There was a shift in atmosphere as a pewter cloud rumbled overhead. As we approached the end of our walk in the Maiella national park, we stopped beside the remains of a second world war prison camp, deep in the park’s corn-coloured hills, and Lisa, our guide, told us a story as dramatic as the simmering sky. In 1943, a band of prisoners, including New Zealand corporal John Broad, fled the camp and spent seven bitter winter months hiding out in caves before eventually making it across British lines. That they survived was thanks to the kindness and bravery of local families, who risked their own safety, and hunger, to help them stay alive and avoid German patrols.
Lisa told us that Broad later described the impoverished Abruzzesi as the country’s true gold, and the sun suddenly sliced through the cloud as though in divine agreement, painting the mountains opposite a shimmering bronze. Digesting both the story and the scenery, our small group of 12 were quietly contemplative as we picked our way back down the hillside to Dimore Montane, the campground we were staying at. The advancing evening turned the sky from lemon to peach to vivid negroni as we skittered down cobbled paths between pines, crossed sun-baked meadows rippled with lilac thistles, and strode past ancient tholoi, the sculptural stone shelters built by local shepherds.
At the campground, the deckchairs in the shady woodland relaxation area were all taken, so we climbed up to the reception’s roof terrace and sat sipping bittersweet chinottos as we watched the sun make its final descent over the hills we’d just hiked.
In a secluded forest setting, Dimore Montane was built by the Italian state in the 1990s, but never opened beyond a fleeting attempt in 2006. During the Covid-19 pandemic, one of the current managers, Simone, came across the camp by chance and discovered that bids to run the site were being invited; a community of Tibetan monks had previously shown interest, but it was felt this public facility shouldn’t be turned into a private space. Simone and his partner Lisa, our walking guide, had previously run a tour company, but they knew it was too big a project to manage themselves, so they invited their friends Fabio and Manuela, who had backgrounds in procurement and communications, to join them. Together, they won the bid and started what would become a vast lockdown project and a giant feat of upcycling.
Opening Dimore Montane in 2021, after a year of renovation, the two couples combined their various skills to impressive effect. Today, when not carrying out their respective management tasks, they serve in the restaurant, lead guests on guided walks, and even create the mixed-media artwork that decorates the main building’s restful white walls.
They cleverly cater to a far wider clientele than most campgrounds. Surrounded by beech and chestnut trees, there are simple tent and campervan pitches, and bell tents for those who want to camp in a bit more style or don’t have their own kit. For those looking for more privacy and comfort, there are simple dorm rooms with shared bathrooms and a handful of en suite, hotel-style rooms. And dogs are welcome.
Unlike most campsites, the kitchen also serves a wide clientele. Campers can cook on outdoor grills and buy basic coffee-and-pastry breakfasts from a little van, while hotel-style guests get access to a wider breakfast buffet, and a restaurant provides food and wines sophisticated enough to draw non-guests out for dinner in the woods.
Much to our camping-mad sons’ initial disappointment, we had booked two connecting bedrooms in the main building and, to our own delight, found them decorated like a designer hostel, with plump mattresses, white bed linen, bright cushions, funky wooden artwork and lights suspended from twigs. A winning mix of restful simplicity and indulgent comfort, it made an ideal base camp for a few days’ adventuring in the Maiella.
The easy access to nature was what had drawn us. A wild massif, the Maiella sits right in the centre of Italy, about an hour’s drive south of Pescara. Not as well known, or as busy, as Abruzzo’s other national parks – Abruzzo and Gran Sasso – the Maiella is speckled with caves, gorges and grottos. Once, these were hideouts for bandits, but today they are largely home to the wolves, chamois, otters and other creatures that thrive in its peaks and plains. Stippled with wildflowers in May and June, and laced with terracotta-roofed villages and remote hermitages, the Maiella is also home to a network of well-marked hiking paths and mountain bike trails.
Starting on the doorstep, we had joined Lisa for the guided walk before dinner on our first evening. Heading up into the national park along paths hemmed by blackberries and wild mint, we’d listened as she brought the rugged, semi-arid landscape around us to life. As we sniffed wild oregano and verbena, at Lisa’s suggestion, and kept our eyes peeled, unsuccessfully, for the 50 or so Marsican brown bears that live within the park, our boys were gripped by descriptions of the area being like the Bahamas 140m years ago (and the proof, on Lisa’s phone: a picture of a fossilised shark’s tooth she’d found along the same path the previous week).
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Over the next few days we went mountain biking in nearby Caramanico Terme, a pretty former spa town whose streets are rippled with gelaterias and, sometimes, parading brass bands. We sat beside Lycra-clad road bikers to eat post-hike paninis at Rifugio Bruno Pomilio, below walls decorated with vintage skis. At Ai Quattro Sentieri trattoria outside Roccamorice, we ate bowls of ragu-swirled chitarra, Abruzzo’s famous square-cut pasta, and pesche dolci cakes – confections of sugar, custard and cake masquerading as peaches. We walked out, past a symphony of goat‑bell glockenspiels, to find the tiny chapel of San Bartolomeo teetering on the ledge of a remote cave, before sheltering deeper in the forest in the cool stone cloisters of the grander Santo Spirito hermitage.
The highlight of our stay, however, was a hike along the Orfento valley gorge, starting in Caramanico Terme. This area is now a state nature reserve within the national park, its biodiversity so treasured there is even a dedicated forest police force who patrol its paths. We chose a five-mile loop from among the various trails that lead into the valley from the town’s visitor centre. After an hour or so of steep climbing up a scrubby hillside in sticky mid-afternoon heat, we followed the trail down into the forest and came out at a series of river pools, cascades of water tumbling into lagoons of pale turquoise. Stopping to rest, we needed all our willpower not to jump in, nor even dip a hot toe in that cool luminous blue. Instead, we sat on a rock by the water, watching an adonis blue butterfly flit through shafts of leaf-dappled sunshine.
Back at Dimore Montane that evening, we booked a table at the campground’s restaurant and sat out on the terrace, beneath strings of lights. Surrounded by a gentle crescendo of giggling children, unwinding parents and clattering cutlery, we feasted on arrosticini, salty little nuggets of mutton threaded on to skewers and grilled over charcoal until they’re all crisply burnished on the outside and mallowy tender inside. As Fabio brought us desserts of saffron semifreddo and slices of watermelon, I told him how impressed we were with the food. And that, like the accommodation, the menu seems to tread an adept line between offering a sense of holiday indulgence and keeping pricing accessible.
“This is still camping, and the food has to be appropriate to that audience, but we want to make it as good as it can be, and as reflective of Abruzzo,” he said. The stakes may not be as high these days, but John Broad would surely be pleased to know that the spirit of hospitality lives on here, and that there’s still human gold in the Maiella hills.
Dimore Montane opens on 17 April (dimoremontane.com). Tent pitches start from €16pp or €23 for two people; dorm rooms from €64 for 4 and en suite doubles from €74, both including breakfast. Rhiannon Batten travelled with an Interrail Global Pass, from €286pp second class or €363 first class
