Gargano

The Gargano is an island that happens to be attached to Italy. The limestone promontory forming the boot's spur spent geological ages separated from the peninsula by sea and then by the marshy Tavoliere plain, and its biology still behaves insularly: dozens of endemic plants, one of the densest wild-orchid concentrations in Europe — eighty-odd species flowering April into June — and, in the promontory's cool heart, the Foresta Umbra, the "forest of shadows", where beech grows huge at altitudes it has no business occupying. UNESCO listed those beeches in 2017 among Europe's ancient forests; the national park, established in the 1990s, covers the whole spur from lagoon to sea.

It is also one of Christendom's oldest destinations. The grotto where the Archangel Michael was said to appear in the fifth century made Monte Sant'Angelo a pilgrimage terminus for fifteen hundred years — Lombard kings carved their names in it, crusaders detoured to it, and its sanctuary is a UNESCO Longobard site; the whitewashed Junno quarter spills downhill from the shrine. On the southern flank, San Giovanni Rotondo grew into one of the world's most visited shrines around Padre Pio, with a Renzo Piano church to hold the millions. The coast performs its own rituals: Vieste and Peschici white on their cliffs, sea stacks at the Baia delle Zagare, and the trabucchi — spidery wooden fishing machines cantilevered off the points, some still hauling nets, a few now serving lunch.

Offshore, the park sails 22 kilometres to the Tremiti islands: San Domino under its Aleppo pines, San Nicola crowned by a fortified eleventh-century abbey, and a marine reserve around both. Legend buries Diomedes here and hears his companions in the night cries of the shearwaters that breed on the cliffs — a myth that sounds exactly right at 2 a.m. The lagoons of Lesina and Varano close the promontory's neck, brackish and eel-rich behind their sand bars.

What's worth knowing before you go

Foggia is the rail hub; buses and hire cars do the promontory, whose roads earn their hairpin reputation. Tremiti ferries run from Termoli year-round and from Vieste in season — go early, seas permitting. Late April and May bring orchids and empty trails; September the warm sea without the August exodus crowds. The Foresta Umbra visitor centre anchors the easy walks.

The connoisseur's table is a working trabucco between Peschici and Vieste at lunch — the catch winched straight from the net beneath you — and the cave of St Michael at opening time, before the coaches, when the carved pilgrim graffiti has the lamplight to itself.