A winter week, for eight people at most. By day you raise a dry-stone wall with a local master and climb in a ravine with a guide; in the evening, stories around the fire; at night, the masseria's rooms.
A trullo stands without mortar, and stays cool in summer: it is a technical solution. The same knowledge holds up the dry-stone walls that divide these fields — UNESCO inscribed it in 2018 as intangible heritage of humanity. For a week you learn it with your hands. At the end, there is a stretch of wall in the land that wasn't there before: you laid it.
In the afternoon, a walk around the land: the walls, the courtyard, the specchie — which are not to be touched. Each person picks a spot in the scrub to return to every day. In the evening, the first fire.
With a local dry-stone mason: how to read a stone, how to choose it, how to lay it so it holds by itself. A stretch of wall begins.
All day on the site, stone after stone. At sunset you measure how far it has risen.
Nothing scheduled. Ceglie on foot, an hour; the sea, half an hour; or sleeping late.
In a ravine, with a guide: an easy crag, meant for people who have never climbed. You read the rock the way you read the wall.
A morning without words, each in their spot in the scrub. At sunset, the sky; in the evening, by the fire, everyone tells a story, and the people who live here tell the story of the place.
Breakfast, one last look at the finished wall, and away by three.
You sleep in the masseria's four rooms: Demetra's panorama, Berenice's fireplace, Zefiro's skylight for the stars. Breakfast and dinner every day, cooked the way they cook here: simple, hot, plentiful.
boots, work gloves, warm clothes, a head torch
No experience needed, of walls or of rock: just a will to use your hands.
Dates on request, for a whole group or for individuals.