To continue from my last post, the bat was hanging from my bedroom ceiling so I left it there with the door and windows shut to stop Stanley the cat taking too much of an interest in it and I went down to Kaş for breakfast with some friends at Küçük Çakıl Plajı (Small Pebble Beach). It really is small too, the actual beach is only about five or six metres wide.
The breakfast at the Derya Beach Restaurant is an excellent creation consisting of lots of little portions of typical Turkish breakfast foods all washed down with copious quantities of tea. Here is what it looks like…
There was also a basket of home made sweet bread buns which came later.
The Küçük Çakıl Beach area at the eastern end of the town is where most of the hotels are situated. There are only two big hotels though, the majority of accommodation in Kas is provided by smaller, boutique hotels like these.
The western end of the town has more small hotels and pensions which cater to backpackers and those with a more limited budget.
When I returned from breakfast the bat hadn’t moved so I left it alone for the rest of the day. I’d been invited to dinner with some friends in the village so in the evening, before I went, I opened the bedroom windows in the hope that it would find it’s way out after the sun had gone down. I also hoped I didn’t end up with a colony of bats in the bedroom! After a very nice meal and some good conversation I got back home to find the bat gone. Success! I hope it was none the worse for it’s experience.
Walking up the goat track near my house the other morning I thought about how many times I’ve wanted to come up here. My neighbours , the çobanlar (goatherders), make their winter camp just up the road from my house and it sits astride the track so I’ve never wanted to disturb them by bringing the dogs through. Recently though, their camp has been abandoned for the summer and just the frames of their shelters are left standing like so many skeletons. Quite eerie.
They have taken their goats up to the yayla, the mountain pastures, for the hot period of the year. There is more to eat and it is cooler up there. Past their camp is a track to a large open area with a big tree in the middle of it.
You can see it on Google Earth and with the naked eye from the top of the mountain at Phellos. I’ve often wondered what it would be like to take the dogs for a walk there.
This fallen tree looks reminiscent of elephants to me, the shapes and greyness of it create that kind of feeling I think.
This rock with a hole eroded in it caught my eye too.
Kurabiye is a kind of small sweet bread similar in appearance to a Hot Cross Bun in England. The texture is firmer and they’re not quite as sweet but the new bakery in Kas makes very nice examples. As I’ve mentioned previously Hanife’s milk is so creamy that I let it stand to separate then skim off the cream. Well this afternoon I had Kurabiye with whipped cream and strawberry jam, extremely indulgent of me but it was lovely.
I had cream left over and later in the evening I had a look in the fridge and found some strawberries that I had forgotten about for a few days. I felt very guilty for about a nanosecond and then thoroughly enjoyed them. The strawberries were beautiful, really tasty.
A strange sort of shuffling sound woke me in the middle of last night. When my cat, Stanley, gets something in his ear he shakes his head rapidly and it makes a sort of soft shuffling clapping sound and that was the closest I could come to the sound that had woken me. But this time it kept repeating and going on for longer and longer. I sat up in bed, turned on the bedside light and saw a bat fluttering around obviously trying to find a way out of the bedroom. The windows had been open till about nine last evening and the bat must have come in looking for moths or maybe even for a place to roost. I opened a window for a few minutes but the bat didn’t find it and I didn’t want to invite mosquitoes into the house so I closed it and we both went back to sleep.
This morning I looked around and eventually found it behind a curtain, as I tried to photograph it away it flew up to the ceiling. I don’t want to chase it out into the sunlight now so I’ll let it stay there and leave the window open again this evening in the hope that it finds it’s way out and back to it’s normal roost. It’s a dear little thing and they fly around outside a lot in the evening at this time of year, there are thousands of big moths around so they must find food quite easily. This one looks very well fed doesn’t he?
If he doesn’t find his own way out this evening I’ll have to try and catch him but catching a creature as quick and agile as this without hurting it won’t be easy.
I’m going down to Kas for breakfast at the Derya Beach Restaurant with some friends this morning so I’ll post a couple of photographs of that later and let you know how I got on with the bat.
If you’re in Kaş on Saturday 22nd May (THAT’S THIS WEEK PEOPLE) then go to Büyük Çakıl beach for the Kaş Rock and Blues Festival.
Don’t miss it, everybody who is anybody will be there, free entry!
Going to the veterinary clinic in Fethiye yesterday Alf was asleep most of the way. He has been holding his back left leg up for about a week so I thought it was time to get him looked at by a professional. That sounds as though I don’t care about him but he often limps on one of his back legs and usually after a few days rest and a walk in the mountains he recovers and is fine so if I can’t find an obvious injury I don’t worry for the first few days. I think he probably strains himself sometimes jumping over the fence or playing with the other dogs. Just to confound me as soon as we got to Fethiye and got out of the car at the vet’s place he started walking normally and didn’t show any signs of limping to the vet.
Two good things came out of the visit though so I was glad I took him. The first thing was that when we walked in the reception staff asked if I had brought him to have his hair clipped. Well I hadn’t made an appointment but it sounded like a good idea because the spiky seeds won’t stick to him then and won’t be such a problem to get out, so I said yes please. I asked about seeing the vet, he was busy looking at a puppy that had been run over by a car so they took details of what to be looked at and said come back in an hour. I went and had breakfast at a nearby restaurant and then did a bit of shopping.
When I went back to the vet I walked up to the desk and asked how Alf was and they pointed at a dog sitting waiting behind me, it was Alf! I had walked straight past him, he looked so different with his hair all gone and you could see the markings on the front of his chest that I’d never seen before. I hadn’t recognised him and I was still unsure if it was him until he turned towards me and I saw his left eye and then I knew.
The vet came and had a chat and showed me a long grass seed that he’d taken out of his ear. So this was the second good thing, it must have been in there a long time and I had thought that the brown stuff in his ear was caused by ear mites and had been treating him for that. I was given some ointment with a long soft applicator nozzle to squeeze into his ear every day for the next five days, I tried it this morning and managed to get some in but he doesn’t like it. Of course the vet was able to do it easily because Alf had been sedated I think, and things always look easy when an expert does them.
Anyway here’s a picture of Alf with his haircut and the inset shows him before, quite a difference eh?
And his leg? Well the vet said to make sure he doesn’t do anything too energetic for a few days and then start taking him for walks, exactly what I usually do so I’m glad I’m not doing anything wrong. Oh, and he’s not limping so much this morning and doesn’t seem to be whining so much but it’s early days yet, I’ll let you know how he progresses.
Taking the big rubbish up to the tip in my pick-up is always a bit of an adventure for me. First there is the possibility of getting a puncture in one of the tyres because of all the broken glass there and then there is the conversation that I know will happen when they see me. It’s nice and the people up there are always welcoming, like everyone in Turkey really, their hospitality is legendary.
I took the first load up on Monday and had a chat with Mehmet, Ekrem and his boy. They come from Diyarbakır in the east of Turkey. I find these guys to be very helpful and always ready to smile so I count them among my friends here. Mehmet often says a few words to me in English, imagine a guy working in a rubbish tip in UK being able to speak Turkish eh? I took the remaining stuff up there today. The roofing material that I took was being put aside to use on the roofs of their own place. They build their own shanty type places with what they find amongst the rubbish or people give them so they were happy for me to bring it.
When I drove back past their shacks the children shouted to me so I stopped and took a couple of photos. Here they are, the little one always makes me laugh, she stands there so sure of herself.
Actually I had tried earlier in the day to take the stuff to the tip but was thwarted in my plan by some of the goatherders who were taking their herd up to the summer pastures in the mountains. They were all over the road and I couldn’t be bothered to disturb them by trying to push through, I wasn’t in any hurry so I went back home and had lunch.
Everyone in Kaş is working hard getting things ready for the tourist season and the new marina in is steadily taking shape. There are more pontoons ready now and work on the buildings is progressing quickly. There is a new road by-passing the marina too.
At this time of year the broom plant is in full bloom. There are fantastic patches of this plant all over the place and their wonderful yellow flowers are almost blinding in their intensity.
In the garden this morning having a wander round with the dogs before I started work I noticed this strange-looking clump of stuff on a branch of a juniper bush.
It is made up of a lot of caterpillars of the Oak Processionary Moth all grouped together. They are called processionary because when they walk along the ground they go nose to tail like elephants and their procession can be a couple of metres long. It looks as though they like to sleep together in a big bunch too, there must be some sort of benefit to them from doing this. They used to be found around the Middle East and Mediterranean but in recent years they have colonised parts of northern Europe and UK too.
All those little hairs on them can break off in the event of an attack by a bird or other creature intent on eating them and if ingested they are highly poisonous. The hairs can also float on the breeze and if inhaled by humans can cause very nasty symptoms and can even be fatal if they trigger an allergic reaction. There are reports of dogs losing parts of their tongues and even being killed by getting the hairs in their mouths. I was worried for my dogs because they could easily go sniffing around and come across a procession of them so I gave the bunch of them a liberal dosing with insecticide. If they aren’t dead by tomorrow I will put on some rubber gloves and a spray mask and collect them in a little plastic bag to be flushed down the loo.
I mentioned previously that the goat-herder’s dog comes into the garden, well here he is with Wilfred standing over him to let him know who is top dog around here.
The goat-herder is disgusted with him because he lets my dogs jump all over him, even little Minnie gives his ears a good ragging now and then.
Took the dogs for a walk up to the top of the ridge at the back of the house this morning. My aim was to get a photograph of the valley with the early morning sun lighting it up. Well I got there a bit early and had to wait half an hour or so with the sun rising behind me and the light chasing the shadow across the valley towards me until it got to my house. Mine is the nearest one with the green roof. Click on the picture for the big version.
I had to chuck away some of a previous lot of milk I got from Hanife because I didn’t use it quickly enough so I froze three litres of the last lot. It didn’t really work out though, the cream sort of went into little bits like it had curdled and kept floating on the top of a cup of coffee so I didn’t like that. Well this time I let it stand in the fridge overnight before doing anything with it then I scooped all the cream off and kept it in a different jug before again freezing three litres. I got over a pint of cream off it so I’ll have to make an apple pie and some other things to eat it with.
Did a bit more laying of the stone this morning then went down to Kas. It is starting to get really warm down there now, it’s so pleasant sitting in one of the tea gardens having a drink and a chat and watching the world go by.
A big international cycle race was coming past Kas today, very exciting for lots of people but a complete pain in the ass if you wanted to get anywhere because they closed the main road for about 3 hours. I was lucky to be able to blag permission from the traffic police to cross the road and come up the ‘back’ road to my village. Some of my mates had to stay in town until they opened the road again. I got caught with it last year and had to wait an hour and a half before going on my way.
My best friend in the village, Suleyman, has a new tenant in his first floor apartment, Ali is his name and he and his wife Filiz speak excellent English and I like them very much. Well Ali Bey’s son in law has a hotel in Kalkan so I thought I’d include a link to the website for it. I haven’t been there yet but I’ll go and see it next time I’m over that way. Looking at the website I’d say if you want some really nice traditional Turkish hospitality at a fantastic price this is the place to go.
Update: Just been informed that the link to the hotel has stopped working, sorry about that, I’ll ring them and find out what’s happening. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
Update 2: The message you now get when clicking the link translates as “The website is undergoing maintenance and will be published soon with a new look.”
Going over to the Greek island of Meis is always a treat for me. I like to hear Greek spoken, it reminds me of my days in Cyprus, and I can get a couple of duty free items. As usual I got a bottle of Cognac and one of decent red wine, the other thing they have over there that I can’t get here is Cadbury’s Whole Nut chocolate. I got two 400 gram slabs, you can’t call it a bar of chocolate when it’s that big. Also had a pork chop for lunch and a couple of beers. When I got back home I had a sleep on the sofa on the veranda with the dogs.
This evening one of the Hoopoes was wandering around the garden busily pecking at stuff. I scared it off at first but it came back and I managed to get quite a decent photograph of it. Little bit of motion blur on it’s crest but otherwise quite good except for the lack of light.
200mm 1/50th at f4 ISO 100
Halfway through my breakfast it occurred to me that it might make a photograph. I like the colours.
Last year I went to Izmir for the weekend. I’ve posted this photograph before but I like it so I’m posting it again. We were on a ferry going across Izmir bay in the evening, just in time to catch a nice sunset.
While I was over in Izmir I had a trip over to Çeşme, playground of the rich and famous. Anyway a friend of mine over there gave me some seeds from a few plants in her garden, I got round to planting them this spring and this is how one type came up. I thought it was interesting that the first pair of leaves were rounded and the next had jagged edges.
This happens a lot in nature I imagine but I thought this was quite a good example and I found it interesting. Trouble is I can’t remember what the mature plant looked like so I’m looking forward to watching them grow.
In the garden this morning doing some tidying up I heard the dogs start to bark and looked up to see what they had seen. Hanife, my neighbour was at the gate with her little girl. I went down to see her and she wanted to ask if she could bring her cows in through the other gate to eat the grass growing in the centre and at the sides of the drive down there. Well it saved me the job of cutting it down so I said yes. Eating the grass would be good for the cows too because it is thick, rich grass and not the sparse stuff that grows alongside the roads. It would be good for me in another way, I get my milk from Hanife and what’s good for the cows is good for my milk. It’s beautiful milk too, lovely and creamy and makes fantastic porridge. Here’s a picture of Hanife and her daughter with one of her three cows.
She can bring the cows again. In the past I haven’t suggested it because I didn’t want cow manure full of weed seeds all over the place. Now I have a big container I can shovel it up and let it soak in with some water to make a good feed for some of the plants, they don’t do that much of it anyway.
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