the Giro d’Italia isn’t just about a bunch of blokes on bikes swishing by wearing startling pastel-coloured cycling kits. (Aside from the black-clad Team Sky, who look like a squad of hired assassins).

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing – and answered questions raised others. Not least, how had valuable, Milan-made chinaware ended up abandoned for over 30 years in an Abruzzo ruin ? And how had it got there in the first place ?

As wartime stories go, this is a nice one.

In the winter of 1943/4, advancing Allied forces liberated the little Abruzzo village of Sant’Eusanio del Sangro. Which is how Lola Lorentini came to meet Charlie Isaacs.

Now…where did it all start ? On something like the fourth or fifth bottle of champagne on Millennium Night. Just the right moment to lay the foundations for a mid-fifties change-of-life plan…

With the Majella National Park practically on our doorstep, it probably seems a bit perverse to get into the car and drive 2 hours to the Abruzzo National Park.
Thanks to the fact that it’s tucked in away in Abruzzo’s remote south-west and crossed by only one main road, the Park’s remained relatively untouched, making it the last stronghold of the rare Marsican Brown Bear.

On the basis of what I’ve bought, planted, forgotten to nurture and then watched shrug off summer heat and winter snow with equal ease, here are five shrubs that survive and prosper to perfection here – and seem a good bet to do so pretty well anywhere in Italy.

Vegetable growing is something of a competitive sport round here – a summer diversion to fill the gap left by the absence of football. Huge vegetable plots are cultivated, producing prodigious quantities of food that no family could possibly eat and demanding equally heroic labours to keep them tended and watered.

One bloke did the work. His mate stood and watched for a while, then got bored and went for a walk through the olive groves.

With that air of doomed certainty that seems to attach itself to any dealings with state-run companies here, there was consternation when they discovered they’d been sent out with the wrong paperwork.

This is where you go locally for that special meal – especially for lunch in summer, when you can sit outside on their lovely shady terrace with views of the Majella National Park…

And where is this special place ?

Within five minutes of starting, the large compressed-air ‘hands’ that strip the olives from the branches and onto nets spread under the trees had broken.

The rest of the morning was a catalogue of frustration as Rocco and I drove off to get a new part; came back and found we couldn’t fit it; which then necessitated yet another hour-long round trip back to find someone who could. Which we did. Eventually.

Think that olive harvesting’s easy ? Think again. But the results are undeniably delicious.