A day in inland Gallura: three-thousand-year-old stones and vermentino among the granite.

Almost everyone who lands in Olbia heads straight for the beach. This plan goes to the other side of the road: to the countryside around Arzachena, where Bronze Age people buried their dead beneath granite stelae and lived in stone villages around towers. In the morning you see the two best-known monuments in the area, mid-morning you taste vermentino at a winery and at midday you have the set menu at a Gallura farm. By mid-afternoon you are back in Olbia, or on a beach.

Getting there from Spain

Fly to Olbia: from Spain there is only a direct flight from Barcelona. You hire a car at the airport. From Olbia, Capichera is about 40 minutes away: the SS125 towards Arzachena and the SP14 towards Luogosanto.

The day, hour by hour

8:45 · Leave Olbia. North on the SS125 to Arzachena and then the SP14 towards Luogosanto.

9:30 · Coddu 'Ecchju and La Prisgiona. Start with the giants' tomb of Coddu 'Ecchju, where the ticket office is: the granite stele is 4.04 metres tall and the burial gallery is about four thousand years old. Buy the combined ticket for €7, free for under-12s. Then, a kilometre away, the La Prisgiona nuraghe, with its false-dome tower, the courtyard with the meeting hut and the well, more than seven metres deep, that still holds water. Allow two hours for both, with no rush.

11:45 · Tasting at Vigne Surrau. Eleven minutes by car, on the road from Arzachena to Porto Cervo. The I Colori del Territorio tasting costs €45 and lasts an hour and a half; if you want to concentrate on the local white, Il Vermentino in Gallura costs €65 and lasts two hours. Everything by reservation on the winery's website.

13:30 · Lunch at Agriturismo Rena. About twelve minutes away, in the countryside north of Arzachena. A set menu of Gallura cooking with cured meats, cheeses and vegetables from the farm, zuppa gallurese, homemade pasta and oven-roasted meat, such as suckling pig with potatoes. By reservation only, by phone or WhatsApp on +39 347 110 7599. The website does not publish opening days or prices: confirm both when you book.

16:00 · Return. To Olbia, about 40 minutes. If you have the afternoon free, Capriccioli is half an hour away for a swim.

If the farm stay is closed

Have the Brunch at Surrau, €55 and an hour and a half, which works as lunch, and head back earlier. Another option is to eat at the restaurant of Tenuta Pilastru, the Filigheddu family's estate beside the Li Muri necropolis, which is open to non-guests at midday and in the evening, by reservation.