Puglia with Nino: seven days in southern Italy that give Tuscany a run for its money

Puglia has a structural advantage over Italy's better-known destinations: it hasn't yet reached the saturation levels of the Tuscan coast or Lake Como at peak season. In summer there are tourists, of course, but the countryside between the trulli, the whitewashed villages of the Valle d'Itria and the beaches of Salento still have that human scale that other Mediterranean destinations lost decades ago. In September the difference is even more pronounced.

The attitude towards animals in southern Italy is also more relaxed than you might expect. The region has a long agricultural and pastoral tradition — shepherds and their working dogs have been part of the landscape for centuries — and that familiarity with animals shows in everyday interactions: masseria owners often have dogs of their own, bar terraces in the villages are welcoming, and on the rural tracks between fields nobody bats an eyelid at a pointer ranging ahead.

That said, one word of warning for anyone thinking of going in August: the heat in Puglia at the height of summer is non-negotiable. Temperatures inland can exceed 38 or even 40 degrees during the middle of the day, and for a short-coated dog like Nino — who, like all pointers, heats up quickly — that means very early starts, a long midday rest inside the accommodation, and a schedule that in August has to be structured quite differently. June and September are the right answers: the landscape is at its best, the beaches are open, and the heat is pleasant rather than a problem.

Puglia has two main airports: Bari (the larger of the two, well placed for the north and centre of the region) and Brindisi (further south, ideal if your plan focuses on Salento). There are direct flights from Madrid to Bari that make the journey perfectly manageable — two hours in the air, no layovers, and within four hours of landing you can be picking up the hire car and ordering your first coffee in the Puglian capital. Check what connections are available when you plan, as the timetable varies by season.

With a dog of Nino's size, the hold is the only option. Each airline sets its own conditions and fees for transporting animals in the hold — maximum weight of animal plus carrier, approved carrier models, booking deadlines — and these conditions change, so check directly with the airline before buying the ticket, not after. What remains constant: you need to book the animal's place at the same time as the flight, and most airlines cap the number of animals per flight.

For anyone who would rather not put their dog in the hold, the alternative is to drive and take a ferry from Barcelona to Civitavecchia or Genoa — a longer journey, but one dogs tend to handle better than a flight, especially if they're already used to car travel. It also gives you far more freedom to stop along the way.

On documentation: Italy is a European Union country, and the rules for travelling with pets are the same as for any other member state. You need the microchip implanted (compulsory in Spain for all dogs), the EU pet passport — the blue booklet issued by any registered vet — and a valid rabies vaccination recorded in the passport. No quarantine, no additional certificates, no extra paperwork at the border. Check the rabies vaccine's expiry date before you leave: if it's cutting it fine, a booster a few weeks before the trip sorts it without any last-minute panic.

The Valle d'Itria is the heart of Puglia and the starting point for almost every itinerary through the region. This is the land of the trulli — those conical, mortarless dry-stone constructions that are the region's defining symbol and that Unesco declared a World Heritage Site — and of three villages that together form an almost perfect triangle: Alberobello, Locorotondo and Cisternino.

Alberobello is the most famous — the one that appears in every photograph and every Puglia tourism poster. It is worth going, but go early: before nine in the morning, when the crowds haven't arrived yet and the stone alleyways still have that otherworldly quiet. At that hour, with Nino trotting ahead through the narrow lanes and the morning light still low and raking across the grey stone, the scene has something that the midday photos full of people can't capture.

Locorotondo is the second vertex of the triangle: a circular hilltop village of white houses with pointed rooftops and views over the valley that shift colour every quarter of an hour at sunset. It is far quieter than Alberobello and considerably more pleasant for an unhurried wander. Cisternino is the least visited of the three and, in my view, the one I liked most. It has that authenticity of a village that still lives for its own sake — butchers who grill your meat on the spot, bar terraces where locals play cards in the afternoon. Nino won over the owner of the bar where we had our aperitivo on the second day; she brought him water without being asked.

Between the three villages, the Valle d'Itria countryside is perfect for the kind of dog walks you actually want: rural tracks between dry-stone walls, centuries-old olive groves whose gnarled trunks could tell you four hundred years of history, and the quiet of a farming area that still takes its produce seriously. Nino covered those tracks at a trot, nose skimming the ground, stopping every twenty metres to investigate something that only he could smell.

The masseria is the key to staying in Puglia with a dog. The term refers to the traditional Puglian farmstead — large stone agricultural estates built between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, many with a defensive tower, walls and an internal courtyard — that have been converted in recent decades into rural accommodation of varying categories. The range runs from a simple masseria with a handful of rooms and a garden to a luxury property with pool and its own restaurant, but they all share something: space, stone, countryside and an atmosphere that has nothing in common with a city hotel.

For travelling with a dog, the masseria is the obvious choice. The surrounding land gives Nino the freedom of movement that is simply impossible in an urban hotel: large grounds to explore, grassy gardens and the kind of silence that only exists when the nearest neighbour is several kilometres away. Many of the masserie in the Valle d'Itria and Salento have dogs of their own — the owners are farmers or smallholders — and that means their attitude to animals is entirely natural. They don't merely tolerate your dog; they understand perfectly well that a dog is part of the family.

Some masserie have a pool, which on the hotter days — even in September it can reach 30 degrees — is a real gift. Nino doesn't swim, but he spent the middle hours of the day stretched out in the shade of the olive trees beside the pool while I swam, which for a pointer is the ideal arrangement.

From the Valle d'Itria to the Adriatic coast is less than half an hour by car, but the shift in landscape is so dramatic it is hard to believe you are in the same destination. The Puglian interior is all stone, olive trees and wide skies; the Adriatic coast is all white limestone cliffs, an almost impossibly electric-blue sea and villages that literally hang above the water.

Polignano a Mare is the image of the Puglian coast: a medieval old town perched on white limestone cliffs that drop sheer into the Adriatic, with small coves accessible by boat or by steps cut into the rock. The view from the belvedere at sunset — golden stone, deep-blue water, wheeling gulls — is one of those that stays with you. For Nino, the best of Polignano was the walk along the cliff edge outside the old town, where dirt tracks follow the coastline with views that need no filter.

The beaches of Puglia's Adriatic coast allow dogs in specific areas and outside peak season. In September the situation is far more relaxed than in July or August: some beaches become accessible to animals again once the concession season ends, and the numbers are so much lower that checks are virtually nonexistent. Always ask at your masseria — the owners know exactly which stretches of beach are dog-friendly at the time of year you're visiting.

Monopoli, about twenty minutes north of Polignano, has a charming fishing harbour and a historic centre of narrow lanes and white façades that is worth a morning. It is less visited than Polignano and has that quality of a town that functions independently of tourism, which is always a pleasure.

Lecce is one of the most surprising cities in southern Italy, and for a very specific reason: Puglian baroque. The architects of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries carved the local sandstone — the pietra leccese, soft and honey-coloured — with a decorative exuberance that produces results found nowhere else. The façade of the Basilica di Santa Croce, the churches, the palaces of the old town: everything is covered in angels, garlands, Solomonic columns and figures that in the midday light have a soft golden warmth and at dusk turn almost orange.

For Nino, Lecce requires a little planning. The historic centre is entirely pedestrianised, with narrow stone streets and a real city life that coexists with tourism. Dogs are welcome on terraces and in the streets, but you need to manage monument visits thoughtfully — interiors don't admit dogs, as you would expect — and be aware that the heat in the old town, even in September, can be fierce at midday. The approach that worked for us was to save Lecce for first thing in the morning: at half past eight, with the light still horizontal across the golden stone and almost nobody in the Piazza del Duomo, the city has a quality that by noon has entirely vanished.

Salento is the tip of the boot: the southernmost stretch of Puglia, with two completely different coastlines separated by just a few kilometres. To the east, the Adriatic: rocky, with turquoise water and small coves. To the west, the Ionian Sea: long beaches of very fine white sand and an emerald-green water that in September, when the seaweed isn't present, is among the most beautiful in Italy. Otranto, with its Norman cathedral and its harbour, is the stop on the Adriatic side; Gallipoli, with its historic centre on a small island connected to the mainland by a bridge, is the visit on the Ionian side. Between the two, dozens of kilometres of coastline with beaches that empty out in September and where Nino finally found the space to run freely that the city days hadn't given him.

Italy in general is one of the most comfortable countries in Europe for eating out with a dog. The terrace culture is deeply rooted, bar owners are hospitable, and nobody looks alarmed when you sit down with a pointer under the table in the village square. In Puglia that openness comes with the added incentive of a cuisine that genuinely rewards the time you give it.

Puglian food is simple and very good. Orecchiette — small ear-shaped pasta made by hand, and still today in Bari you can watch women making them in the lanes of the old town — with cime di rapa is the region's signature dish: bitter, with garlic and chilli, perfectly balanced. Burrata — which was born in Puglia, in Andria — is another argument in the region's favour: creamier than mozzarella, with that soft cream heart that on a plate in a Valle d'Itria restaurant has a flavour the imported versions never quite reproduce. Taralli — small dry rings flavoured with fennel or pepper — are the inevitable aperitivo snack alongside a beer or a glass of local Primitivo on any evening terrace. And lampascioni — a type of wild bitter bulb, similar to a small bitter onion, pickled or fried, with a flavour that surprises you the first time — are one of those very local products worth seeking out.

Nino had his own gastronomic highlights from the trip: he made a particular friend of the butcher in Cisternino, who gave him scraps each time we passed, and spent every dinner with dignified restraint under the terrace chair without bothering anyone — which, for as curious a pointer as he is, is an achievement worth acknowledging.

If there is one image that sums up Puglia in September, it is an Salento beach with that blue-green water that looks unreal in photographs and turns out, in person, to be exactly like that. The beaches of the Ionian Sea — long, fine white sand, with that colour of water that only Salento and a few corners of Greece can offer — are in September a version of themselves that July and August simply cannot provide. Fewer people, still-warm water and stretches where dogs can move freely once the seasonal beach concessions have closed.

Nino had his first encounter with the Ionian on a beach south of Gallipoli, on a stretch where on a Tuesday afternoon in September there were only a handful of other people. He waded in up to his knees — pointers have a curious relationship with the sea: it draws them in but they never quite surrender to it — and spent the next while sniffing every centimetre of wet sand with the concentration only dogs and small children bring to discovering something for the first time.

The contrast between the Adriatic coast — rocky, cliffy, with deep dark water close to the shore — and the Ionian coast — flat, sandy, with that pale green that advances slowly from the waterline — is one of Salento's great pleasures. In just a few kilometres you can move from one to the other, and the difference in landscape and light is total. If you have to choose between the two coastlines for your final days, save the Ionian for last: it makes for a farewell that is hard to improve on.