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.