France - The Last Post

 

Champagne, sparklers and new dreams

As already mentioned in the previous blog, this wonderful voyage of 33,818 nautical miles had taken us six and a half years to complete, and we’d travelled through 39 different countries. We had no home port and no family or friends awaiting us, but we celebrated anyway with a good dinner out. I had magrets de canard (duck breast) for the first time, which the French cook rare, and it was scrumptious.

3 June 2008

After one day at anchor out in the bay, we moved to the Navy Service Marina, lifted Forever out of the water and gave her a good scrubbing down and clean up. The services at the marina were fairly basic but their rates were reasonable and the yard is secure. Within walking distance was the town of Port Saint Louis du Rhône, set right at the mouth of the Rhone River and surrounded by the marshland of the Camargue.

The Rhone

In some places the swarms of mosquitoes were horrendous, but there were some great beaches a cycle ride away, thankfully without mozzies.  There weren’t many other liveaboards in the marina but we made a few friends.

Walking the dog with Heiner and Pirkko

Mike’s friend Nick, who had a sister with a holiday home nearby, came to visit for a week.  Nick came sailing with us six years earlier in Palma.

Moules Mariniere with Nick, Penny and Peter

Penny and Peter knew something of the area and we all took a marvellous trip to the beautiful historic town of Les Baux de Provence.  Most particularly we went to see a spectacular visual display of Van Gogh’s work projected onto the walls of the impressive, now abandoned, limestone quarries in the Val d'Enfer (Hell Valley).

We bought a car and travelled to London, arriving in time for the joint birthday party in July of my two sisters.  My brother-in-law, David, produced champagne to celebrate our trip and we were very touched. On the way back we stopped and visited my friend Jane who lives in a small village called Bancel in the Gard area.  We attended the local grape harvest fete where the children get to do the first ‘pressing’.

We travelled around by bus, or later in our car, to Arles through the fields of sunflowers that inspired so many of Van Gogh’s paintings, to the charming town of Aix-en-Provence, to the cities of Montpelier and Marseille and through the marshlands of the Camargue to Les-Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. We were tourists but also I was looking for work as an English teacher, without success. It seems there were too many better qualified teachers around already, i.e. those who had formal training as ‘teachers’ and not just a TEFL course. My French was/is enough to get by comfortably in social conversation but not nearly adequate enough to do any kind of work other than teaching English. In order to achieve our new dream, it was necessary for me to get some kind of work, but it just wasn’t happening.

The new dream? This is to buy a small property with a bit of land in France (we had discussed Spain, Portugal and Italy but settled on France because of the language) and then live our interpretation of ‘The Good Life’ with our own vegetables and fruit, chickens and ducks, goats and bees. As one friend said ‘Dear God, Peggy, that sounds like the Clampetts!’ Well, yes, perhaps.

The circumnavigation had been Mike’s dream and I had been very happy to be a part of it and help make it come true. The new dream is essentially mine but Mike is equally happy to be a part of it and make it come true. Mike has farmed before in Zimbabwe and South Africa and has good knowledge of poultry and honey bees.

But, unable to find work, we packed up, left Forever settled on the hard at Navy Service and drove back to the UK to find work. Our financial situation hasn’t improved and short of one of us becoming a successful novelist or painter, winning the lottery or robbing a bank our dream remains just that. But we won’t give it up.

And for the immediate future..... this summer we plan to return to France and finally do the trip I so wanted to do three years ago, meandering on the canals through the stunning French countryside from Port Saint Louis du Rhône through Paris and out at Le Havre in the north. I will start a new blog of this trip.

The entrance to the Rhone at Port Saint Louis

You can follow our new blog on the trip (starting April 2011) through the French canals on the following blog: http://riversailing.blogspot.com

Italy - Sicily and Sardinia

The technical end of our circumnavigation

16 May 2008

It is difficult to say when we actually finished our circumnavigation. Most of the yachts we knew belonged to a yacht club in their home town and this could be taken as the official start of their journey. They left from there and then returned, years later, to much fanfare and celebration, as triumphant heroes. But not us, and we felt rather envious of those who had a home port to return to. We had been living in England when we bought Forever in Palma, Spain, and had then spent our first year just bopping around the Med. Palma couldn’t be called our home port, and anyway we didn’t intend to return there, having finally decided that we would try to make a new life in France. Our travels round the Med had taken us to Agropoli, Italy, which represented our most easterly point at E15 and thereafter we sailed only westward – right round the world. In theory, therefore, we could say that we finished the circumnavigation when we passed through E15 again, which we did again at the end of this trip, as we arrived in Sicily. We had been cruising for six years and five months at that point - but we were still cruising, so we decided to hold on the champagne and sparklers.

In Sicily, we anchored off a rather make-shift marina at Giardini Naxos. The anchorage area was a bit dodgy, though once the anchor was dug in we seemed secure enough, and we had good neighbours on Lady de Vie. The marina people were neither friendly nor obliging, but we managed to sneak drinking water from a tap on the dock and I took my buckets to one of their docks and defiantly did my laundry. It was a long walk round into the town, but once there, it was good. Behind Giardini and on top of the hill is the ancient town of Taormina.

Taormina on the hilltop

Taormina’s past is Sicily’s history in a microcosm: Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Swabians, the French and the Spanish all came, saw, conquered and left, bequeathing architecture that is a sublime mix of Arab, Norman and Gothic. The main attraction is the Teatro Greco, now home to all manner of events, including plays, fashion shows, concerts, and cinema festivals.  Originally quite small, it started its life in the 3rd Century BC and was enlarged by the Romans to accommodate their own particular brand of theatrical extravaganza. The views from the theatre are spectacular, taking in a (usually) smoking Mount Etna and the Bay of Naxos down below. We scorned the cable car, of course, Mike preferring to beat a rugged and steep shortcut up the mountainside.

Giardini and Mount Etna

                                                                   

                                                             

the ancient...and the modern

We took a leisurely rest here for a week and then headed up through the Messina Strait, the tide assisting us part of the way and fighting against us later on, and into the Tyrrhenian Sea.  The wind was a bit on/off but the weather pleasant and sailing was comfortable.  No matter how many years we might have stayed at sea, we never got tired of dolphins and on this trip our companions were a group of what we identified as Bottle-nosed and then a second group of Risso’s dolphins (flat nosed and big).

After five days we rounded the northern tip of Sardinia in a huge thunderstorm (which gave us and Forever a thorough wash) and as night was falling we entered the wide bay on the south of Isola Caprera and anchored in a narrow channel at Porto Palma.  The boat kept shifting as the tide turned so we put our anchor alarm on which buzzed frequently all night though our position remained stable.

Sardinia's rugged coastline

Nearby was a sailing school and the next morning dozens of pretty little yachts manned by inexperienced but enthusiastic youngsters were zigzagging all around us. We were so impressed by all these little yachts practising their tacking manoeuvres around the bay that we tacked all the way out next morning and were doing very well until another short sharp storm hit us on the nose. We moved over to Porto Palau, an excellent quiet anchorage, and hung on a mooring buoy. The town was expensive and not very interesting, but we managed to get water, fuel and a few groceries.

Back when we thought we’d sold our beloved boat and planned to deliver it to Ireland, we’d discussed at length the merits of taking our mast down and coming up the canals through France, as against sailing round Gibraltar, up the Atlantic and across the dreaded Bay of Biscay. My preference (the canals) had prevailed – hooray! - and we had sourced a marina near Port Saint Louis du Rhone, at the mouth of the Rhone River. The delivery plans had changed with the boat sale falling through but we still wanted to go to France.

So, on 31 May 2008 we left and sailed through the Bonifacio Strait for the second time and then, leaving Corsica to starboard, we cut straight across past our old haunts of Isle d’Hyeres, Frioul and Marseille and two and a half days later anchored in Fos Bay. Here’s the map of this last leg.

Since Turkey we had travelled a further 1,594 nautical miles, bringing our grand total to 33,818 nautical miles and we add one more country, Greece, to bring the grand total to 39 countries visited.

Greece

Greek salads and Minoan Palaces

23 April 2008                                            

Our first stop in Greece was the island of Symi, just north west of Rhodes. We anchored in Panormitis Bay on the south coast and then took a bus with a group of other yachts over the hills to the town of Symi in the north to check in. We, and a few others, had been concerned about bringing Forever back into EU waters, as a lot of yachties seemed to think that VAT would have to be paid again as we had been away for more than five years. This was a case of the usual scare-mongering and we had no trouble at all. Being British we didn’t expect to be charged but the harbour master charged us all €45. The town of Symi was very pretty, and we went with a few of our new acquaintances for a good fish lunch. Why is it that Greek salad tastes so absolutely delicious in Greece?

Symi town

The anchorage at Panormitis Bay was sociable and reasonably secure so we stayed a couple of days. It was Easter weekend and the Greeks celebrate Easter with much gusto, this being the most important religious holiday of their year. There was a very ornate church on shore and Good Friday passed with a lot of singing and early fireworks. In theory, the fireworks are supposed to be set off on Saturday at midnight, but there are always those who like to start early!

Good Friday was also Mike’s birthday and we had drinks with Rapture I and Deliverance. We also met Ed and Annette on the American yacht Doodle Bug.

Low on fuel and water, we sailed south in the morning and stopped for the night at an uncomfortable rolly anchorage on the small island of Halki. That was Easter Saturday night and at midnight all hell broke loose. Cannons fired, bells rang and fireworks exploded – all night long. The faithful gather in the church with candles which are lit at midnight. It was a beautiful sight, all these beautiful little flickers of light trailing down the side of the hill from the church as the people returned to their homes. Still very sleepy the next morning we tried for fuel but there was none to be had, so we moved on again. The winds were very miserable and couldn’t make up their minds – one minute so good we thought we might go straight on to Crete, but then so capricious we had to turn back and anchored at Diafani on the island of Karpathos. We spent a peaceful night disturbed by only the occasional bang from late fireworks. Again, there was no fuel to be had so, now dangerously low, we took a short sail further down the island to Pigadia.

We arrived there on Easter Monday which was, of course, a holiday. However, the anchorage was reasonably safe and comfortable so we relaxed and the next day shopped - a bit expensive but so nice to get bacon again - and got water. We had to take a very long walk to get a bit of fuel in a jerry can.

Our next stop was the small island of Kasos, just south west of Karpathos. We tied up on the wall of Fry Harbour next to Doodle Bug. The harbour master in this tiny little village was hospitable and obligingly gave us a weather report for our next leg to Crete. We managed to find some decent fresh food, including lovely artichokes, and got a little water. There were noisy celebrations on shore all that night, followed by a very quiet holiday next morning, the first of May. In company with Doodle Bug, we left for Crete. They took some good photos of Forever, heeled hard over in strong winds

My father had often spoken of Crete – as a soldier (Rhodesian battalion) during the war he managed to miss the evacuation in 1941, was captured by the Germans and spent the remainder of the war in a POW camp. I spent a wonderful month camping on the island in 1975 with my dear friend Trish and we visited the fabulous ruins of Knossos.

On this occasion we anchored off Elounda in the bay created by the Peninsula of Spinalonga. The small islet Spinalonga, just north, was a leper colony until 1957.

Once again, we were anchored next to Doodle Bug, and Ed and Annette became good friends. We wined and dined on each other’s boats regularly. They hired a car and we all took a fascinating day trip to the ancient Minoan Palace at Malia – not quite as famous as Knossos, but nonetheless very impressive, and had an interesting lunch in the town.

Elounda was a nice little town and we spent ten days there. Collecting water was an eternal schlep; we’d row in every day and fill up two or three jerry cans from a tap on the roadside and struggle back with them full. But shopping was reasonable and we found a good internet cafe. Whilst here we finally heard that the sale of Forever had fallen through. This was disappointing as the sale had included us delivering the boat to Ireland and we’d been looking forward to the trip. It was also why we’d been moving along so quickly, but now we could relax and take our time. Ed and Annette were very kind to us – they gave us (that’s me, the cook) a kitchen timer and a cute Jolly Roger wind sock. When their daughter, who’s a mechanic with Harley Davidson, came to visit she gave us each a very nice Harley t-shirt.

Leaving Spinalonga

We said goodbye to the Doodle Bugs, who went off cruising, and early on 11 May, we lifted anchor and sailed north and then westwards along the north coast of Crete, heading for Sicily. We decided not to stop as there aren’t any good anchorages along that coast, but our first day was slow with little wind. Once we got past the island and into the Ionian Sea we hit one of the worst storms we’d ever hit in our entire seven years of cruising. I can’t say what the wind speed was as we didn’t have a working instrument, but although we took in the main sail and were running with a very small genoa, the waves coming up behind us were terrifying. I am easily scared by the sea, but Mike always loved it as feisty as possible so when he began to look tight lipped I knew it was bad. I was seasick a lot of the time, of course. Fortunately, the storm was blowing us in the direction we wanted to go so for a while we made very good, albeit uncomfortable, progress.

This nasty 540 mile trip took us 5½ days. Here’s a little map of our journey from Bodrum through Greece and into the Ionian.

Turkey - Finike

Turkish Delight, barbeques and vodka

Here’s a map of our journey from Aden in the Yemen to Finike in Turkey. This covered 1,934 nautical miles making our grand total to date 32,224 miles and we can add Sudan, Egypt and Turkey making it 38 countries in total.

We spent a year in Turkey.  It was considerably cheaper to take a berth in the marina for a year, paid in advance, so we borrowed some money and did that. Finike was very sociable. There were a lot of foreigners and not only live-aboards (mostly English and German) in the marina but also those living in apartments in the town (many Russians). The hard core would meet for drinks on summer evenings in the Rose Garden, well segregated - one table for the English and one for the Germans.  Behind the marina office was a small club house ‘The Port Hole’ with a barbeque area where we gathered on sunny evenings – one of the better parties was my birthday that year. In the winter there were film and games evenings. It was Sandra who frequently organised these social events – she would provide and sell the drinks (which saved us all the hassle of bringing our own), the profits going to her animal charity. The town had been infested with stray dogs and cats which Sandra had routinely rounded up, taken to the vet and had spayed or neutered and then attempted to find homes for. We were all happy to contribute.

Setur Marina office

Our friends Pam and Roger arrived, Cap d’Or bedecked with all their flags, as this represented the end of their circumnavigation, although they continue to cruise.  We’d originally met them in Phuket but we’d missed each other all the way across the Indian and up the Red Sea.  They remained in Finike for most of the year, touring around and working on their boat. Boris and Lisbeth on Li stayed for a while as well as Pat and Olivia on Aldebaran. Mike was commissioned to paint someone’s boat and we decided to try for other commissions. Pat designed and produced a professional-looking poster which we put in the marina office and ablution block. 

Boris and Lisbeth

We heard from Aliesha who finally got out of Egypt in 2008 with a brand new engine, fitted it and sailed to Turkey, but they went further west and we didn’t see them.

My sister Pai and niece Natalie came to visit for two weeks in July. I was only working part time then at the summer school so I could spend plenty of time with them. They hired a car and we were able to do a bit of touring. We also took a two day sailing trip to Kekova to celebrate Pai’s birthday, and mourn the anniversary of Jamie's death.

We swam and saw the ruins of the sunken town in Kekova Rade.  Back at the marina we spent many a happy hour playing the Turkish game ‘Okey’ (similar to Rummikub ) with Cap d’Or. Pai and Nats came for another holiday in February and we explored Myra and the ruins at Arykanda. They gave me a fab new digital camera for my birthday.

One evening we were invited for dinner by Caroline and Jim on Moujik. When we arrived they said they’d been invited by a neighbouring Russian boat to dinner at their apartment in the town and that they’d insisted we come along too. It was a most entertaining evening. The Russian couple, who had a few grandchildren running about were incredibly hospitable. Olga spoke a little English, Slova not a word, and none of us spoke any Russian but with so much goodwill in the air communication positively flowed. Admittedly, a lot of vodka was drunk, very cold and neat. Caroline and I stuck to wine but Mike and Jim tried valiantly to keep up with our hosts, downing glass after glass of the stuff, making extravagant toasts, and getting drunker by the minute. The two Russians remained almost completely sober, and an elaborate, delicious meal was effortlessly served over a long period. There was a great deal of male-sailor bonding and Slova suggested a route that totally captivated Mike – from the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov to Rostov, all the way up the Volga River through Gorky to Leningrad, coming out in the Gulf of Finland. Mike, knowing this to be a rarely travelled route, was desperately keen and even I was intrigued as I’d always wanted to go to Russia. However, it would be a very long trip (about 3000 km) and the thought of the Russian winter, which had defeated the armies of Napoleon and Hitler, brought us to our senses.

The area around Finike is famous for citrus fruit, mainly oranges and there are dozens of orange trees planted in the centre island of the town’s main boulevard, full of fragrant blossom in spring.

The Saturday market was the most fabulous market we had ever seen, then or since. The range of fruit and vegetables defied belief, until one recalled the unsightly sea of plastic greenhouses that cover hundreds of hectares of ground all around. The produce yielded by these greenhouses was, however, superb; perfectly formed, delicious and cheap. The market included a bewildering range of cheeses and yoghurts, olives and eggs, bread, dried fruit and nuts, sweets and cakes, and fresh locally farmed trout, as well as an extensive flea market with cheap clothing, shoes, fabrics, household wares and gifts. The market area was enormous, extending five or six streets in both directions, and butted off the main square where there were half a dozen permanent shops selling fresh meat and fish. Around the square were also a number of cafes and restaurants, one of which was the favourite haunt of the cruising community. We both enjoyed Turkish food and often dined in a restaurant in the marina - my favourite was spicy lamb kofta with rice and rocket. When strawberries came into season I went hunting for cream which wasn’t easy to find, but what I did find was fabulous, just like Cornish clotted cream!

Behind the marina breakwater was a swimming platform where we gathered on calm days to swim. Mike was a frequent visitor as was young Timmy, tri-lingual son of Turkish/English Canan and German Andreas on Romoco. We all became fast friends.

In many ways our year here was good and we gave serious thought to settling. We’d made some good friends and liked the country and people very much. Many of the foreign people we knew had invested in a Turkish Lira bank account which at the time was paying the amazing interest rate of 17½%. The banks would only guarantee £50,000 so most had only invested that amount, but even that little yielded a monthly income, after tax, of about my teaching salary! We were very tempted and even went so far as to open a bank account. However, we didn’t have the money to invest at that point, I was weary of teaching and without a good grasp of Turkish any other kind of job would be difficult to find, and finally, the fact that Turkey was still not part of the EU meant we didn’t have the automatic right to remain. Europe beckoned.

At that time, we had an offer on Forever, so on 10 April 2008 we said goodbye to our friends and left Finike. We sailed west to Bodrum to have a survey done, and then headed south, stopping for a couple of nights at Knidos, on the Turkish Peninsular of Datca. Knidos was an ancient Greek city and there are some wonderful ruins - a theatre and three temples - the temple of Dionysus, the Temple of the Muses and the Temple of Aphrodite.

The most famous statue by Praxiteles, the Aphrodite of Knidos, was made for the city.  The original has perished, but a later copy is in the Vatican.

We left Turkey on 23 April 2008 and headed towards Greece.

Turkey - Demre

      

 Life on land teaching unwilling young Turks

17 May 2007

We went directly to Turkey and arrived on the south coast of the Antalya Province four days and 371 nautical miles later. We have friends in Cyprus and had been keen to go there, but we still had no main sail and with the prevailing winds being westerly this would have given us a reasonable sail to Cyprus but later sailing west from Cyprus would have been a nightmare. For this same reason we also didn’t go to Israel which I’d love to have visited again. On the recommendation of various other yachts we chose the port of Finike to make landfall. It was so good to be back in the Mediterranean after that long hot slog up the Red Sea. The weather was cooler and everything was green, with flowers! We’d truly seen enough sand.

Regrettably, the anchorage outside Finike was not particularly safe and therefore not suitable for a long term stay so we moved into the marina. Anchoring is much nicer than being in a marina in some ways – the water is usually clean so one can swim, it is cooler, more private, and, of course, free. Downsides are worrying about the anchor dragging, discomfort when the wind blows up, and having to take the dinghy to get anywhere. Marina’s on the other hand are sociable, convenient to all facilities – particularly water and electricity, and the boat is tied securely and blessedly still. Downsides are the cost, being cheek by jowl with other boats, the water is dirty and there is considerably less fresh breeze.

A decision had to be made quickly on what to do with ourselves as our financial situation had become rather precarious. We looked on the internet for businesses to run, but in order to pursue anything in that area we would have to sell Forever first and we knew that could take some time. I looked on the internet for jobs teaching English, totally without success so I decided on the direct approach, walked into the local school and offered my services as a teacher. They had nothing, but the helpful English teacher suggested I try a private college in the next little village along the coast called Demre. I phoned, made an appointment, was interviewed and offered a job – all within a week of arriving in Turkey!

The school, Anka Koleji, was closed for summer holidays but they were running a summer school and I could start on 1st June. The salary they offered was small (in my opinion) but as the marina was 30 kilometres away, they offered me a furnished apartment in Demre as part of the package. I accepted, and duly started work three days a week at the summer school. A bus would collect me each morning outside the marina and bring me home in the evening. I had to push very hard to actually get the promised apartment, but that finally happened in September, when the new school year began. It was a spacious two bedroom on the 5th floor with no lift, but had a large balcony and a view over the village, the countryside and the sea in the distance. The school bought us some basic furniture and we arranged satellite TV. The flat was hot in summer and cold and damp in winter, but it was within walking or cycling distance of the school and we were reasonably happy there. We lived there during the week and then took a bus on Friday afternoons back to Finike and spent the weekends in the marina on Forever.
The mosque was nearby and we got used to the calling of the faithful five times a day.

The view from our flat - a sea of plastic greenhouses

Mustafa Kemal Attaturk (1881 – 1938), the founder of the Republic of Turkey and still utterly revered by the Turkish people, transformed the former Ottoman Empire into a modern and secular nation-state. He was a forward thinking man and did much for the cause of Islamic women. At a meeting setting out his new civil code he made the following comments:

To the women: Win for us the battle of education and you will do yet more for your country than we have been able to do. It is to you that I appeal.

To the men: If henceforward the women do not share in the social life of the nation, we shall never attain to our full development. We shall remain irremediably backward, incapable of treating on equal terms with the civilizations of the West.

My Hero!

There had been a bit of an upsurge in fundamentalism in the southern provinces of Turkey and a lot of women, young and old, had reverted to wearing the headscarf, though it remained forbidden in all government offices, including schools.

The school arranged for a year’s visa for me – an expensive (for them) and very time consuming (for me) process. The headmaster and other teachers at my school were welcoming and kind but mostly didn’t speak English. I started to learn the language and made some headway, never enough. Saniye, my fellow English teacher, a beautiful young Turkish woman, spoke excellent English of course and she and her husband, Hasan, became good friends to Mike and me. We were the only non Turks in the village and didn’t really make friends apart from them.

Demre is a small town, its main claim to fame being the ruins of the ancient Lycian town then called Myra, a name derived from myrrh. In classical times, Andriake was the harbour of Myra.  This silted up later on though some remains can still be seen.

Roman theatre - with Pam, Pai and Nats

Its second claim to fame is the 11th-century church of Saint Nicholas.  The church once held his earthly remains, though most of them were later stolen by holy-relic thieves. St Nicholas (who was later transmuted into the jolly Christmas elf, Santa Claus) was born in nearby Patara, became a priest, rose to the rank of bishop, and did much of his good work here. He died in 350. There’s a statue of Santa in the town square. 

The countryside in the area was lovely.



I can’t say I enjoyed the job much. This was a small private school and the classes were mercifully small. I taught English to every class from kindergarten to early teens but only some actually wanted to learn English, mostly the girls who were a pleasure to teach. The boys, however, were often very nationalistic and felt that everything Turkish was good and everything else was not – and therefore didn’t want to learn English. They were a lot less well behaved than the Thai children, discipline was slack and the teachers didn’t get the support needed from management and parents. I persevered with the job because it permitted us to stay in Turkey for the year and also I thought the experience would stand me in good stead if I wished to get teaching work when we returned to Europe.  Though my salary provided us with a decent living, it wasn’t sufficient to make any significant savings.

Mike went back and forth from Demre to Finike, sometimes on his bike which was quite a feat as the road was mountainous and curved sharply and precipitously along the coast.  I hated that road, the buses thundered recklessly round the hair pin bends and I’m surprised there weren’t more accidents. He often went off exploring on his bike, climbing right to the top of some of the mountains around Demre.  He also had to travel to Kas every three months for a visa-run to the island of Castelorizo in Greece. There was a reasonable, pebbly, beach within easy cycling distance of our apartment where we’d go for an evening swim in the summer. 

Mike continued with his painting, and concentrated on portraits. He met a young man in a shop one day who asked for a portrait of his girlfriend. He was so pleased with the painting he gave us each a pair of shoes and a blouse for me from his shop in exchange. Mike also painted a portrait of Attaturk for Hasan which he hung in his music shop.

Towards the end of December, we had a four day weekend whilst the Turks slaughtered goats and celebrated Bayram, a festival of giving that is similar to our Christmas except they are more charitable and give to the poor as well as family. Christmas Day and Boxing Day were, however, ordinary working days for me. We celebrated Christmas the following weekend with a crowd at our friend Alison’s house in Sahilkent.

When our year was up at the marina, we decided not to stay for another year, so I resigned and finished work at the end of March, and we returned to Finike.