For just two or three weeks in early March, the whole length of the Val di Sangro turns pink as tens of thousands of cherry trees come into bloom. This is a commercial crop; a special and renowned Abruzzese cherry, famed for its juicy deliciousness. And the variety ? We tried in vain to find out. It’s the ‘Abruzzo Cherry’ of course ! There are cherry festivals in June - we’ll find out more then…

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Prosecco di Conegliano-Valdobbiadene. ‘Vigne dei Dogi’

One of the nicer aspects about eating-out in the Veneto region - the area of north-east Italy that includes Venice, Padua and Verona - is that any meal will be preceded with an appetite-whetting glass of Prosecco. Appearing almost automatically and usually on the house. As for the rest of Italy, Prosecco still remains the most popular pre-lunch/dinner aperitif, while a request for ‘un bicchiere di Prosecco’ - ‘a glass of Prosecco’ - in any bar will provide you with a better instant pick-me-up or antidote to a scorching summer’s day than anything else ever can.

Italians may argue endlessly about which regions - usually their own - produce the best red or white. But there’s never any argument about Prosecco. It’s quite simply Italy’s favourite fizz.

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We figure we have a month - maybe a little more - before the bulldozers move in to demolish the existing beyond-renovation ruins on our Abruzzo property and work starts in earnest on building our new home and our special holiday villas for two. We’ve salvaged all the old roof and ceiling tiles we could reach - 1013 of them ! - without risking serious injury, or worse, by clambering over desperately unstable walls and beams to get more, so having done what we can for the moment outside, it seemed a good time to see what lay inside our two long-abandoned houses.