The Valle d'Itria Gravel Loop, Among Trulli and Stone Walls

The Valle d'Itria has a problem and a solution, and they sit just a few kilometres apart. The problem is its most famous towns, Alberobello foremost, which in peak season fill up with coaches and queues at the souvenir trulli. The solution is simple: leave the main road and slip into the countryside. There, among centuries-old olive trees and an endless web of dry-stone walls, hides the real valley, made of isolated trulli still lived in or used as storehouses, vineyards, orchards and a silence the crowds in the centres can't even imagine.

The route

This gravel loop deliberately chooses the farm tracks and minor lanes between the great white towns, using them as support points but avoiding their congested cores. The cornerstones are the villages on the rim of the valley: Locorotondo, with its spiral old town among the loveliest in Italy and a view that embraces the whole basin; Cisternino, a maze of whitewashed alleys with grills at the ready; Martina Franca, with its elegant Baroque; and Ostuni, the white city, which from its hill dominates the plain of olive trees down to the sea. Alberobello can be admired from afar or crossed early in the morning, before the coaches, and then you return at once to the quiet of the countryside.

It's between one village and the next that the magic happens. You ride on country roads, small drovers' trails and gravel tracks running among the dry-stone walls, coming across trulli scattered across the farms, the characteristic dry-stone constructions with conical roofs, and monumental olive groves with trunks twisted by centuries. Every bend opens a different vista, and the dense network of lanes lets you build the loop as you please, lengthening or shortening it to suit your legs.

The terrain

The beauty of the Valle d'Itria is that here the southern Murge plateau is gentle and rolling: no extreme climbs, but a continuous soft up-and-down that makes riding pleasant without being exhausting. It's terrain within reach of many, provided you have the right machine: a gravel bike or at least one with tyres suited to unpaved surfaces, because the farm tracks alternate secondary asphalt, packed white gravel and the odd rougher stretch. The overall effort is moderate and adjustable, which makes it one of the most accessible itineraries in this collection.

To get here the valley is well served: you rely by car or train on towns like Locorotondo, Cisternino or Martina Franca, and from there you head out into the countryside. Unlike the more desolate plateaus of the South, here refuelling points are frequent: every village offers grills, bakeries, masserie and cellars, so there's no problem of isolation. If anything, the challenge is resisting the temptation to stop at the table too often.

When to go

The best period runs from spring to autumn. April, May and early summer bring green countryside, blossoms and ideal temperatures; autumn, up to October, brings warm light and the olive harvest, with the mills at work. High summer is the time to avoid for two reasons: the intense heat among the olive trees and, above all, the tourist onslaught on the famous towns. By choosing the shoulder seasons and the hours of morning or late afternoon you find pleasant temperatures and, most importantly, the countryside all to yourself even when the centres are packed.

Practical tips

A practical tip: build your itinerary so you sleep outside the most popular centres, in a masseria or a trullo among the olive trees. Not only do you save on the crush and the prices, but you wake up in the very landscape you came to find, with the song of the cicadas and the dry-stone walls outside your door. And plan your dinner around a Cisternino grill or an educational masseria: the food, here, is half the journey.

Practical guides for Ostuni

• Where to stay in Ostuni
• What to see in Ostuni in 2 days
• Where to eat in Ostuni
• How to get to Ostuni