Journey to Middle Earth

There’s a heatwave forecast for the coast and with a week to spare before we go back to UK, we decide to head up into the Anatolian plateau to visit Cappadocia. At an altitude of 4,500 feet, we hope to escape the worst of the heat. It's supposed to be amazing.....and it is.

We don’t get much sleep on the overnight bus from Antalya but we arrive at Kilim Pension in Uchisar in time for a good breakfast before crashing out for a while to recover from the journey.

Our pension is just below this castle at Uchisar

Words can't adequately describe the extraordinary landscape of Cappadocia. Tolkein’s Hobbit country comes to mind, but that doesn’t cover the early Christian rock churches, the houses and pigeon lofts built into the rock, the caves used for plumping up lemons.  Unsurprisingly it’s one of Turkey’s tourist hotspots, so in places it was heaving with tour groups.

How the hell do you get in the front door?

Entrance to a rock church

This church was only discovered 10 years ago

A collection of pigeon lofts

And inside - niches for pigeons. The dung was spread on the fields

These houses were only abandoned in the 90s

It’s cool up here - in fact unseasonally so - just what we were looking for. The wildflowers, apricots on the trees and abundant streams made it feel like stepping back into spring. 

Even the public loos are in a cave!

One morning we joined the pension’s daily hike led by Philippe who took a small group of us up the Red Valley. Cathy found herself dusting off her Russian to act as interpreter to a Russian family in the group.



Another day we visited the underground city at Derinkuyu, built by early Christian communities to escape persecution.  After an hour we emerged blinking into the sunlight wondering how they coped with anything up to three months in their underground hideout.

In the tunnels of Derinkuyu

Weaving at the Avanos carpet co-operative

Turning pots by hand at Avanos

We did the return trip to the coast in the daylight. The heat hit us when we got off the bus in Antalya and now back onboard in Finike marina it’s over 40 degrees, making any kind of activity exhausting. The appallingly wet summer in UK is now looking very appealing. We’re back in Devon from 16th July to catch up with family and friends, so this is the last blog entry until we get back to Turkey again in September.

An Epic Saga

We’re coming into Finike harbour on our way back from Kekova one afternoon.  There’s a yacht milling about in the entrance and as we alter course to avoid it, Cathy notices its distinctive lines and shouts, ‘it’s another Saltram!’

Finike is home base to two Saltrams – ‘Makarma’ and Rodney Douglas’s ‘Vito,’ the only aluminium Saltram.  ‘Lara’, the new arrival, makes three 40 foot Saltrams in the same place at the same time – by our calculations almost 10% of all the 40 foot Saltrams in existence.  We arrange a rendez-vous for the morning outside the marina to take photos of us all together and have a good look round each other’s boats.

The three Saltrams

Vito from Makarma's deck

Lara

 

Makarma

It turns out each boat has its own character and each one is laid out differently down below. ‘Vito’ is utilitarian in battleship grey looking the long-distance business complete with baggywrinkles at the crosstrees. ‘Lara’ is sleek and beautiful - perfectly engineered with everything is in its place. Her owner Trevor took seven years to fit her out from the bare hull.  ‘Makarma’ is more like a comfortable home – a bit cluttered but with a lived-in atmosphere.   She has a good sized double berth amidships and doesn’t have the mainsheet track in the cockpit.

Makarma's foredeck ready for company

Lara's foredeck ready for sea

  But essentially we’re the same go-anywhere cruising boats, sturdily built with graceful lines. As owners we’re much the same too – proud of our boats and keen to show off well thought-out kit like neatly placed pulleys for the self-steering, a stowable cockpit table, dodgers which unzip to make room for a winch-handle and so on. 

Lara's neat self steering set-up

Although surprise, surprise - no-one’s yet come up with a good way to go astern in a straight line.  Alan Pape and the Skentelberys would have been chuffed to see us all!

Kekova Roads - twice over

Looking out from Yasemin bay

Kekova in summer is swarming with gulets and day tripper boats but you can still find quiet places to anchor. We’d been told about a narrow inlet too small for gulets but with enough space for one or two yachts.  It isn’t in Heikell but after a little sleuthing on the charts we worked out where it was, and when we got there, it was deserted - what bliss!  We’ve christened it Yasemin bay as the name is daubed on a rock inside.

The 1 metre long resident turtle at Yasemin

The anchorage to ourselves

After a couple of days idyllic seclusion we motored to Ucagiz for a planned rendezvous with Colin and Bronwen Thompson who’d chartered a 40 foot Bavaria from Gocek with New Zealand friends Ben and Jan. Colin and Bronwen live in a huge Victorian house in Richmond which we call Hotel Thompson because they’ve generously extended an open invitation for us to stay with them whenever we’re in London.

Bang on time at 18.00 they arrived in Ucagiz in time for a quick swim before drinks on Makarma’s foredeck followed by a delicious supper at Hassan’s ashore. It was great to link up with them all.


Next morning after visiting the local Lycian tombs and browsing the local carpet shop we agreed to meet up later in Yasemin bay for the night. Apart from a couple of tripper boats that came and went during the course of the day, we had the place to ourselves again. Wonderful! We all squeezed into Makarma’s cockpit for a convivial supper of chicken and couscous washed down with copious quantities of wine. 



All too soon it was time to go our separate ways with promises to meet up again before long.


A week later and we were back in Kekova again - this time with Honor.

Serious business of shopping in Finike market

...and the rudimentary changing rooms

 Her holiday with us was overshadowed by the sudden death of Oina, her beloved Little Granny and Cathy’s first mother-in-law, but with the funeral set for a date after her return home she was still able to come out and see us as planned.

The price of a well-earned break from work to relax in the sun with a book was putting up with the discomforts of sleeping in the forepeak but apart from a bad reaction to mosquito bites, she coped fine and we really enjoyed having her. 

It’s the first time we’ve had a visitor onboard since we’ve fitted the new holding tank. We’ve added ‘tank watch’ to our usual watch on the fridge temperature, as the level in the tank is a matter of guesswork at the moment.  It doesn’t bear thinking about if the thing overflowed, so we reckon life with visitors onboard will be simpler once we’ve installed a guage to measure the contents. 

Landing stage for Aperlai

The obligatory photo in front of a Lycian tomb at Aperlai

Enjoying the meze at Hassan's

Honor on the lookout for the sunken city at Simena