Four trips, and none of them touches the others
The region is five hundred kilometres long: you choose one part and stay there.
In Puglia you do not tour the region: you pick a piece of it. Going down from the Gargano to the Salento means five hours on the road, and there is no sense in doing that twice in a week. Each of these four routes sets out from its own campsite.
The Gargano and the Tremiti
From the coast between Vieste and Peschici you climb to the Foresta Umbra, drop down to Monte Sant'Angelo, where the cave of Saint Michael has drawn pilgrims since the fifth century and is Unesco heritage, and come back by Mattinata. The Tremiti are the boat trip, and they leave from Vieste, Peschici and Rodi.
The Valle d'Itria
Between Bari, Brindisi and Taranto lies a plateau covered in trulli, with white towns on top of the rises: Alberobello, which has a whole quarter of them and has been Unesco since 1996, Locorotondo, Cisternino, Martina Franca, and a little further on Ostuni. They are all a few kilometres apart and make one full day.
The Salento
Lecce is the centre: soft stone, baroque facades and a Roman amphitheatre in the middle of the main square. From there you go down to Otranto, the easternmost point of Italy, with the floor mosaic of 1165 in the cathedral; then the coast down to Santa Maria di Leuca, and on the other side Gallipoli and Porto Cesareo.
The gravine and Castel del Monte
The inland circuit: Castel del Monte, the octagon Frederick II had built around 1240 and which nobody is quite sure what it was for; then the gravine of Massafra and Laterza, with their rock churches; and Gravina in Puglia, where an aqueduct bridge spans the canyon.