Apulia by Scooter

Puglia on a Vespa, six nights out of Bari, through the strangest architecture in Italy. The heel of the boot is flat, warm and full of small roads, which is scooter country, and the distances between the stops are short enough that nobody arrives exhausted.

Matera gets the first rest day and justifies the trip on its own. The Sassi are dwellings cut directly into the rock of a ravine, lived in continuously for millennia, cleared as slums in the 1950s and now partly reoccupied as houses and hotels. Walking them takes a full day and the place looks like nowhere else in Europe.

Lecce provides the second rest day, reached by way of three more oddities. Alberobello is a town of trulli, conical dry-stone huts built without mortar, of which there are well over a thousand. Castel del Monte is an octagonal medieval castle whose purpose nobody has satisfactorily explained. Otranto has a seafront old town at the easternmost point of Italy. Taranto also features before the return to Bari.

Edelweiss include a choice of Vespa, six nights of hotels, a guide and a tour book. Flights are separate and the inclusions are not itemised in full on the operator’s page, so the detail is worth asking for before booking. Prices are per person for 2026. Puglia is less travelled than Tuscany and considerably cheaper to eat in, and the roads between these towns are flat, quiet and short, which suits a scooter far better than it would suit a large touring machine. The combination of a slow vehicle and a region with this much to look at is better matched than it first appears.