Back to Guangzhou

Driving in from the airport I recognised nothing. It was only when we got close to the city centre that I recognised a few landmarks but even then not much. And I lived in this city for seven years and have been back twice since, the last time only two years ago. Of course this is China so how can I expect anything to be the same. The real impact was because they had built yet more high level fast roads through the city now adding long stretches of translucent materials alongside the roads going up three metres high or so to deflect the worst of the sound upwards.


Having given her the powdered baby milk (there has been a scandal about some of the local stuff so it is not trusted; the fools believe that the west would not sell rubbish stuff), Helen duly “handed me over” to Bill and we went for dinner at a nearby restaurant. The meal was a strong contender for the worst meal I have ever had in Guangzhou, the food capital of the world. We did not tarry long over this imitation meat meal (this is where vegetables are made to look and taste – allegedly – like meat) and proceeded to the BBR. The BBR for the ignorant is the bar by the river – my favourite bar in all the world. It is the location that makes it, right next to the Pearl river with views across it to the skyscrapers but it is the colours that create the greatest impression - oh and it is outdoors. There are coloured lights along the river bank, along the road, all over the buildings and on both the Haizhu and Jiangwan bridges on each side of the bar. They do seem to have abandoned the revolving searchlights pointing up into the night sky from the top of some buildings though. Maybe they are getting "green".


In the bar we chatted about the eighteen months since we had seen each other before being joined by Mao. Mao (not the deceased "Great Helmsman") is one of the owners of the bar who Bill now counts as a friend but whose English is not much better than my Chinese. This limitation, of course, means that the start of the “dice game” cannot be delayed long and it wasn't. This is a gambling game that takes anything from ten seconds to a minute for a game. To be successful you have to be a convincing liar. At the end of each game the loser, yes the loser, drinks – this game should have been invented by the Irish. The drink is not large – about 10 c.c.s of San Miguel - but if you lose ten games in ten minutes you have drunk a litre of beer. Bill started off with a losing streak and I was pretty well invincible for the first twenty minutes but the luck always changes and by midnight we were all quite cheerful, Mao resorted to getting his wife to play in his place as she was sober but, naturally, he had to drink when she lost. Bill and I are seasoned liars so, of course, she was losing a lot and Mao was drinking more.


All good things come to an end and Bill and I got a taxi home where I gave him the cheese and Christmas puddings and Bill introduced me to his wine rack which has a dozen bottles in it – these are to be demolished before I go and stay with Qin & Jennifer in four or five days time. So, in the aid of fighting jet-lag, we demolished a couple - after all I had only been up forty hours (I can't sleep on planes except when taking off or landing) and it was still Christmas night in my mind.


The Chinese conception of gardens is not the same as the Western idea. Whereas westerners think of flowers and grass and space, the Chinese think of views, water, shapes and variety. We went to a house built in the 1870s and it is very complicated – every time you turn a corner you find something new, every window that you look out of has a different aspect. You are wondering why I have jumped from garden to house; well the two are not so clear cut as in the west. This “house” has ponds, a waterfall, trees and a small temple as well as about twenty separate buildings. Bill is quite a fan of this particular place and explained a few things to me so I began to see why he liked it so much.


One of the buildings was a mini three-storeys-that-looks-like-four temple. The top layer of this edifice was dedicated to "The God of Wisdom" and contained a sign that Bill took a photo of but did not esteem it good enough.


I would have been glad if anybody could have made any sense of it. Don't get me wrong, I think that it is great that the Chinese go to some lengths to put up signs in English, I just wish that they would get a native speaker to read the words before they put they go to the trouble of printing them. And this is the aforementioned “God of Wisdom.” So in stead here is a photo of the God.

Another day we went to a park that is quite spectaclar in it's own way. The rock was dug out of the hillsides starting more than 2,000 years ago and has left a series of cliffs and lakes which have been turned into a very nice park. The cliff sides are quite steep so there are wooden handrails in many places and a few little wooden rest houes which are very welcome for some shade in the summer. Of course, they are not actually made of wood, concrete is far more durable in tropical conditions but the Chinese go to considerable effort to make the pieces of "wood" have a good variety of different shapes. In both places it was great to see lots of flowers in the middle of winter - and these were real flowers in these two cases, unlike in some other gardens I have been to.


Several nights in the BBR led to Mao finding different people to try and beat me - they all wanted to play the guailo (white ghost) who they should be able to beat at a Chinese game. The first candidate was rather a pretty girl who had to be taken away by her brother because she got so drunk losing. His next attempt was three middle aged women in succession one night. I saw off the first two and it was about a draw with the last. I demanded a rest so they started on Bill. By the time we fought our way out we calculated that we had drunk a lot less than half the beer we had bought. Haven't been back for more than ten days.


For me Guangzhou is a rest. I do a few things - go shopping, visit the odd site, go bowling, go to the BBR (although no foot massages on this trip), eat out but it wasn't long before I was back into the swing and doing what I do a lot of when I lived in Guangzhou - reading.


After a few days staying with Bill and Tina I moved to stay with Qin and Jennifer - more good friends who have always helped me a lot in China. I must have been on holiday with these two about half a dozen times. By this time I was relaxed enough and went to see the people from the university where I used to teach. They are very keen on having me back and I am certainly considering it. There are two dificulties. Officially I am too old to be hired as a "foreign expert" but they think that they can get over that. The other issue may be more difficult. China's big cities have a policy of moving the universities out of the city so the main campus of my old university (and most of the other nine univerities in the city) is now outside of the city on an island in the Pearl river. There are a hundred thousand students on the island but the air is clean, there is little traffic, it is quiet, has few distractions for the students i.e. horrible. I took two trips round the island looking for a fish market, half  decent restaurants or, so help me, a bar, a bowling alley or a cinema. The campus is so big that you need a bike to get round it unless you allow a twenty minute walk from your flat to the classroom. And five hundred bikes a month get stolen at the university. (They have 35,000 students on the campus there - it is the largest campus on the island.)


Where I used to live when I was in GZ before there were twenty or thirty decent restauarants within three hundred metres, it was a five minute bus ride to the main shopping area, I could walk to many places of interest and it was less than two quid for a  taxi to and, more importantly, from the BBR. Even with a subsidy from the university renting a two bedroom flat in town will take a quarter of my salary if I return.


There are many advantages of returning.

1. I like the country, the people and the politics. Britain is a knackered old society only concerned with petty issues and is in long term decline.
2. I had a very easy lifestyle. Teaching 8 x 90 minute periods a week is not hard especially when the lessons are to different classes so there is basically one lot of preparation a week. Effectively a working week of 25 hours.
3. I can save money. Renting out my room here would pay my share of the mortgage. I can live quite comfortably on the pay from the university. I can easily double that with another ten or twelve hours a week testing English or teaching accountancy.
4. I only work eight months of the year. The Chinese accademic year is two four month terms with two months between so I can do lots of travelling.
5. I like teaching English. It is more varied and more testing than teaching Business Analysis.


There are a couple of downsides. Mainly because my friends are too lazy to get off their big fat arses and come and visit me in China where they have the best tour guide that they could possibly hope for. And San Miguel is OK when it is hot but not real beer


The Chinese attitude to western culture is quite interesting. There is a new Opera House in Guangzhou. This is rather odd looking, ugly even, from the outside but works wonderfully inside with great accoustics and seating for lots of people. We went on New Years Day to see an orchestra from Prague playing Czech music most of which I didn't know. During the first half we were sat at the back and I was constantly irritated by people looking at their phones. (Their were regular signs, as soon as a phone went off, telling people to turn them off and spotters with pointer lights highlighting people playing with their phones but, even more than in the West, the phone is the most important thing in anybody's life.) We swapped seats with some friends and sat near the front in the second half which was much more enjoyable. The only real oddity - there was lots of kids in the expensive seats near the front nodding off or having to be carried out when they cried - the rich Chinese think their kids should get culture whether they like it or not. Ten years and a day earlier we had been in the Sun-Yat-Sen Memorial Hall listening to a western orchestra ( we were right at the back and a seat cost 8% of a month's salary) and at the end they played popular classics to which the audience clapped in time. This time the only restraint on the audience were polite requests on the electronic notice boards asking them not to cheer between movements.


I bought two paintings for a thousand quid each!

Now there's a shock. It is difficult to think of a man less interested in fine art than me, don't you think. One of my friends in GZ is an artist. She does lacquer paintings. This involves many layers of lacquer, sanding down and the like. It also involves using interesting materials - for instance Virginia uses eggshells quite a lot to define edges. I have alwasy liked her work and we went to see some of her new stuff. We got to the gallery and it was closed - day off. So the staff gave us some tea whilst somebody opened up the very very large gallery for the three of us - Virginia, me and Maurice (Virginia's hubby). We had  a wander round and looked at a few other artists and some quite interesting sculptures but it was Virginia's stuff I wanted to see. Her new stuff is smaller than the grand things I am used to and she is doing a series of fifty women faces by nationality. Interestingly, she told me that they sell the paintings by the square foot. At current excahnge rates it is £700 per square foot to the gallery and £1,000 to the punter. They weren't expecting me to buy any and Maurice tried to persuade me out of it but I have always liked Virginia's paintings (and I could not afford the big jobbies she used to paint - and still does) so I got two at gallery rate. The plan is to get some mug (Anna) to punt them round a few London galleries for a poultry commission. If they sell, I will become an art dealer; if they don't I have two lovely paintings to hang on my wall. The women are French and Japanese - I thought I should be considered a connosier when Virginis said that the French one was her favourite - but the artist would wouldn't they!


And so to the Philipinnes.

Bill had been keen on taking a trip outside China. He is a well travelled man but independent travel outside China for Chinese citizens was pretty well impossible ten years ago so he is very knowledgeable about China but, hardly surprisingly, not so au fait with the rest of the world.


He was in Europe in 2011 and we travelled round a bit. I have two lovely memories. he looked at these lumps of scaffolding poles in the road and said "What is this?" He had never seen a cattle grid before. Upon seeing a big field of wheat in Belguim his reaction was "Microsft screensaver". This is quite a good indicator of how he must have felt when I first met him in 2001 asking stupid questions about China.


The original thought was to go to Myanmar. However, it was impossible for Bill to get through the bureacracy in time (and I don't know about me either) so we settled on the Philipinnes. Even for this it wasn't easy. Bill applied for a visa on December 24th but didn't get it until January 5th. The most likely explanation is that the new Chinese passport has, very conspicously, on the cover all the islands it lays claim to in the South China Sea. This is pretty well all of them right up to the coast of the Philipinnes. Surprisingly, some of their neighbours don't like it.


The third member of our party, William, is a Canadian national so, despite the fact that his English is much worse than Bill's (William originates from GZ), he didn't need a visa, just like me.


William had planned the trip but, due to my interference, we were committed to staying in this place for three days.


Things began, how shall I say, smoothly. A 1.50 a.m. flight out of Hong Kong, a 6.30. am two hour boat ride to Bohol and three million people hassling us to get in a taxi or on a tuk-tuk. This was in English (the national language is Togalog but if you want to hassle the tourists it had better be in English). As we wondered out of the port looking for a cup of coffee the most persistent hassler was disposed of by the reassurance of a grumpy old Englishman that whatever taxi we took it wouldn't be his.


The "city" was a complete and utter dump i.e. imteresting. In really poor countries I am always surprised by the things that people think somebody wants to buy. This particular city's speciality is transport. Practically every vehicle on the road is a tuk-tuk for hire. Philipinno tuk-tuks are a bit different; they haven't grasped the idea of taking the back wheel off the motor bike and substituting an axle like on tuk-tuks in most parts of the world. Tuk-tuks are just motor-bikes and sidecars with a roof, The bike engine is 150 ccs so a driver and three passengers, all around the ninety kilo mark, makes for slow rides. The one sat behind the driver has to ride side saddle with his head tucked down under the roof - Bill was the poor sap who got the hour long ride to our destination.


We were on Pangloa and heading for a white beach. Well actually I had booked us into a place four kilometres from the beach so there was a lot of tuk-tuking. The beach is white but it is not very long or wide with shops and restaurants lining it - hmm! The place I had booked was nice though, unlike the weather. It didn't rain all day but it rained quite often particularly in the middle of the day so an hour by the pool after breakfast was inevitably followed by some activity.


We tried to go for a walk in the "Chocolate Hills", so called because of their colour. None of us had eaten green chocolate. Walking wasn't up to mush so we tried lunch on a boat. This was supposed to be a beautiful valley. Well it wasn't ugly but I have certainly been to many more interesting valleys. However, the locals had got it sorted. A boat would leave about every five minutes, the food (OK but the Philippines ain't a place to go for culinary delights) was a buffet, there was a trio of singers and the boat stopped once, timed after you had eaten, so you could get off and watch some local dancers. We arrived just as the previous boat left, stayed five minutes and were immediately replaced by the next boat - the dancers must do the same routine at least fifty times a day. All nicely timed so we were back in exactly an hour. We went to a tazier sanctuary. The tazier is the world's smallest primate - only about 20 centimters long with rather a longer tail. It is nocturnal so sits still in the day which allows the tourists to get within twenty centimetres of them and stare - they just stare back. Lovely creatures - their main predators are domestic cats.


One day we went to another island to snorkel. This was a forty-five minute boat ride and we did over two hours continuous snorkelling - you could stand up - the longest I have ever done in one stretch and the rain doesn't affect you. You can probably guess there were lots of fish to see - there were of many varities and colours but there are strong currents off the reef and we were discouraged from venturing out so couldn't see all the good coral properly. We had barbecued lunch on the beach - nearly all food seems to be barbecued - but there was good reason here, the island generator isn't turned on until the evening. As our host said "after lunch souveniers". All the women who were hanging round the camp - about eight of them - descended on us pushing their individual souvenirs. Bill didn't buy anything and William started haggling for everything he was offered. I picked a couple of shells that I liked (mine host had commented that I hadn't asked for discount) and asked for discount. Mine host's response was to add a trinket, when I protested that William had got discount he added another! It was a very entertaining half an hour.


The two real highlights of the trip were both about light and colour.


We went night kayaking (which I have never done before) to see fireflies - lots and lots of fireflies. I have seen them on Attenborough and a small display in Malaysia but these were fantastic. There were seven or eight separate mangrove trees each with two hundred (I guess) flies around them, winking away apparently in waves. It is a lovely site made all the more pleasant by doing it in an evironmentally friendly quiet way. Of course, an illegal fast boat came up at the end with (by the sound) about half a dozen noisy tourists on board.


It was so dark (no stars of course) that you couldn't see anything and we managed to lose the light on the back of the guide's boat. Wiliam (who was in the front of the canoe) was utterly useless at paddling - gently twirling his hands and just skimming the water - so I had to put my back into it. I was slightly relieved when I spotted the red flashing light.


The weather improved so we went back to the snorkelling island to do something I have never done before - diving. I was quite nervous, Bill and William had both done introductory dives before although both some years ago. You basically get carted round by your instructor, all you have to do is regulate the pressure by squuezing your nose and blowing. You have to do this surprisingly often - every foot or two you go down. Other than that you just look at the fish and the coral which were fantastic. Bill was struggling a bit but I turned out to be something of a natural. I am definitely going to get PADIed - somewhere warm - so I can do some proper diving.


The lowlight was the journey back to Guangzhou. We flew out of Cebu and getting a taxi to the airport there wasn't straight forward so we spread out to try and flag one down and somebody opened Bill's rucksack and took his Kindle; apparently William saw it but didn't shout and run across the road. I had put Bill on my Kindle account so he can get books in English but within five minutes of it getting knicked Tina, Bill's wife, had cancelled the subscription from GZ - Chinese and Technology, what a combination. When we got to Hong Kong we could only get a taxi to the border, we hadn't got enough Hong Kong dollars so the taxi-driver allowed us to pay in RMB - the same number. The RMB is 20% stronger than the Hong Kong dollar. We got over the border and couldn't get a taxi to GZ. It was gone 2.00 a.m. by this time but that doesn't matter in China. The local Shenzhen taxi driver took us to two places where GZ taxis go from - nothing. We waited at the second stop for half an hour before a GZ taxi did turn up so we got back to Bill's at 4.30 a.m. Tina wasn't best pleased to get a call from Bill because we hadn't got the right door keys!

The Lycian Way with Liz


One friend upon hearing that I planned this venture in the company planned said that I was a saint. This is not something that I am often accused of.


The Lycian Way is a fairly new long distance walk of five hundred kilometres in, surprisingly, Lycia. Lycia is a mountainous chunk of south-eastern Turkey and the Lycian Way winds its way around the coast sometimes venturing ten or fifteen kilometres inland. We are doing a stretch of about a hundred kilometres in the area south-west of Antalya – which some of you may know from package holidays to this part of the world.


It was, as ever, planned in great detail. I booked (and paid for) the flights a couple of weeks before we were due to depart and Liz was supposed to get something organised about accommodation. Five days before the flight Liz was still dithering so I booked (and paid for) a self guided package where your heavy bags get moved. Who said that I was a wimp and a hypocrite because I have always derided these easy options? I even bought Liz's train ticket to Gatwick. Liz is of the opinion that having the idea is as much work as all the organising. You are perhaps beginning to see why canonization should be a certainty within twenty years of my death.


The only real hiccough on the way out was that I had packed my blood pressure pills in my sponge bag and, naturally, then forgot the sponge bag. Liz is medical and knew that Gatwick has a good pharmacy and a medical centre. The pharmacist believed me – apparently I was the fifth such idiot that morning – made a phone call to my doctor and, in exchange for twenty-two quid, gave me two weeks supply of the necessary. I am an old enough fart not to have to pay anything for medicine normally but was quite relieved to cough up on this occasion.


Picked up at the airport and wisked to our first hotel two hours and 1,300 metres away – 1,300 metres higher that was. The pool was a bit cool, sauna was extra, wine was damn good and only €15 a bottle and the food was fine. I didn't exactly hammer Liz at Pool.


Up  with the lark (i.e. 5.30 UK time) after an appalling night's sleep, breakfast and off we went after admiring a splendid all round view and noticing lots of birdies. The route for the day was essentially downhill but the real highlight was on the only real climb of the day - and that was a mere two hundred metres. Half way up we stopped where our rather poor (but well marked) path crossed a track. I noticed these fairly large looking flies (about 1.5 cms long) that could hover and fly backwards. Flies can hover (hence hoverflies) but these were darting backwards and forwards apparently getting nectar from this one particular bush two metres from us. The longer I looked the more they didn't look like flies; they were tiny but they looked like they had single eyes on the side of their heads (not compound eyes on the front corners) and then I noticed a tiny fan shaped tail that looked brown. I had convinced myself that they were  humming birds. I know that there are some humming birds in Latin America that weigh only a few grammes but these midgets in Europe? Obviously when I get a wifi connection I will look them up but, if they are flies, they was enchanting to watch their movements and who has ever said that about a fly!


The walking was very peaceful for most of the morning; we barely heard a car and no airplanes. But we also saw no domesticated animals and the “fields” - of which there are very few - showed no sign of agricultural cultivation. The only plant we liked was a pinkish anenome type thing – you know, you will buy them at Christmas because they stick up and look colourful.


There were two options for the day; the longer one involved scrambling, and Liz wasn't keen, so we took the shorter one and finished on time! We then opted for a road walk to the other destination – a rather unimpressive Roman bridge so Liz had walked for six hours and done about eighteen kilometres. That is actually a reasonable speed for oldies after you have allowed for all the rest breaks, photography breaks, general farting about breaks and navigational cock-ups – only one of the latter today which cost us only ten minutes.


We got picked up and taken the eight kms to our hotel – yes old farts don't finish the last boring bits of walks but get picked up.


This hotel claimed to be an international horse riding centre but think “dude ranch” - it is called Bive Ranch. There was a “jail”, “sherriff's office”, “general store” and all that type of shit. There was, however, a decent size swimming pool – cold obviously – I lasted at least five seconds. Food was poor; the weren't expecting a non-carnivore, despite my booking, and only produced a few beans and peppers as my main course but this was better than Liz's compressed dodgy meat (or was it dog meat?) Booze was ridiculously expensive so we settled for the odd Raki. Liz had had the sense to complain about a few deficiencies in our room – including non-working outside lights. One of these got fixed so I could read until one a.m. without disturbing Liz. Liz later complained that I barely snored all night so she didn't know whether I was alive or dead! Not surprising that she didn't notice such things when I can open the outside door, stagger through the room, open another door to the balcony, pick up a chair and go back through the room repeating the opening and closing routines, read for two hours, open the door to get in and doze off in my pit without Liz noticing any of it.


A five hour walk is scheduled for today. Basically a three hundred metre climb and then a gentle amble via an old Roman city to “Sundance” - a “seventies throwback”. What could be difficult?


Well, to start with the flies at breakfast. Yesterday had, apart from our possible humming birds, a few dragon flies and butterflies, not been dominated by the curse of the walking classes in the Meditteranean – fucking flies. Now at breakfast they were back – not in vast numbers it is true – but back they were. Why? Flies love shit and, of course, what are horses good at?


Second my navigation. There is only one serious climb of the day, a three hundred metre job after a half hour walk in from the ranch so good to get it over in the morning. This was pretty straightforward with not too much to notice, apart from the apparently parasitic trees. Now I have seen strangler figs and they are pretty horrible if you have any feelings toward plant life and what may happen to it. This lovely creature actually looked worse. Inside there appears to be a completely dead tree. Outside there is pink bark covering most of the tree branches with just dead stubs sticking out. Twigs and leaves are growing upwards in the pink shade of the parasite with no sign of the original plant apart from the odd dead branch. Pretty but horrible, like the strangler fig. Could I have jumped to the wrong conclusion two days in a row? Yes, my humming bird theory was complete bollocks - there are none in the "Old World"


O yes, my navigation. We got to some branch on the ridge and a red arrow pointed left up this crappy little path; Liz, who was leading, went up it based upon the fact that it had a red arrow on it. Now we had seen a few red arrows before but the Lycian Way, like all the big walking routes in Europe (forget the self-centred English), is marked by parallel red and white lines so I ignored the arrow and went on the main route. We both waited and retraced our steps, as you are supposed to do TIM BROWN and met up. I was navigating so we pursued my route for ten minutes then retraced our steps and pursued Liz's – her faith in the red arrows was correct. I subsequently disentangled the wording in the guide sheet to make her route plausible: but obviously only plausible, the great navigator never gets it wrong.


The rest was apparently easy – gentle down hill with lots of butterflies and dragonflies. In fact the dragonflies were excellent; one just calmly sat on a twig waiting for me to look at it a range of one metre – how often do you get that? Apparently, quite often in Turkey. We saw loads later, of two different species in similar poses, who just sat on twigs whilst I looked at them; one green, one red - dragonflies not twigs - and, I hope, Liz has managed to take a half decent photo of the red one.

We then encountered a short rise of twenty metres. “You told me that we had finished climbing for the day” came the cry from behind me. It happened again later in the day in similar circumstances.  Liz does not look at the map or read the guidance notes; I had told her that there was one climb of three hundred metres for the day and that was it; apparently a twenty metre uplift in the Hart vocabulary is a “climb”. You just have to recognise that it is my fault if anything goes wrong. Can you see why a medal is not enough and I expect beatification before I die?


We went through an old Roman city which was quite impressive with THREE harbours - one on either side of a peninsula with an inner harbour on the north side. There was a theatre there and Liz went up to the back. I had a T-shirt on that said "Two beer or Not two beer, that is the question." So I couldn't resist going down and declaiming that and adding "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer he slings and arrows of outrageous sobriety or to take beer against a sea of troubles and by supping end them. " Actually I made the last bit up; I only thought of it afterwards but I did do the "two beer or not two beer" bit. As some of you will know, you don't have to shout to communicate comfortably in a Roman theatre - this was new to Liz and she was impressed.


I am always fascinated by fucking butterflies. Yes, I do mean butterflies copulating – how often have you watched them? Even the greatest living Englishman has not, as far as I am aware, had a programme on butterfly couplings. I seem to remember his chatting over the three generations of the movements of the Monarch butterfly from Mexico to Southern Canada and back but fucking butterflies? My experience, especially practical, in this area is limited but one of the great sites I saw in (whatever the word is for the study of butterflies - lepidoptary?) was two mega-butterflies at Tikal in Guatamala. They were fantastic; wing span of fifteen centimetres; wings black with irridescent turquoise patches on them slamming their wings into each other. There was no apparent difference in shape, size or colour. Fighting or Fucking?


OK enough language for effect. I am a bit of an unobservant sort of chap but always like to look at this stuff and wonder at nature. I am walking along and see a butterfly in the path flapping its wings. Normally a butterfly has enough sense to go forth and multiply when a great clodhopper like myself rattles the path but this one wasn't moving. I stopped and noticed another similar looking butterfly facing it – facing it? Why should butterflies face each other? Liz, who has better eyesight than me, came up and confirmed this idea. The one I first noticed had a wingspan of about 5 cms, was basically grey in colour with white bits on both the topside and underside of the wing and the one facing it was similar. The one I had first noticed was opening his wings regularly. This, sometimes, meant that the other one opened its wings and leant forward for a second or, possibly, even two. They jumped up and down a bit (i.e a metre in the air) and came back together a few times and then split up after five minutes – not enough time for Liz to get out her long lense and do the business. However, two hundred metres up the path we came across a similar pair. This time I could see that the one doing the flapping had a stronger white colour on the top of its wings and a white spot towards the front and, as I had noticed, was more active - so must be a male desperate for a little light relief. Liz has probably taken a decent photos – we will see. My eventual conclusion was based on watching a few nature programmes – many insects shag (oops a relapse) by touching parts of their abdomen together just momentarily: just like humans but insects have a very high foreplay to action ratio in comparison with any man, let alone an Aussie. (Australian foreplay "Want a fuck Sheila?") How can momentary contact be fun? However, if my guess is correct and they both leant forward enough for the tips of their abdomens to touch - job done, she goes off and lays x eggs (x being some ridiculously large number), he does what men do – tries his luck elsewhere – before they both die in two or three days.


After that was a complete bollocks – drifting along a great path at close to zero miles an hour, taking the wrong route and squabbling about the right way to go – naturally I was correct, it wasn't my mistake that I had got it wrong in the first place when navigating.


Dad is lying on my foot. He is looking at Mum – a golden retreiver type trying to take six seven week old pups for a walk. They, the pups, just came over and jumped on Dad and me but rapidly lost interest.


One pup is getting mums attention, three are ripping up some turquoise fabrics and two have wondered off on their own. Dad does a quick tour and returns to sit on my foot having  clearly decided that he can keep an eye on things whilst getting some fuss. Somebody whistles; Mum and the pups rush off to the man with a bowl; Dad prefers to stay for his fuss. By the way dad looks like the type of creature that all domestic dogs come from – a wolf; rather a nice wolf.


I thought that was the end of the story until Dad rushed off to a car that was leaving. Mum barked at the side of the car but Dad ran off and got in front of it. They both ran round the car barking when it stopped but every time that the car moved forward Dad jumped in front of it. Of course, somebody eventually got hold of Dad and the car drove off. How many pups are still here remains to be seen. Twenty minutes later Dad has returned to smell the turquoise fabric and stare mournfully off off in the direction that the car went.


A full count later revealed all pups present and correct. Doing well with this naturalist observant stuff, aren't I?


We were staying at the aforementioned Sundance - in a way that tells it all - it is a hippie sort of place.  Very relaxed - get your own beer, food was ready when it was ready, games to play, wifi etc. I liked it the best of all the places we stayed.


Obviously it was beneath our dignity to walk to the start of the walk on the next day - a lift for about six or seven kilometres was actually very helpful - by the end of the day Liz was completely knackered and the bonus kilometres would have been at about 1 or 2 kph had we done them. However, it was a magnificent walk - all along the coast with lots of lovely bays, crystal clear water and headlands. But, those of you that have done some coastal walking know that means lots of climbing - about 800 metres that day. As I gently moved ahead this gave Liz plenty of opportunity to cry "Don't leave me behind". As some of you know I am a completely inexperienced mountain walker of very limited intelligence who is famous for leaving people on mountains so I obviously need reminding of this requirement on a regular basis. We even had a bit of slightly exposed path in the afternoon to liven things up a bit. Coaxing Liz along there was a slow process.


I detest walking slowly at the end of the day so had left Liz behind on the road as we apprpached the village for our night's stay but I stopped at the first shop to get us two refreshing drinks - iced tea for Liz and Fanta for me. I had finished my Fanta by the time Liz arrived and she didn't complain when I went ahead another 300 metres to get a real reviver. Yes, I had ascertained that beer was only 300 metres away from the first shop (where none was available) but had not skipped the first shop - What a gentleman!


Best dinner of the whole trip that evening.


We had done three days easy walking so what did we have next - a rest day. Liz went shopping, I read. We both went to the beach, I lasted about five minutes in the water and fifteen sunbathing - back to reading and leave Liz to it with her knitting - yes Liz takes her knitting everywhere on holiday. We did, however, do one interesting thing. In the evening we walked up to Cheronos (I am sure that I have spelt this wrong). This is where natural gas comes out of the ground and bursts into flames. There are about twenty of these spots in an area of two or three hundred square metres and plenty of evidence where there have been others. Quite impressive. We timed it right so we were leaving just as it got dark so that we could see the flames from the beach in the village three kilometres away. (We could also see some higher up which I had gone searching for and failed to find.) These were, of course, natural "lighthouses" and were used as navigation assistants from four or five thousand years ago until the days of the GPS.


We had done such a thorough exploration of the village in our thirty-six hour stay that we had managed to miss all the nice restaurants on the beach south of the village that we walked past to another old Roman town when we left in the morning. Not too well restored (the Roman town, not the restaurants or us) so there was chance to poke around and make a mess of the navigation. Having done both of those it was a long steady climb and, for the first time, we met people going our way - five in all, none of them men. The climb itself was not very interesting because we were in thick woodland most of the way. It did leave plenty of opportunity for cries of "Don't leave me behind" and, the other favourite "Watch what I am doing". Personally I find walking backwards up rough paths rather difficult so I was not  following orders on the latter one. It got interesting near the top where a forest fire and, independently, a decent storm had thinned the forest and opened some lovely views back to the sea. On the top of the hill (about eight hundred metres) was another Roman town - this one quite large and not even properly surveyed. One look at Liz's face persuaded me that it would not be a good idea to suggest delaying  for an hour or two whilst I did a bit of digging around in the bushes.


Over the top of the rise and we were in clear grassland and we could see two young Dutch women who had overtaken us a couple of hours earlier turning right when they should have turned left. It was too far to shout and, besides they might have been doing a circular route heading back to the lower Roman town. In fact, when we saw them later, they confirmed that they had done a TIM BROWN and marched off the wrong side of the hill, heading north not south, and only realised their error once they got back to the Roman town by the sea. I had a lot of difficulty not laughing continuously when I heard the story - clearly they had no idea that if the sun is behind you in the northern hemisphere (it was yet another beautiful sunny day) you are not heading north.


The view from the top contained rather a lot of greenhouses for delight. The walk off was pleasant though, lots of babbling brooks. There was the one serious error in the notes from the travel company that wanted us to turn right when left was appropriate to avoid a precipitous drop. On this occasion my navigational skills were equal to the test. The stroll was enlivened by pomegranite juice sellers on the way off - very tasty it was too. I should clarify here that "it" refers to the pomegranite juice; I have not yet become a cannibal, at least that I have noticed.


The hotel was the dottiest that we stayed in. It was at the beginning of a town that was spread along two kilometres of shingle beach which had seven gin palace tour boats for going round the coast (and about a dozen that had already been taken out of the water at the end of the season). Gin palace is probably the wrong term. They could easily hold fifty people on these things that were made to look like proper old fashioned sailing ships (we had seen some at sea three days earlier). Obviously no sail had been hoisted for twenty years - if ever. Nice bay at sunset though.


Anyway, the hotel. It was run by a young couple who lived on the premises along with a stray cat that had moved in and her - the cat's - three five week old kittens. They got everywhere - even trying to keep them out of the room was hard work, let alone keep them where they were supposed to be. I suspect that they were the main reason that dinner took forever to prepare. It was worth the wait and the location wasn't bad - in the middle of a stream with ducks to feed and fish to watch. Breakfast was agreed for seven and when nobody had turned up by 7.30 we climbed over a few things  and helped ourselves. The man eventually appeared at 8!


The reason for the early start was a scheduled 7 1/2 hour walk with a pick up time of 4.30. Apart from the first day we had been at least an hour and a half over schedule so definitely an early start and if, by some miracle, we got there early we could have a swim. Thunderstorms were forecast and I looked at the route and there was a scree slope after 4 hours i.e. too late to turn back. Liz just assumes that I can get her over any difficulty (and I have managed a few in various places) but I don't like steep dusty scree myself and told Liz that I couldn't garuntee to help her. The upshot was that Liz decided not to go. My persuading her was nothing to do with being fed up of doing very slow walks, enjoying the prospect of no  "Don't leave me behind"s etc. and wanting to get a decent leg stretch - no, perish the thought.


Liz enjoyed her day knitting, shopping and chatting. I had a lovely walk at a decent speed (I beat the clock by an hour and a half - enough to get a couple of well deserved beers in before pick-up). Actually it was a good job that Liz didn' come with me; the scree slope was not steep and big bolders, in fact I don't know why they bothered mentioning it in the notes, but there had been a few rockfalls that you needed to find a way through and towards the end it got very rocky and steep in parts. Liz would not have enjoyed it and would have taken forever so I didn't feel guilty about my use of my powers of persuasion. She did miss out on some good cliff type views though and the nutty runners who overtook me. The runners were doing a marathon; they weren't that good though - I could still hear them an hour after they had passed me so they would be looking at times of eight to ten hours - if they finished.


When I got back to the hotel to meet Liz her lunch had been free and so was my reviving beer. We will be quite satisfied to have a late breakfast again.


A damp evening in Antalya after a two and a half hour drive was made worse by Liz's insistent use of a guide book to find a restaurant. I had walked all day on an egg, a banana and an orange. For an hour and a half we wondered round looking for restaurants that had to be in Lonely Fucking Planet and, this being Liz, CHEAP - because dinner that night wasn't included in the package deal. In the end I just looked at a restaurant and said "we are going here". Dinner was a quiet affair.


A desultory day in Antalya and an evening flight home.


It seems unfair to say lots of uncharitable things about Liz and few nice things but nice ain't funny, I ain't charitable and it is my blog.


"On foot holidays" were good and I recommend them if you want to do that sort of lazy walking. They have quite a few walks in places round Europe.