Trulli coining it in!

ITALIAN JOB

PUGLIA is the latest part of Italy to try to curb numbers of tourists visiting.

Venice and Rome have both taken strenuous steps to ‘manage’ the hordes descending on their cities, and now the Heel of Italy has followed suit.

The area is known for its picturesque villages – all come supplied with wildly ornate churches, elegant squares and odd beehiveshaped houses called trulli.

Puglia is famous for its exquisite cuisine – everything from delicate pizzas (the best you’ll taste anywhere) to over-sized plates of deep-fried enoki mushrooms and camembert.

If you happen to be in the area, ask for a caffe speciale: espresso over ice with almond milk and a shot of brandy. Then ask for another one.

However, it’s those delightful villages that are the centre of something of controversy at the moment.

Some councils, including that of Alberobello, the UNESCO heritage site with some 1,500 trulli, are charging visitors €5 per person to enter their towns. Not everyone is happy about this, needless to say.

They say locally that visitors to Puglia cry three times: when they arrive, when they leave and when they get on the scales. You can probably add a fourth time – when they realise they’re being gouged by the local council.

ROCK AND ROLLERS

TO reach the Lusty Glaze restaurant, deep in a Cornwall cove surrounded by 200ft high cliffs, you have three choices: go by boat; stumble down a set of 133 steps clinging to the side of the cliff, or whizz in by zip-wire.

In the realms of surreal access to restaurants, clearly we are dealing with giants here. But it appears to put nobody off.

The actress Demi Moore recently opted for the zip-wire route, and managed to carry it off very stylishly. Of course.

I, however, clambered down the 133 steps. But even though a force 5 south-westerly whipped in off the Atlantic, I think I managed my descent on a December evening with a reasonable amount of aplomb – although perhaps in the style of Christy Moore rather than Demi Moore.

Whatever your means of arrival, you’ll likely be glad. The restaurant sits in a cove looking out west across the Atlantic.

Stand on your tiptoes and you might see New York. In winter the surf is pounding outside – but in the restaurant the log burners are roaring away, the day’s catch is in, and dishes are being prepared. The menu includes the most local treats possible – do try the Cornish mussels in cream sauce. If I told you how many I had, you wouldn’t believe me.

The restaurant is in the Newquay area of Cornwall. The natural grandeur of the beaches round here has remained unchanged since the tectonic plates first began to twitch about.

But the town itself is transformed.

Yes, you can still get your candyfloss and your slot machines, but next door to the amusement arcade you’re as likely to find silent disco yoga, or a vegan café as anything else. The hipsters have arrived, and co-exist along- side the surfers, the families, the dogwalkers, the ramblers.

Newquay’s beaches include Cantock, whose beautiful white dunes are bound together by marram grass as tough as fisherman’s twine.

The esoteric-sounding Polly Joke beach is no laughing matter; the name comes from the ‘Porth Lojowek’ meaning ‘cove abounding in vegetation’.

This is no idle boast – it’s bounded by National Trust land, and is a top destination for those studying marine botany. And you never even knew that was a thing.

Overall, this corner of Cornwall is a grand place to visit for a few days – the bars are cosy, the food is great, and there are hotels you can stay in that teeter crazily along the edges of cliffs.

The locals are friendly, too, and certainly in Newquay, tend towards the unassuming.

In a shop on the way to Pentire Headland, I overheard a young Austrian couple chatting to the check-out lady. ‘But,’ the woman said in perplexed manner, ‘if you’re travelling the world, what on earth are doing in Newquay?’

BALTIC IN BRISTOL

IN an old notebook I have a few sentences scribbled down about an idea for a telly show.

I don’t know where the idea came from; I assume I read about it somewhere; perhaps, being generous to myself, I dreamt it. At any rate, none of my sources (ie Google, Wiki) can shed any light.

The concept is a chat show hosted by a xenophobic chef who travels the world, disapproving of the local cuisine, and solving murder mysteries. Well. My detective would have a rare time of it in Bristol, food from five continents is widely available throughout the city. I was there on my way back from Newquay, and feeling peckish.

I finally decided on Dela, a Scandinavian establishment. Dela means ‘share’ in Swedish, and with that in mind, I approached a large table by the window where sat a millennial, fully equipped with laptop, headphones, cup of coffee, beard.

‘Can I share your table?’ I asked. He brightened considerably. ‘Oh yes, please. Are you an interesting person?’

I had to confess that I was, at best, semi-interesting. At that he looked crestfallen. In fact I’ve seldom seen crests fall so abruptly. He took me at my word, packed up his stuff, and relocated to another table well away.

Lara, the owner approached with menu and information about the concept of Dela. It’s all about sharing (I nodded knowingly). Lara hasn’t tried to hide the fact that Dela was once a factory: air conditioning ducts criss-cross the ceiling; the herringbone floor looks durable and businesslike. ‘It’s Douglas fir,’ she said. Now this is outrageously Scandinavian, this knowing which conifer lines your floor.

On reading around the subject, I later learned that Douglas fir was named after a botanist called David Douglas.

Mr Douglas died in Hawaii after falling into an animal pit trap. Sadly a bull fell in on top of him a short time later.

Now, if only I’d known about that before the millennial scarpered. That’s a globule of 25 carat trivia right there.

That surely would have classified me as interesting.

At any rate, should you be in Bristol, I’d recommend Dela. It displayed everything that Nordic cuisine should: sustainable, pure, creative, beautiful.

In addition, you might even make a few new friends (if you’re interesting enough).

FACT OF THE WEEK

GLEANED from a tour of Titanic Belfast – the gym on the Titanic (aft deck, floor 3) had a rowing machine..

LIGHT ON THE MATTER

IF you want to be the first person in your street to say: ‘Ah, there’s a great stretch in the evenings all the same,’ strictly speaking you could do so on December 19.

On that day the sun sets at 4.07pm in Dublin; the evenings then get progressively lighter. Between December 9 and December 18 the sun has been setting at 4.06pm – the earliest sunset in the capital.

Of course, no point between the 9th and the 18th is the shortest day of the year, which is (usually) December 21.

Until then the sun rises progressively later, so that the days still continue to ‘draw in’.

The Dark Days – or Mørketiden (‘Murky time’) as the Norwegians splendidly call it – are still with us.

The reason for the disconnect between the shortest day and the earliest sunset is that the Earth’s elliptical orbit and axial tilt are not constant.

It explains why very quickly at the beginning of January the days seem to lengthen. It hasn’t been getting darker in the evenings since December 9.

Our ancestors pondered long and hard about such matters. In ancient times no-one knew the world was round – or if they did they kept very quiet about it.

The migration of birds remained a mystery for a long time – indeed, the birds knew the earth was round long before we did. We assumed they hibernated underwater during the winter months.

When it was discovered that the world is round and spins on its axis, the blameless birds once again got it in the neck. Birds take off at sunrise, shortly after the dawn chorus.

On the opposite side of the world, they are landing at sunset. This was obviously what caused the earth to spin. An imaginative idea, but totally and utterly – for those of you absent from school that day – erroneous.

This year the Earth’s axial tilt is furthest away from the sun at 10.22 on December 22. This split second is technically speaking the Winter Solstice, although colloquially the term is used to mean Mid Winter’s Day.

Blink and you’ll miss it.