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.
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.
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