There is so much to fear with a nascent teenager but the moment I dread — perhaps the most — is the inevitable silent, sulking refusal to come on the family holiday. In this context, family means only me, the mother figure, rather than the full trio.
All the more dreadful, then, will be the end of my foreign adventures with the still peachy-skinned Louis, 12. Over the years, the two of us have had adventures in Japan, Africa, Argentina, India, South Africa and most recently, closer to home in Italy.
Peaceful afternoons
Of course, one can't safari in Italy, nor visit a fish market at 5am for fresh sushi, nor take tango lessons in the square outside Eva Peron's pink palace, nor watch a lion stalk a deer at dawn.
But Italy does have delicious food and long, lazy afternoons under a fig tree with Lampedusa and E.M. Forster. So, can you lure a near-teenager with the promise of peace and pizza alone? Probably not, you would think, but you haven't been to Puglia.
I hadn't, either, and while I doubt I will ever become much of a Puglia-phile, I loved it. The people who organised our activities on this heel of Italy, wish me to have taken in and absorbed the statistics on olive production. But I didn't. But I can tell you even those bits that teenager would call "boring", were in way delightful, as we listened to our handsome guide in sunshine.
Ancient architecture
That we are now so sold on Puglia is entirely due to the staff and proprietors our hotel, Masseria Torre Coccaro. This wonderland of theirs is like a village. You enter up a drive, off a dusty road and through an arch-way leading to a village square. Here there is a chapel — so quaint, so Italian. On the other side of the square is an imposing, ancient, castellated building with storybook steps up; another has storybook steps down, also leading to a hidden garden with a sliver of a swimming pool, enticing paths to glorious horticulture — and all around are tiny white cottages.
This Masseria Torre Coccaro is a fairytale version of the Crossroads Motel — Crossroads-on-sea, the sea being the Adriatic, the rooms being terracotta and adobe. The swimming pool area is an idyll with bar. There are rugged — as opposed to babyish — climbing frame-type facilities for nascent teenagers, bikes and horses to ride, excursions to take and food, which you can not only eat but learn how to cook. We did just that on our first full day.
It is not just cooking — it is shopping. We spent much of morning gawping at aubergines (melanzane) and inhaling tomatoes, great mounds fungi, coriander and mint.
With a hotel chef and cookery teacher to guide us, we bought ingredients for making pasta sauce and parmigiana di melanzane. At a farm we bought big, fat, creamy mozzarella.
Time to chill
After an hour in the cookery school, followed by a sit overlooking the glorious horticulture with a beverage, during which time the boy and some new friends took to their bikes, we lunched on the food we had cooked and then had time to chill.
So, out came my Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread) and in went Louis, to the pool. That evening, we strolled to the Masseria Torre Coccaro's sister hotel, the Torre Maizza for supper. Down the olive grove-lined drive, we ambled to eat risotto with local cardoncelli mushrooms, lamb cooked on a grill with roasted, herby potatoes and, afterwards, sublime caciocavallo cheese.
The boy and friends explored the rooftops, while I sat with a glass of sweet refreshment and the parents of the friends.
We discussed, whether the cost of these few days set against the price of a long-haul flight to the Galapagos added up to a value-for-money, happy holiday. We decided it did.
The following morning, Louis and I were in the Torre Guaceto nature reserve, watching a tortoise disappear into some undergrowth, followed closely by an exotic lizard. I had dragged myself reluctantly out of a sea that was calm and still and lapping for this. This is the kind of hidden, secret bay you imagine being shipwrecked on.
The boy was busy looking for fossils and climbing the fallen trunks of Jurassic-looking trees and would have been happy to stay there for the rest of our short time in Puglia. But there were trulli houses to see.
Trullis are so dolls'-house cute, so not what a 12-year-old boy is interested in. They are white and round with oversized, conical, grey, slate roofs.
Countless websites will tell you why and how they were built. They have also made a tourist town of Alberobello, its streets full of shops selling bottles with layers of coloured sand, linen and local pottery which, if you have room in your luggage, is not just lovely to look at but reasonably priced.
Safe and comfortable
If you would rather do beach, the Masseria Torre Coccaro hotel beach club has a restaurant under a giant pergola, serving seafood but also pasta for children. Its sunbeds look like the couches upon which Lampedusa's aristocrats would have lounged.
This was not the kind of holiday Louis and I had ever had before. It was safe and comfortable. The hotel Aveda spa is like a state-of-the-art grotto, the riding and the swimming were on tap and the nature reserve was a gem.
Those who can travel with their husbands and stay married will find the village atmosphere of Masseria Torre Coccaro lends itself to a family holiday.
And while Louis could have done without the cookery, the younger children were happy kneading dough and operating the wood- and wire pasta maker (also sold at the hotel reception). I bought one and, of course, have yet to use it. For now, it serves as a reminder of a happy escape with my still-peachy holiday companion.
Fact file
Prices at the Masseria Torre Coccaro cost from £115 (Dh645) per person, per night, based on two sharing a double room, including breakfast (www.apuliacollection.com). Cooking lessons cost from £100 (Dh561) per person, including a morning cooking with the hotel's chef and lunch. British Airways flies to Bari, a short trip from Masseria Torre Coccaro, from £142 (Dh797) return (www.ba.com).
