A week of land cruising - Stage 1 to Pamukkale

We're taking a week's break from the boat and the heat on the coast to do some land cruising by bus. We've left the boat in the marina at Kusadasi and are going first to Pamukkale, then on to Egirdir in Turkey's Lake District. 

Seen from a distance Pamukkale (Cotton Castle in Turkish) looks like an unsightly scar of quarried rock set in the hillside. Get closer and an extraordinary sight unfolds. Layer upon layer of freshwater pools formed by the accumulation of white travertine limestone climb up the hill. Alkaline-rich warm water trickles down the hillside out of underground thermal springs and over thousands of years has deposited the limestone on the slopes to form these iconic pools.

The Romans discovered the place first. To enjoy the healthgiving waters here they built the spa city of Hierapolis, the remains of which can still be seen.

Entering Roman Hierapolis

Leighton inspects the Roman latrines

Tomb submerged in limestone

Pamukkale, now a World Heritage site, is still attracting visitors today - along with the Blue Mosque and Ephesus it's a must-see on most tourist intineraries.  These days they come by the coachload to swim in the constant 38 degrees of what's known as Cleopatra's pool, and paddle in the warm alka-seltzer water on the hillside.

Cleopatra's Pool

On advice from the people at the delightful Venus pension where we stayed, we arrived at the site late in the afternoon after most of the coaches have left. We started at the top of the hill to explore the extensive ruins of Hieropolis. Then it was off with our sandals at the crest of the hill to walk down among the travertine pools laid out below us.


Walking barefoot down the hill is a curious experience. The limestone is rough and ridged like the hard sand exposed on the beach at low tide.

In the pools, the water is like warm tea and sludgy grey mud squelches between your toes.

Leighton cools off in one of the pools

Everyone's supposed to walk down the same way to limit erosion from the hordes of visitors. Half way down, Cathy ignored the notices to keep to the path and took off up a slope to look at a formation of stalagtites she remembered from her last visit here in the 70s until an irate policeman whistled her back down.

This distant figure is Cathy going off-piste

The next day we took the dolmus to Karahayik, determined to see what Alison our friend from Finike described as a giant turd. Here it is.

Leighton holds his nose beside the giant 'turd'

The greenish brown mud here is supposed to be good for pretty much any ailment you can think of. Steaming hot water bubbles out of this revolting looking orifice and flows down into the mud baths. Bathers cover themselves in mud and leave it until it's caked dry before sluicing themselves down to get clean.



Somehow the idea of a mud bath didn't appeal - must be something to do with the sweltering sun.....or the disgusting sulphur smell.  We wimped out and cooled down in the pension swimming pool instead.

Honor visits and it blows like stink

The meltemi arrived the same day Honor landed at Izmir airport for a week’s holiday onboard.  No chance of the gentle day sails with a lunch stop at anchor we’d planned when the forecast is showing northerly force 6&7 all week, day and night.  Luckily Honor’s not an ultra keen sailor so she doesn’t mind that the boat’s staying firmly tied up in Teos marina.


Party time - we’re invited to join fellow boat owners at a marina concert celebrating the start of summer.


Sigacik (with Seferihisar) is proud to be the only slow food town in Turkey. The snail, emblem of citta slow, is a must-see landmark.  But why is it bright pink?

After a couple of days sitting by the pool, or at the local beach getting a sand facial in the wind, we hired a car and did a circuit up the little Meander valley and back to Selcuk returning along the coast road to Teos.

Our locally produced guidebook recommended visiting Tire, a village in the little Meander valley. It turned out to be nondescript warren of alleys lined with stalls selling tin buckets, shoes and garish jewellery - with no sign of the ‘cultural assets’ and local handicrafts of felt, clogs and quilts promised in the guide’s effusive description.


After sampling the local grape sherbet and watching a weaver on his loom in an old hamam, we pressed on for lunch at Sirince, a hilltown perched above Selcuk. Much better.

Lunch on shady terrace at Sirince

Sirince

Another day saw us cooling off at Ramo beach, close to Cesme. Although it faced south away from the wind, loads of whitecaps surfed past offshore.

Our unreliable guidebook suggested visiting Urla on the way. The town is allegedly the oldest olive oil workshop in the world with ‘a very Aegean ambience’. But somehow we couldn’t quite bring ourselves to stop and see if it was true or not. We went to Alacati instead and watched hundreds of windsurfers blasting back and forth across the lagoon before heading back home. The wind’s still howling in the rigging - oh dear.

Enjoying a meal out on our last evening together

An easy downwind sail?

Our destination - Teos Marina, Sigacik

When people say that sailing in the Med is unrewarding, they probably have in mind a day like today. We started out from Cesme with a gentle northwesterly. That’s good, the wind’s behind the beam for a change. We hoist the mainsail and unroll the genoa and manage a few easy downhill miles until we reach the south end of the Chios channel where the wind dies. We roll up the genoa and turn on the engine to get round the corner. On the other side, we’re heading southeast along a pretty beach on the south side of the Cesme peninsula. In the lee of the land, the wind’s now a pretty lacklustre affair, sometimes puffing up, sometimes dying. We motor on. At least the tillerpilot is doing the steering for us.

After ten miles or so the wind gets up a bit from astern. We turn off the engine and unroll the genoa but it refuses to fill behind the main. We haul it over to the other side to see if it’ll fly there but that doesn’t work either. We don’t think it’s a good idea to pole it out as it’s a bitch to get back in when it starts to get gusty. We roll up the genoa and go on under the main alone. We fit the preventer to stop us gybing as we’re sailing dead downwind.  The tillerpilot can’t be relied on in these conditions, so we set up the Aries windvane. But the wind blowing off the land changes direction all the time and our course begins to look like a drunken spider’s. Not good when we’re trying to make Teke Burun, the next headland. Leighton takes the helm instead.

On the approach to Teke Burun we’re on a sleigh ride with 20 knots up our stern. It gets to be hard work hanging on to the tiller. Not worth setting the Aries again as we’re almost there. We undo the preventer and gybe round the point. After that it’s just 10 miles to go to Teos across Sigacik Korfezi. Past the point the wind dies. On goes the engine again. Take out the windvane and set the tillerpilot again.

Half way across the bay, a fresh breeze pipes up at 60 degrees off the bow. I pop my head out of the companionway and seeing the strength of the wind, I ease the mainsheet, prompting the tillerpilot to seize up.  Leighton, who’s been finessing the thing to steer properly since the point goes below in a huff. I hand steer. It’s a good sailing breeze, but it takes two to unroll the genny, and I don’t dare ask Leighton for his help.

As we near Teos, the GPS log registers 5000 nautical miles. We can’t remember if that’s since we set out from Plymouth, or since we left Ayamonte. Given that today we’ve only managed 34 miles in 8 hours, it represents many hundreds of hours of slow travel out on the water. What an achievement!

Cooling off by the marina swimming pool

Cherries in season at Seferihisar market

Leighton on the trail of old artefacts at the temple of Dionysus at ancient Teos

Ayvalik - Greek ghost town

After a week at anchor and still no sign of the southerly wind abating, we head for the Setur Ayvalik marina for the weekend to top up the water tanks and have a much needed shower before heading off to explore the town of Ayvalik.  

Smart waterfront properties on the way to Ayvalik

Before the establishment of the Turkish republic, the market town of Ayvalik was a prosperous place of tanneries, mills and factories. In its heyday 20,000 people, mostly Greeks, lived here, working in 22 olive oil factories, 30 soap factories and 80 mills. 600 ships docked at its little port every year. All this commerce came to a grinding halt when the forced population exchange of the 1920’s sent the town's Greek residents to live in Crete, and Turks from Crete, Lesvos and Macedonia arrived to settle in Ayvalik.



The town has never recaptured its former importance although much of the old architecture of the town still remains. The streets behind the quay are lined with boarded up stone warehouses and factories, some with faded Greek lettering still visible over the door. The newly arrived Turks added a minaret to the Greek Orthodox churches to convert them to mosques.

The cobbled streets are steep and narrow, overlooked by typical Greek and ottoman style houses, now decaying gently, many of them empty. There’s very little sign of the sort of gentrification and development that’s taken place in Alacati. We liked the fact that it’s still a working town with very few airs and graces.


We didn't want to disturb this guy's siesta so we lug our bags of fresh provisions back to the marina on foot instead.  When we head back to our anchorage on Monday, we think - just maybe  - we can head south on Thursday.

Getting hooked

Anchors are a bit like teenage sons. When they’re out of sight you have no idea what mischief they’re getting up to and your mind starts running over all sorts of ghastly outcomes if things go wrong. So when the wind gets up and the water’s too deep or murky to check that the anchor's properly hooked, we get ready for yet another sleepless night on anchor watch.

If only it was always this quiet at anchor....

 It blew 30 knots in our little anchorage in the Ayvalik archipelago one afternoon and all night. The couple on the only other yacht there had gone ashore when the wind got up. They got soaked getting back in their dinghy and no sooner were they onboard than their boat started to drag. When they hauled in their anchor it came up tangled in what looked like an old bike frame. We watched in horror as the wife struggled to control the boat to stop it from being swept sideways onto the shore while her husband in a fit of madness took to the dinghy to hack away the lump of scrap metal swinging beneath the bow.  As we watched the wind carry them out of the anchorage, we dreaded the thought of going through the same nightmare. 

As it turned out, we needn’t have worried - that time anyway. When we came to leave, the bugel took some lifting because it was stuck fast in the stickiest mud we’ve ever come across, even better than Vliho’s.  But the next time we came to leave……the anchor brought up with it a coil of thick rope - we think the remnants of some old mussel beds - still attached to the seabed. Thankfully it was easily sorted out, but you just never know with anchors - or with teenage boys for that matter. 

Ayvalik Archipelago

The forecast was for W3 - a gentle reach. But we’re hard on the wind with two rolls in the genoa beating into a NW5 wondering if we’ll make the approach into Ayvalik without being blown onto a lee shore.

This is serious - we've got the chart out!

After a salty three hours we ease off the wind and relax, entering the narrow channel into the sheltered water of Ayvalik ‘lake’ to drop the sails inside.

We’ve just spent a sociable few days with our Swiss friends Mike and Corinne on Cleophea and Agios Nikolaos friends Mike and Annie on Kandeed who are sailing in company with them.  We’ve gone our separate ways again now - they to Halkidiki and us to Ayvalik. We wish them fair winds and good sailing. 

What could be better - dinner with friends

The large enclosed lake at Ayvalik and the offlying islands form an attractive archipelago that promises sheltered cruising and a variety of secure anchorages. It is the furthest north we’re going this season. When the wind goes northerly again we’ll start heading back south.

With no sign of the southerlies abating we anchor in a little bay off Camlik Koyu. The mussel beds marked on the chart have gone, leaving a pleasant inlet with all-round shelter. At the head of the bay lies a holiday village and two small hotels. A scattering of blue beach umbrellas line the narrow beach which this early in the season has very few holidaymakers. The place is ideal to stay while waiting for a favourable wind. Ashore there’s most of what we need - a small kiosk selling fresh bread and other staples, toilets and an outside shower, walking trails that meander over wooded hills that surround us.

A calm day in the Ayvalik archipelago

 While it’s still calm one morning we climb a steep conical hill known as the Devil’s Table from local folklore which tells of devils meeting here to drink and make merry. At the top there’s not even an empty beer can to be seen, but we enjoy a good view of all the bays and islands that make up the archipelago.

Devil's Table hill from the anchorage

We do posh

What an idyllic place to spend Cathy's birthday. A scattering of houses, a sandy beach, a herd of goats and turquoise blue clear water. In the afternoon reality bites when a stiff onshore breeze blows up. Luckily we find a more sheltered spot to anchor nearby where we could celebrate with birthday cake and candles.















The next day the forecast is showing gusty southerlies for forty eight hours. After one long night on anchor watch this week already we feel like tying up to something solid while it lasts. Cesme marina is run by Camper & Nicholson, a British company that runs upmarket marinas not usually used by budget conscious liveaboards. But it’s the most conveniently situated on our way north. Having phoned ahead to find out the price for two nights’ stay, we decide to go in.

On the way in Leighton starts to look worried. ‘I’m not sure our £5 million indemnity insurance will go very far if we bump into one of those superyachts,’ he observes. The marinero guiding us in from his inflatable RIB wants us to back down a narrow corridor between two pontoons. We look at him in disbelief. A long keeler like Makarma doesn’t go astern obediently like your average white boat, especially when it’s a bit breezy. ‘We’ll need some help then,’ we reply. A second marinero turns up in another boat, and with a RIB on either side to nudge us the right way, Leighton manoeuvres Makarma back into a snug berth alongside the pontoon.

We find ourselves between a black and white gin palace that you’ve probably seen in a Bond film and a sleek yacht with Raymarine satellite domes and monogrammed fender socks. Expensive boats line the pontoons and exclusive boutiques and glossy eateries line the shore.


We haven’t put a foot on land for three days. Better smarten up before we check in at the office. We head for the showers. They have Philippe Starck power showerheads and Dyson airblade hand dryers (brilliant for drying washed knickers we discover later).  When we’re all brushed up we head off to town to track down the Rumeli ice cream parlour which is reputed to make the best ice-cream in the north Aegean.

In a small museum inside Cesme's impressive Genoese fort we learn that the place took a bit of a battering when the Russian fleet on orders of Catherine the Great attacked Cesme harbour in 1771. Russian fireships destroyed the entire Ottoman fleet which was trapped inside. Good thing the harbour's changed a bit since then and in our secure berth inside we don't even have to worry about the weather.

View of the marina from the Genoese fort