About Us EN | villaoleandro.eu

About Us

In the heart of the Gargano, Tenuta Villa Oleandro, our home, is situated just a few kilometres from the beach at Calenella Bay and from of Vico del Gargano, San Menaio, Peschici and Rodi Garganico. 100m above sea level and with views down to the Adriatic Sea, the villa overlooks a gently rippling ocean of silvery greenery. Our beautiful Casale in the Sun, set in a verdant valley of olive groves, truly is a little corner of paradise.

Having made the momentous decision to "escape" the UK, and after a long and fruitless search in France, we eventually found our property right under our proverbial noses, here in the Gargano; a place where Margherita’s father originated from and a place we had been making summer pilgrimages to for the previous 20 years or so. It then took us 12 long months to complete the purchase from 10 disparate and dispersed individuals.

Completed during the 1920’s, though the heart of it is much older, the casale, or torretta (little castle) as it’s known to some locally, was abandoned in the 1940’s and by 2003, when it became ours, it was in a sad state of total abandonment and disrepair. The original arched front doorway of stone pillars and crested keystone was missing and only one of the two once sturdy studded doors hung barely from its hinges.

The whole house was in a similar state; the stone treads on the stairs and most of the flagstone flooring had been ripped out, windows, shutters, door frames and doors were rotten (though amazingly some panes of glass still survived). Most worrying of all, the partly collapsed roof was host to a small copse of trees and shrubs whose roots were clearly visible in the internal walls, upstairs and down, where they had knocked off the plaster.

Despite the dire state of the place, we fell in love with the vaults that topped every room, especially the cross vault above the first landing halfway up the stairs. We took the project on, regardless of the fact that we had decided at the start of our search never to buy anything that needed major building works. After two years of loving, attentive and at times frustrating and stressful, re-building, restoration, renovation and extension, we finally moved in. Eventually, following a further prolonged wait, we were finally granted permission to build our gorgeous pool and have been "living the life" ever since!

With the house came some 280 olive trees, some specimens centuries old, and almost 2 hectares of woodland, so we have had to learn to adapt ourselves to our new responsibilities. A bit of a change from computer programming and banking, we have become olive oil producers and our trees provide plenty fire wood to feed not only our pizza oven but also our stoves. Wood-burning stoves that we are very glad of as winters can be cold and damp here too!

We share our home with our family of cats and dogs, who have all been rescued; abandoned kittens and puppies who came to ask for help and we could not ignore them.

Since we moved to Villa Oleandro Ian finally wrote his book about Vico del Gargano, it's people, dialect and traditions. He'd made up his mind to do it as long ago as 1981, but until we moved to the area he had little material or experience to go on. He wrote the first chapter in the 1980s and it travelled with him, moving from computer to computer, awaiting inspiration. Once here, there was no stopping him.

Margherita kept herself busy too. Many, many years ago she began collecting and adapting recipes for her own Book of Cooking and is now very proud to have a printed copy on the shelf alongside her extensive collection of cookery books. And in 2011, having started her jottings ten years previously, she finally also published her own story.

Having achieved our goals, it was only when we discovered Lulu Self Publishing that we were able to realise our books. It appears that unless you are some kind of celebrity it is virtually impossible to get a publisher/agent to even read a chapter of a book, much less find a publisher to produce and distribute it. Thank goodness for the Internet and self-publishing!

Read Our Books

Pan' e Pomodor' - My Passage to Puglia by Ian R McEwan

and

The Return of the Changeling - from Puglia and back by Marghaux Maye

Stay With Us

If you would like to "live the life" for a week or two, we have a beautiful, spacious and exceedingly well appointed apartment where guests can be comfortable and independent whilst enjoying our place in the sun.

Have a look at: La Casa Lavanda

Read what our guests say about us: Guest Reviews