Apulia and Allotments

In recent times, I've enjoyed combining my crime writing life with travel, and I've found increasingly that escaping from my computer tends to help me to come up with fresh story ideas. Not, usually, because I've gone to great lengths to seek out specific ideas, but rather because having a more relaxed mindset is often the best way to find inspiration. Anyway, when booking a holiday in Apulia (or Puglia as it's known here) I thought I might get the germ of an idea for a story in Matera, a town I've wanted to visit for several years. But things took an unexpected turn...

Apulia is rather less well-known to British visitors than many other parts of Italy but it's very attractive and relatively unspoiled. The first stop was Lecce, which has among various baroque delights (and papier mache figures) some remnants of a Roman amphitheatre. A nice town, but in many ways a warm-up act for a wonderful place, Alberobello, famed for its distinctive Trulli houses, and somewhere that appealed to me hugely.

After that, we (along with our pals Kate Ellis and her husband Roger, whose company is always enjoyable) headed for Matera. When an artist I met told me about Matera's wonderful atmosphere, I wanted to take a look for myself, though I wondered if it would live up to the hype. No question, it did. It's the third oldest continuously inhabited town in the world, we were told, after Aleppo and Jericho, and the cave-dwellings which were once "the shame of Italy" are now a key attraction at this year's European Capital of Culture. A destination I can recommend unreservedly. And the mysterious bones in an underground crypt certainly provoked a lot of thought...

Bari, an ancient port, exceeded my expectations, while the remote mountainside town of Monte Sant Angelo was very impressive, as well as slightly eerie: now that's somewhere that would be a good setting, I thought....After that it was on to Vieste, and Peschici, two coastline towns offering dramatic scenery as well as labyrinths of narrow streets and alleyways. A boat trip along that coast, during which we ventured into various caves and grottoes, was utterly memorable.

Our other travelling companions included two people who extolled the virtues of having an allotment; and that's when a story idea unexpectedly came to me - at a point in the trip when I was already worked on another short story, a version of a locked room mystery with a difference. They were very helpful in supplying me with background information and by the end of the trip I had sketched out the whole story in note form. As for a story set in the mountains or in the crypt of a cave, you never know...