We enjoyed our stay at Dent (Roberto's) villa.
The set-up of the accommodation is made up of a set of Trulli joined together to create a larger property. The property is fairly remote and we saw no locals when we were staying there - although one friendly local dog paid us a visit.
Wi-fi was good.
In the main area of the property there are three double bedrooms of which one is made up of two singles pushed together. Two of the three rooms had A/C although as the walls are thick this isn't essential and we did not use it every evening. The third bedroom with the twin beds was accessed through one of the other bedrooms which meant you could not access the room through the house without walking through the other bedroom. It also had an external door which we used in the morning to avoid disturbing our friends.
The property is well lit at night which allows easy relaxing in the variety of outdoor seating options. One with a dining table and one with a lower coffee table style.
The pool area was good and again had a variety of seating options from sunloungers to deckchairs. From memory there were 4 deckchairs and 2-3 loungers which was plenty for our group of 4. The pool was a good size with easy entrance and was cleaned once during our stay as well as before we arrived.
In the main property there are three showers rooms which we found tricky to control a comfortable temperature due to the scolding hot water. This was also the case in the kitchen where we burnt our hands a few times.
There was an additonal outbuilding by the pool with a en suite however we were not able to use this as the bed did not have sheets provided.
We travelled to Italy during August 2022 when there was a drought in the local area so we were warned to be considerate in our use of the water. Dent asked me to update him every 1-2 days on the water remaining in the underground tank located in the grounds. This required dropping a stone on a string into the tank and measuring how much of the string came back wet. This was actually quite fun but was slightly unexpected. I expect this is because Dent isn't local to the property and the cleaner is also an hour away. When we were low on water Dent organised for it to be filled by a local company. We were never without water.
There was a misunderstanding at the start of our stay regarding a high chair and cot which Dent had confirmed prior to booking that he would be able to provide. One week before our trip I whats app'd Dent to reconfirm that these would be provided to which I was told he would try. He was unable to provide a high chair so we took a portable one but he was able to provide a cot. When we arrived and put our son to bed we discovered that an unwashed sunlounger had been used in place of a mattress which we realised had black mould marks on the underside. When we spoke to Dent (around 8pm) he was apologetic and offered to send the cleaner over to find an alternative solution. We declined this as we understood there would be no mattress in the property and instead we used a cleaner lounger from the pool area. The issue was resolved the next day when a man turned up to cut a piece of foam to the correct size. We paid 30 euros for this to be provided.
There was one further misunderstanding on our final day when we had indiciated we would leave at midday but ended up leaving at 10am and leaving the keys inside the property. At no point had we been told that Dent had organised for the cleaner to be present to take the keys from us. Dent was understandably annoyed at the property been left unlocked, however given the remote location, that the adjoining property is named Roberto's and that we did not know at this point that Dent was 1,000 miles away in Verona, we had assumed that he lived next door.
In the future I would recommend a handover policy is explained to guests so they are aware of their responsibilities on check-out and that this is clearly communicated at check-in.
All in all we had a good stay at Dent's property which is well located between Ostuni, Locorotondo, Martina Franca and the ceramics at Grottaglie. The beaches were also only 30 minutes away.