Farewell to the Dodecanese

Having spent rather longer than we would have wished in Palon, Nisyros Island the wind finally changed in direction and moderated to give us a cracking sail to Kos where we prepared for the arrival of Jane and John, Miggy's sister and brother in law. Bella was in her element and doing what she enjoys most; sailing in 15 to 20 knots of wind on a beam reach.

Onward then to Turkish Gumusluk, a protected anchorage on the north west tip the Bodrum peninsula. The anchorage is pretty but quite deep (we had 45m of chain down) and the village stands on the site of Myndos built in 350BC the remains of some of which are sunken beneath the waters of the bay, the former ancient harbour.

A tour of Gulluk Korfezi, the area in which we were to cruise with Jane and John, did nothing to endear us to the place; in fact quite the opposite. We had entered holiday home hell, the hillsides surrounding the gulf being crammed with white box like buildings more akin to painted barrack blocks. There is hardly a bit of maquis or rock and certainly not a tree to be seen between these endless unimaginative developments. It is Planning gone horribly wrong; an utter nightmare. The mountainous terrain and sparkling blue waters of the Turkey that we love has disappeared. Even the people, mostly fishermen who tend the many fish farms in these waters are not the friendly Turks that we have come to know. In Asin and Gulluk harbours local boats were taking up all the space on the long quay with splayed bowlines and there was no sign of any help in finding us a place to berth in the spaces that did exist between boats. This is clearly not yachtsman territory; we may be tolerated but we are not welcome!

A rather disappointing day was made a little more exciting when we were lashed with torrential rain; violent thunderstorms too close for comfort and squalls of 40 knots of wind.  Legends of boys swimming with dolphins originated at 5^th century AD Iassos, now Asin, and we did see three dolphins during our 45 miles at sea.

Our itinerary for Jane and John's visit naturally changed to go firstly to Gumusluk for a taste of real Turkey and then to the Greek islands of Leros, Lipsi and Agathonisi and finally to Didim Marina, Turkey where would hire a car to visit Ephesus.  

Lakki town on the island of Leros has a strange feel of former times with art deco buildings dominating the skyline; in fact a fascist dream town built during the Italian occupation to represent Mussolini's vision of a new Roman Empire. The civic buildings, constructed in the mid 1930's, include a saucer shaped market, a cylindrical town hall and fascist centre and a vast hotel, cinema and theatre complex. Mussolini's summer residence still stands within the Italian naval dockyard.

The Island was occupied by the Knights of St John from 1309, by the Turks from 1522 to 1831, by the Italians in 1912 and by the Germans from 1943 until Allied liberation. A simple memorial stands on the harbour side as a poignant reminder of the sinking of HMS Intrepid during the Allied assault and the lives of the seamen lost.  Leros was reunited with Greece in 1948 and when the Junta took power in 1967 they exiled political prisoners to the prison camps on the island. With its association in antiquity with Artemis, Leros, an island with rolling green hills and fertile valleys is known today, more encouragingly, for its strong tradition of music, dance and poetry.

The island of Lipsi, one of many islands claiming to be where Calypso enchanted Odysseus, is enthralling with its plethora of blue domed chapels and gaily painted houses typifying Greek island life. The waters of the bays at Lera Lipsi were crystal clear and turquoise over the sandy bottom; a swimmer's paradise.

The hamlet of Ay Yeoryiou on the tiny island of Agathonisi, the northernmost outpost of the Dodecanese archipelago, was enchanting a Greek warship took up all the space on the quay making the limited anchorage quite crowded.

Back now in Turkey the Marina at Didim is huge and only about 10% occupied. Being only a year or two old it appears pristine with modern services and an excess of extremely helpful friendly staff both in the office and on the pontoons. The Marineros are superb and attend in ribs from the marina entrance. They would leap on board and park the boat for you if requested or given the slightest opportunity. The laundry is collected from and delivered to the yacht beautifully clean, ironed and folded and the acres of yard are surrounded with chandlers, engineering shops and sail makers.  There is a Carrefour Express supermarket on site and a 5 star Yacht Club the facilities of which are open to bertholders including the magnificent infinity pool.  Despite its grandeur the Marina is somewhat soulless being out of the joint towns of Altinkum and Didim, resorts of the worst kind with all the baggage that goes with such places.

Ephesus, as one of the greatest ancient sites in the western world is, of course, very popular with tourists as we discovered to our chagrin. Unlike our visits to other ancient ruins made in virtual solitude, on this oppressively hot and humid day we were four amongst a hoard of many thousands disgorged from three cruise ships berthed at nearby port of Kusadasi.

The effort of trying to avoid the marching masses was, nevertheless, worthwhile and the well preserved remains of this city are remarkable. Ephesus was first inhabited around 2000BC and, although the city we see today was founded by the successor to Alexander the Great, Lysimachus, during the 4^th century BC most of the extant structures date form the Roman period when Ephesus became the principal port of the Aegean.  

Of those surviving buildings the early 2^nd century AD Celsus Library with its fine colonnaded facade with statues of ladies representing wisdom, virtue, intellect and knowledge stands out supreme. Construction of the colossal 25,000 seat Great Theatre was begun in Hellenistic times and extended first by Nero in the 1^st century AD and then by Septimus Severus at the end of the 2^nd century AD. Wide colonnaded marble streets connect these magnificent remains as well as the Harbour, Stadium, the Temple of Hadrian, State Agora and Palace of the Council, the Odeon and many other notable buildings and monuments. Perhaps the most entertaining of the ruins is that of the brothel and the Latrina or public toilets.

Both St Paul and St John the Evangelist lived in Ephesus. The former spent five or six years trying to preach in the city but was banished after conflict with the locals about the God of Christians and all the pagan gods.

St John spent the last years of his century long life in Ephesus, probably between 39AD and 48AD, during which he is said to have written the fourth Book of the New Testament. He died here and was buried at the foot of Ayasuluk Hill where by the 10^th century AD Lysimachus's city of Ephesus was finally resettled because of an unhealthy climate at the original site and of its economic decline due to the silting up of the direct access to the sea.

On the Cross Jesus said to John ''She is your mother, John'' and to Mary ''This is your son, mother''. Thereupon John undertook his responsibility to the end and on his leaving Jerusalem for Ephesus took Mary with him. She spent her final years of 30AD to 35AD in peace and died in a modest house just 8km from Ephesus on Panaya-Kapulu hill. The Virgin Mary's House is a shrine revered by both Christians and Muslims alike. There is certainly an aura of sacristy and serenity within the House and at the Fountain of St Mary nearby where the healing waters once sipped by Mary are, even today, claimed to perform miracles. Our visit to the House was made more moving as we witnessed the Blessing at the end of a small service held in a tiny open air chapel nearby delivered by a visiting young Polish monk.

Between our visit to Ephesus and that to Virgin Mary's House we took a simple typically Turkish lunch in the shade at a Lokanta in the nearby town of Selcuk and on the way back to Didim we visited the ancient city of Priene. Construction of the 4^th century BC Temple of Athena was supervised and financed by Alexander the Great. The Romans did not inhabit the city because of its strong Greek ties and its importance declined until it was abandoned in Byzantine times. This neglect has resulted in the city and its monuments being one of the best preserved Hellenistic settlements to be seen.

Having taken Jane and John to the airport after a relaxed and pleasurable week of good company we consoled ourselves with a gozleme; thin filo pastry with a filling of strong goat's cheese; and a beer overlooking the beautiful Lake Bafa. Considered one of the most picturesque landscapes in Turkey with the peaks of 1500m high Mount Latmos as a backdrop Lake Bafa was an arm of the Aegean Sea until silt eventually closed the Gulf.

We departed Didim to explore the remainder of the Dodecanese islands with the first call being at the small island of Arki. Port Augusta, the main and only settlement on the island is a tiny fishing hamlet with two Tavernas on the quay. At first glance this is what it appears to be but on closer inspection it is a fake. This is a summer place only for chic Athenians to visit their posh villas. We were thus not that enamoured with the place, pretty as it looks on the face of it.

Thence to Patmos and what a difference a day makes. Patmos is a delightful island with scraggy hills and fertile valleys. Although a popular tourist resort and place of pilgrimage, the island maintains its Greek character and the people are friendly and outgoing. The popular harbour is well protected from the prevailing summer northerly winds and at just €3.75 a night is good value although there are no facilities except an agreeable little town where all yachtsmen's needs can be satisfied.

As the 'Jerusalem' of the Aegean Patmos's religious importance emanates from the presence of St John the Theologian, or Divine, on the island from 95 to 98AD having been exiled from Ephesus. This is a different chap from St John the Evangelist who earlier lived and died in Ephesus. For this period Patmos's St John lived in the Cave of the Apocalypse (Revelation) where he had a vision of fire and brimstone and dictated the Book of Revelation to his disciple, Prochoros. The very rock on which the Book was written, the indentation where the saint is said to have rested his head and the cleft in the rock where it is claimed he heard the voice of God are still visible today. The cleft, taking the form of three cracks radiating from the centre, is said to symbolise the Trinity.

High above the Cave stands the majestic fortified Monastery of Ioanni tou Theologou (John the Theologian) built in the 11^th century AD in honour of St John. The main church within the Monastery, the Katholicon which houses a revered 12^th century icon of the saint and many fine 12^th century frescos, is one of the most sacred places of worship for orthodox and western Christian faithful alike. The church is one of ten chapels built within the confines of the Monastery to satisfy the edict at the time whereby mass could only be performed once daily in any one church or chapel. At present thirty monks reside in the complex whereas it was the home for many Greeks who fled from Constantinople after that city's fall.

The enchanting white rectangular houses of the Chora (old town) huddle around the massive Monastery walls. Many of the houses, some of them mansions of former sea captains wealthy merchants, have unique stone window mouldings decorated with a Byzantine cross.  From this jewel of Byzantine architecture with its maze of narrow winding cobbled streets there are fine views over the Patmos archipelago and further afield to other northern Dodecanese islands and the island of Samos, our next port of call.

And so we finally leave the Dodecanese, an archipelago 180 miles long scattered along the Turkish coast, having visited nine of the twelve inhabited islands (actually there are thirteen but Dodecanese has a better ring to it than Decatrianese we feel) from Kastellorizon at the southern extreme to Agathonisi in the north.

Dodecanese Revisited

Sad to leave Finike, our excellent winter base, we motored in light headwinds to the protected anchorage at Ucagis Limani, one of our favourites from last year. A flying fish danced in the air just as we left the marina breakwater as if to wish us well for the season ahead. Bella seems as if she had been loosed from her chains and was happy swinging at anchor and we were excited to be at sea again looking forward to adventures new. From Ucagis to the Greek island outpost of Kastellorizon, one of the special places we have visited during our Mediterranean cruise.

After this nostalgic indulgence we were ready to explore pastures new, the first being Rhodes. We were advised that finding a berth at Rhodes Mandraki harbour is a problem even at this time of year. We therefore arranged to reserve a berth for two nights through an Agent, A1 Yacht Trade Consortium, albeit at a fee of 150€! The fact that we were shown directly to a private berth on arrival while other yachts were scrambling for the limited or nonexistent public berths convinced us that the cost of an Agent was worthwhile as did the fact that he successfully negotiated customs and port police clearance where there were self inflicted problems in that, having not cleared into Greece at Kastellorizon, we were deemed to have come directly from Turkey. We even faced the threat of a fine for misstating the facts! Left to our own devices with the authorities doubtlessly we would not have fared as well.

Rhodes, the capital of the Dodecanese archipelago, has been an important centre since the 5^th century BC and was a vital part of the Roman and Byzantine empires before occupation by the Knights of St John from 1306 to 1522.

The Old City which, being the stronghold of the Knights of St John, is reminiscent of Malta, Bodrum, Kos and other places that the Knights conquered and ruled with a rod of iron and which we have visited albeit with a very much less warlike intention.

The Knights citadel built in 1309, surrounded by 4Km of massive defensive walls, is dominated by the Palace of the Grand Masters with its magnificent castellated and crenulated horseshoe shaped towers,  fine marble tiled central courtyard and elegant chambers.

The Inns of the Tongues which were occupied by the various nationalities of the Order of St John line the Street of Knights which runs from the palace to the harbour. The Inns have coats of arms carved in stone within their austere facades. It was in this street that the Knights would muster at times of attack.

The Old City is divided into the Collachium, the Knights quarter containing the Palace and the Inns and the Bourg which housed the remaining population including Jews and Turks as well as Greeks.

The city is has been superbly preserved and expertly reconstructed where necessary and so has an extremely close resemblance to that occupied by the Knights in medieval times. It is worthy of its World Heritage Site status. We were glad not to have missed the visit despite the problems.

We spent a day or two relaxing in the beautiful anchorage of Panormittis on Symi Island. Our peace was broken only by peacocks squalling like tomcats in stark contrast to the kids calling sweetly if soulfully for their mothers. Strong winds arrived during the day with 26°C and brilliant sunshine and Miggy had her first swim of the season in beautiful clear water. In the evening and into the night, just like the last time we were here, the wind rose to 40 knots. Yachts were dragging all over the place but not, thankfully, to affect us. We held firm as a rock.
We were pleased to be joined by Peter and Val on 'Noisette' in Panormittis and to sail in company with them on the next stage of our travels to the Dodecanese islands of Tilos and Nisyros.

A light to moderate W/NW wind gave us good sailing for roughly half the passage to Tilos Island and sailing into the bay was delightful both in terms of being under canvas and the scenery.  The tiny harbour of Livadhiou is sheltered except from the southeast and is equipped with electricity and water. The fee for mooring is around 14€ per day. The winter compliment of about ten yachts increases to around forty during the summer. We have seen a photograph of the mêlée at this time where you can walk from one side to the other without wetting your feet!

 Tilos is fertile and the lush valley in the interior comprises small farms growing varied crops from Almonds to Tobacco. Its hills are scattered with chapels and ruins of Crusader castles, remnants of the rule of the Knights of St John from 1309 to 1522.

The birth and domicile on the Island of the 4^th century BC poet Erinna of 'Distaff' fame has left a legacy of poetry and music on the Island.

Nisyros Island is almost conical in shape and is mostly mountainous consisting of volcanic rock formations and outcrops of stone produced by periodic eruptions.

Greek myth has it that Nisyros was formed when, at the conclusion of the battle of gods and giants, Poseidon, god of the sea, pursued and caught up with the giant Polybotes, broke off a lump of Kos Island with his trident and hurled it at him. Lying under Poseidon's missile, the present day island of Nisyros, he sometimes sighs and groans thus explaining the phenomenon of the volcano.

More likely but less fun is the fact that Nisyros lies on the same Aegean volcanic fault line as Santorini, Poros and Milos and that there was a massive eruption some 24,000 years ago. Eruptions over the years, the latest in 1873, have left a caldera with a number of craters still exhibiting boiling mud pots and gas vents surrounded with pure sulphur crystals and a stench of rotten eggs!

The geomorphology and tectonic structure of the Island has led to the formation of underground hot springs known for their medicinal properties as far back as Hippocrates. Near Pali lies the now abandoned Hydropathic Institute, a massive complex of buildings, showing the popularity of this therapy in bygone days.

On the rim of the crater lie the pretty villages of Emporeios and Nikia, where we lunched, with their blue shuttered whitewashed houses and narrow stone streets.
Perhaps the most poignant of the sights of Nisyros is the tiny derelict village of Avlaki once the principal port of the Island. In bygone days ships unloaded their cargo at this tiny harbour for onward transport by donkey along a steep and tortuous trail to Emporeios. Then in the thirties roads were built and the more sheltered town and port of Mandraki took over the role of Avlaki and Emporeios. Such is progress.

The attractive fishing village of Pali where we berthed has little other than a baker, a church, and three Tavernas and is delightfully peaceful. The former fishing harbour has been reformed with the entrance facing east as protection from the Meltemi wind. It has been dredged throughout to about 4m and water and electricity are available at all berths. We paid just 5€ every other day for our electricity. It is a comparatively large safe haven for roughly thirty yachts.

It is surprising that small islands such as Nisyros and Tilos are able to make such provision for yachtsmen whereas construction of the Marina in mighty Rhodes, where the need is critical, has been static for years.

A fast sail north to Kos puts us within easy reach of the Turkish Gulluk Korfezi where we look forward immensely to Jane and John, Miggy's sister and her husband, joining us for a week.

Holiday in the Isles of Scilly

Had we arrived at Penzance, Cornwall 12,000 years earlier we would have been able to walk or perhaps ride a donkey to the Scilly Islands. As it is the good ship Scillonian 111 ferried us the 30 miles ESE across the Western Approaches to the British Isles. By 4000BC Scilly had become the single island of Ennor as sea levels rose by 75 metres as the ice cap retreated north toward the Pole. In the Pubs on the mainland old Cornish fishermen still recount stories of how on a calm day with a still sea you can hear the mournful toll of bells moved by the tide in the steeples of 140 graceful churches of the land of Lyonnesse now lost under the waves. It was not until around 1000AD that the 50 Scilly Islands as we now know them began to arise from the sinking Isle of Ennor. Of these only St Marys, Tresco, St Agnes, St Martins and Bryher are now inhabited.  

Archaeology tells us that the first humans to reach Scilly were the Mesolithic people (8000BC – 4000BC) who moved north from the Mediterranean after the end of the ice age probably following herds of migrating animals as the ice retreated. They were followed by the Neolithic people (4000BC – 2500BC) who shared a common culture with peoples from the Atlantic seaboard from Spain, Brittany, Cornwall, Wales and Ireland. Widespread cultivation of the land, village settlements of small round houses or hut circles occurred during the Bronze Age (2500BC - 700BC). It is evidence of the foundations of these structures in the shallow waters between the existing islands that may have fuelled the fishermen's tales of the lost land of Lyonnesse. The Iron Age (700BC – 400AD) brought more sophisticated civilisation to the Scillies and in its later period when Rome ruled Britain the Celtic status quo and Iron Age culture continued to develop unhindered although there appears to have been frequent contact with Roman trading vessels. The fall of the Roman Empire in Britain heralded a decline in trade and commerce and the Christianity which had spread from Rome was replaced by the altogether different Christian tradition of the Celts from Wales and Ireland. Island life declined dramatically with the gradual rise in sea levels to the extent that around 1000AD the population had diminished to a mere few hundred.

Despite Edward 111 granting the islands to the Black Prince, the first Duke of Cornwall, the islands sank into obscurity for the next 500 years plagued as it was by insecurity and the loss of agricultural land to the rising sea. From Tudor times onward the Scillonians took advantage of the Scilly's strategic position on the newly established commercial shipping routes to North America and Africa by engaging in piracy. Elizabeth 1 ignored this as long as it was to the detriment of the French and Dutch but ultimately the Spanish Armada highlighted the vulnerability of the Islands to attack and in 1593 Elizabeth started to build defences including the Star Castle on St Marys. The staunchly Royalist islanders afforded Prince Charles shelter in the Star Castle during his flight from the Parliamentarians during the English Civil War and, after subjugation by parliament in 1648, reverted to their piratical past by attacking passing merchant ships. At the end of the Civil War Parliament set up defences on the Islands to deter foreign invasion but the Dutch declared war on Scilly; the peace treaty being signed only some 20 years ago!

The Napoleonic Wars disrupted the Scillonian's major industries of smuggling and fishing and by the beginning of the 19^th century and a series of poor harvests thereafter once again heralded the rapid decline of the Islands. I was not until 1831 that prosperity began to return with Augustus Smith leasing the Islands from the Duchy of Cornwall. He instigated proper education for the children and new agricultural practices and the coming of the railway to Penzance in the middle of the 19^th Century bought the first tourists to the Islands and allowed the establishment of a flourishing flower industry.

St Marys, where our ferry landed, is the largest of the Scilly Islands that emerged from the sea and is a halfway house between the mainland and the four 'off islands'. Some off islanders regard St Marys with similar disdain as they do the mainland. Cars and buses speed around the roads of the Island in stark contrast to travel in the off islands where tractors and golf buggies are preferred. The sheltered centre of the Island is mainly cultivated for flowers and in particular winter and early spring daffodils and narcissi which are sent to market in London. Vegetables and early potatoes are also widely cultivated. Prehistoric monuments abound on St Marys as a result of its position on ancient sea routes from the Atlantic seaboard stretching from Portugal and Spain in the south to Ireland and Scotland in the north. The best examples of these late Stone Age/early Bronze Age settlement can be found at Halangy Down.

St Agnes, the smallest of the inhabited islands that has its particular Celtic history and traditions. We had little time to explore although we walked from the sheltered and pretty harbour at Porth Conger through Higher Town passing the 1680 lighthouse, one of the first lighthouses built in Britain but now defunct, and beyond Lower Town for fine views over white sand beaches, Annet, the home of the puffins, the Western Rocks and The Bishop rock and its lighthouse.

The Western Rocks have been a graveyard for shipping for centuries. Hundreds of ships have been wrecked with the loss of thousands of lives. As late as the early 18^th century Navigators could plot their latitude, or position along a north/south line, fairly accurately by reference to the pole star but were unable to establish with any certainty at all their position on an east/west line; their longitude. It was the loss of over 2000 souls in one night alone when part of the British fleet foundered here in 1707 that prompted the Admiralty to set a prize for the first person to find a reliable way of establishing longitude, a prize won by John Harrison with his spring mechanism based chronometer.

The Bishops Rock lighthouse guards the western extent of the rocks. The first structure built with cast iron columns was finished in 1850 only to be washed away by a storm before it was commissioned. A solid tower of Cornish granite replaced it but vertical cracks appeared soon after construction showing that the structure was not equal to the force of the very high waves that battered it making it shake violently, knocking plates off the shelves. In April 1874 waves exceeding 40 metres broke clean over the structure washing away the lantern and flooding the lighthouse nearly drowning the keepers. In 1881 an outer stone structure was built around the existing tower increasing its height and strength. This exists to the present day.

St Martin's is the Scillies north eastern bulwark to the ravages of the North Atlantic and the landscape of the island reflects this with its uncultivated weather beaten north eastern side and fertile sundrenched western slopes running down to the dunes and white sand of the waterfront. The cultivated western side is covered with sheltered flower and vegetable fields and wild Agapanthus, Lily and Hottentot fig grow from every hedgerow and dry stone wall. The flowers harvested here are packed and flown to the mainland and further afield.

Wide eyed and whiskered grey seals pop their heads above the water lounge or with their pups on the beaches of the Eastern Islands just south of St Martin's. Gannets, gulls, shags, cormorants, shearwaters and guillemots fly from rock to water and back and a Peregrine falcon nests on a rock ledge.

Bryher Island can be somewhat bleak being subjected to the full fury of westerly Atlantic storms. The northern end is a plateau of high ground sparsely covered with dwarfed heather. Names such as Hell Bay and Badplace Hill reflect the fury of the storm waves that have travelled as much as 2000 to break clean over Shipman Head. The southern end of the Island is a little less foreboding being protected to some extent by the offlying Norrard rocks with names that conjure up the mystery of these islands such as Gweal and Illiswilgig. We limited our walk to the more cultivated central saddle of the island through The Town and around Timmy's Hill resting at the Hell Bay Hotel for a pot of tea on the terrace overlooking the idyllic sands of Great Par beach, Stinking Porth, Black Rocks and the mighty Atlantic Ocean.

Last but not least the beautiful Island of Tresco, the pearl in the oyster and the Island upon which we stayed in a well equipped and excellently furnished house on the beach with superb views over the water and rocks of Old Grimsby Sound and St Helens Pool to St Martins, Tean, Round Island and the Eastern Islands. This view ranks amongst the best that we have seen in all our travels.

Softly undulating sand dunes covered with marram grass, bell heather and ling and wild flowers just about to burst into a riot of spring beauty dominate the south of Tresco. The panoramas looking seaward across the shallow water, white sand beaches and banks and foreboding rocks are magnificent with St Marys and St Agnes Islands to the south, Bryher and Samson to the west and St Martins and the Eastern isles to the east.

The Great Pool is a haven for geese, swans, egret, curlew and duck and the beaches are alive with the cry of oystercatchers, curlew, dunlin and tern. Within the trees of Abbey Wood and gardens stands Tresco Abbey. Its origins lie in the 12^th century when Henry 1 granted all religious buildings of the northern Scillies to the Benedictine monks of Tavistock Abbey. The present Abbey is the home of the Dorrien–Smith family and descendants of Augustus Smith whose far sighted approach revitalised the depressed and poverty struck islands. The Abbey gardens created in 1834 by Augustus Smith house an extraordinary collection of plants from all over the world that thrive in the warmth and long hours of sunshine that bless the Scilly Islands. There are over 4000 specimens from countries as far away as Mexico, Japan, Australia, South Africa, South America and the Mediterranean including Cacti, Palms, Bamboo, Echium, Agapanthus, Aeonium and King Proteas. There are enchanting artefacts and sculptures including a stone Roman sacrificial altar and the evocative figureheads from wrecked ships that conjure up the Scillies dramatic seafaring past.

The landscape of the north of Tresco is distinctly different from that of the south with its windswept heather and gorse clad hills punctured with stark granite outcrops.  Cromwell's Castle built in the mid 17^th century to protect Tresco Channel and New Grimsby harbour from attack by the Dutch. It replaced King Charles's Castle built on the hill above in the mid 16^th century captured by the Parliamentarians due in the main to the fact that it was poorly sited with the shot falling out of the cannons when angled downward toward forces attacking from sea level!

For the three decades that we have owned a yacht on the south coast of England we have endeavoured to reach the Scillies but have always turned left to Brittany or the Channel islands because of the prevailing head winds. We have sailed past the Islands whilst racing or delivering yachts but finally we have landed upon them, walked around them as expansively as time has allowed and have experienced the incredible forces and delights of nature. We feel a debt of gratitude toward Miggy's mother, Betsy, who by celebrating her 80th birthday on the Islands made this experience possible for us and fifteen others of her close family. We feel privileged to have stayed in these wonderful islands just 25 miles distant, but a world apart from, the English mainland. 

Last of a Finike Winter

We trust that our homecoming at the beginning of March will be greeted with the onset of spring and more settled and warmer weather than we have had here in Finike of late. The local townspeople tell us that they need the rain to bring on the tomatoes and citrus fruit but surely not in the amounts that have poured down upon us since the beginning of the New Year. Wind from the quadrant south to east even if it is blowing hard offshore but not inshore brings with it a significant swell that penetrates the marina giving an uncomfortable motion on Bella. Whilst conditions are not dangerous the movement makes the environment on board inconvenient and somewhat wearing. We do, however, have beautiful, warm, sunny days to compensate for all this.

Our Turkish visas expired during February thereby occasioning a trip from Kaş on the Turkish mainland by ferry to the tiny Greek island of Kastellorizon. It was great to revisit one of our favourite haunts in the Mediterranean made even finer by a superb pork steak for lunch!

To widen our cultural experience we witnessed Camel Wrestling in Demre! This activity is an ancient tradition with origins in the Middle East where nomadic tribes pitched their bulls against one another as a competitive sport. We believe that the contests may have also been used for the practical reason of finding the strongest bull to service the females thus ensuring a strong lineage of working camels. We have no authority to substantiate this however.

Camels used for wrestling in Turkey are of the Tülü variety, a cross breed that are bulkier and longer haired than the slender, long eye lashed cousins that we encountered in the Sahara desert. The camels are decked out in their finery with elaborate wooden saddles and richly embroidered blankets.

The annual contest held in the mating season attracts a huge high spirited but good humoured local crowd, also in their Sunday best, sat cross legged on the ground, standing or perched on their trucks around an unprotected arena. The atmosphere is of the occasion is enhanced by the market and food stalls that surround the field of battle.

The sight of camels wrestling one another would seem to promise some spectacular action but in reality these animals are gentle and prefer the art of persuasion above that of fierce combat and the wrestling is more akin to comedy than blood-sport.

Two bulls are led into the arena and a young cow is paraded around to get them excited as evidenced by streams of viscous milky saliva issuing from the bull's mouth and nostrils. Mostly the two bulls half-heartedly butt each other shoulder to shoulder and lean on the other until one of them gives in and runs away. This is the really exciting bit as the bull will often charge off towards the crowd, with the conquering bull in pursuit, and the spectators scramble hurriedly out of the way. The antics of spectators trying to avoid a thousand kilograms of camel running towards them can lead to pure comedy and the biggest crowd reaction. Miraculously there are few accidents to camel or human. Occasionally two bulls will get down to it and actually try to wrestle one another, feinting in here and there, eventually locking a fore-leg inside the leg of the opposition and leaning on him to topple him over in a dromedary's version of a wrestling fall and pin. Large bets are wagered by owners and spectators alike, though how you tell just which camel won can be difficult to determine; both bulls may run off simultaneously or merely refuse to get involved at all. We hear that the judges award points for style however and the winning camel's owner receives another blanket!

Bella's bottom has been sanded down, primed and painted with three coats of antifoul and her topsides polished and she looks as eager as we are to set off on this season's adventure. We intend to sail west and north along the Turkish coast as far as Ayvalik taking in the Greek islands of the northern Dodecanese and eastern Sporades on the way. We will cross the Aegean to the western Sporades, sail south down the Evvia gulf into the Saronic, transit the Corinth canal and spend the winter in the Ionian Islands.

For those of you who may winter in Finike marina in the future we can say without a shadow of a doubt that those in the yard who were involved in hauling us out of the water, propping us up and launching us were the most professional and careful that we have experienced during our sailing careers over the past 35 years. The hoist strops were tied together and were place exactly in line with the lifting marks on the hull. We were transported gently the few metres to our hard standing and 14 props, each measured and placed precisely symmetrically, were wedged to support us. In the UK we were lucky to get 7! For a euro each the yard will move the props so that the antifouling coats can be complete without leaving patches that have to be painted just before launching only to wash off as soon as the boat goes in the water. The yard even supplied a sturdy steel ladder and proper steel framed wheeled staging.

Our final visit of the winter was to Elmali, a market town 60 km from Finike up in the hills. At an elevation of about 1200m the temperature was 15°C than on the coast. Amongst the bland concrete buildings are scattered beautiful Ottoman houses and there is a covered market that, although smaller than Finike, is full of atmosphere like the town itself which is truly Turkish.

Miggy's artistic skills are coming on apace as can be seen from the watercolour below of a Turkish summer picnic.

We look forward now to seeing family and friends during our stay in the UK from the 5^th March until the 25^th April which will include a week in the Scilly Islands with Miggy's Mum and her close family to celebrate an important birthday.

More Finike Winter Jottings

Forty people of thirteen different nationalities sat down to our traditional English Christmas dinner and enjoyed themselves without exception. Faik, the Komsu Garden restaurateur, his family and his chefs who had learnt so much during the trial run the week before, about which we wrote in the December blog entry, and had prepared so well both in the kitchen and in the dining room that Miggy had less than expected to do although she still had to ensure that the turkey, potatoes and vegetables were neither over or under cooked and make the gravy and the stuffing.

Modern Antalya, our regional capital, with its palm tree lined boulevards is one of Turkey's principle tourist resort and, being only a two hour and £8 return bus ride from Finike, is where we get our culture in the form of opera, ballet and orchestral concerts and where we can shop in superstores for products not readily available in Finike except, of course, pork for which we and most of our fellow liveaboards crave!

On the subject of shopping it is made easy in Turkey as shops tend to be grouped together by their trade or produce much like it has been for millennia in the 'Souks'.

Antalya has been continuously inhabited by the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Seljuks and the Ottomans since its founding in 159BC by Attalos 11, a Greek king of Pergamum. It is the picturesque old town or Kaleiçi that holds the most interest with its narrow winding streets and wooden balconied houses provided one can shut one's eyes to the inevitable plethora of tourist souvenir shops touting their junk. The 13^th century fluted red brick minaret of the Yilvi Minare Mosque, previously adorned with turquoise tiles has become Antalya's symbol and the Karatay Medrese (theological college) from the same period displays fine Seljuk stone carvings on the portal and mihrap or prayer niche. Much of the old city fortifications still stand and the clock tower, once part of the city walls, marks the upper limit of the original city. A well preserved and renovated and beautifully decorated three arched gate with Corinthian columns was built into the city walls in 134AD in honour of the Emperor Hadrian. The cart tracks through the central arch have been exposed to view.

Despite our previous blog comment about 'old rocks' we still enjoy visiting ancient sites and to add to our collection we trampled around the ruins of the city of Termessos first settled by the Solymians in the first millennium BC. In fact they are the same Anatolian peoples that founded Sagalassos about which we wrote in October last year.

The city flourished in Hellenistic and Roman times and first appeared on history's stage when its formidable natural defences, being on a saddle of ground at 1100 metres between two cliffs, convinced Alexander the Great not to try to take the city in 333BC. Alexander was right; it is a long, steep exhausting climb to the city centre and we didn't even have hostile forces to dissuade us from success!

The buildings of Termessos are not as well preserved as many we have seen apart from the theatre with its fine views over Antalya Bay but the setting is magnificent. Termessos is included in the Güllük Dag National park where wild goats and deer and perhaps the only remaining Anatolian lynx roam.

Winter activities continue with regular Sunday barbeques, quiz nights and weekly talks on practical or historical matters. Recently an Historian gave a talk on the civilisations in the Eastern Mediterranean over the last 5000 years. At the Art Club Miggy has ventured quite successfully methinks into portraiture.

All this carries on in weather that has become quite wet and colder as the snow line lowers on the mountains to the north of us. It is a beautiful scene however and we do still have the warm sunny days in between.