is largely down to the biggest steel plant I have ever seen, right next to the central city. Much of the site now looks derelict.

We then climbed steadily upwards to the inland plateau just above Italy’s heel. I had discovered that Matera had a large motorhome dealer and so we decided to try to replace the television which, as I described in an earlier post, is broken. Without the TV the all singing all dancing satellite system is about as much use as a length of damp string.

We arrived at the motorhome dealer at around 2.30 pm hoping against expectation that they would be open. In the south of Italy just about every business seems to close for 2 to 3 hours for siesta and unfortunately this turned out to be the case with our dealer, so we killed time until it opened. The dealer spoke no English but with a mixture of my cod Italian and gestures I made myself understood. After one look at the TV the dealer also easily made me understand that he did not sell TVs for fancy pants satellite systems and he didn’t know where I would find one. So we will have to make do without the delights of BBC World News – I think we will survive.

We had a number of options for staying overnight in or near Matera. We explored a couple of privately owned sostas, but they were not to our liking. Eventually we settled on a lovely, but very basic, campsite set in the rural heathland that surrounds Matera. It is only €10 a night (electricity extra) and the bathroom facilities are basic (43.870571, 16.632050). We are a few kilometres out of the centre, but the heath is magnificent and apparently has many walks, including to ancient rock churches. Sarah has already been out with the dogs to explore the heath a little – as always she’s desperate to get her 10,000 steps in each day. I, on the other had, am not so bothered!

Basil on the lovely campsite

For the third time this trip we have bumped into the same French couple. We first saw them on the car park at Ostuni. We had a basic conversation in my awful French. I therefore knew we were both taking vaguely the same route. We were on the same campsite at Gallipoli and when we bumped into each other in the campsite office this afternoon we both burst out laughing. Motorhoming at this time of year is a small world.

I think we may stay here two nights: one to explore Matera and a second to go walking on this heath.