Les Deux Alpes
Ski passes at the larger French resorts are very expensive. It costs €56 per day to ski in Alpe D’Huez but fortunately if you are in resort for more than a week there is a season pass available which is much cheaper. We bought our season passes for €745 including medical insurance for the equivalent of 13 days skiing.
The bonus of buying any pass that is one week or longer in Alpe D’Huez is that you also get a number of days in other ski areas included in the cost. One of these is the nearby report of Les Deux Alpes, which can be seen from some of the Alpe D’Huez slopes.
The town of Les Deux Alpes is sprawling and busy and it is difficult to park so I wasn’t keen on trying to drive up there. However, just like Alpe D’Huez, there are lifts in the valley which directly access the resort. At the bottom end of the village of Venosc is a lift called simply Telecabine de Venosc, with a car park alongside it. The slight disadvantage with this lift is that it arrives in the bottom end of town and the connecting ski lifts are a few hundred metres walk away.
However, once you reach the lifts (the closest being the new Diable lift), it is a very quick ride up the mountain. This is a high resort with the top at 3600m and the town at 1650m. Les Deux Alpes is an unusual resort in that the very top of the mountain, the glacier, has pretty gentle slopes which make up a great beginner area. The more intermediate and advanced skiing is in the middle and then the way back to town is either a wide sweeping blue run or a gnarly steep black run. There are 15 greens, 41 blues, 13 reds and 9 black runs over 119km of slopes. So overall it is a smaller resort than Alpe D’Huez and more geared to the early, intermediate skier.
The lift system in Les Deux Alpes seem to be more modern with fast chairlifts in more places and the lifts seem less prone to queues than in Alpe d’Huez. The ski runs also tend to be much wider than in Alpe d’Huez and there are lots of really cruisy runs making it really suitable for those intermediate skiers.
The mountain itself is made up of different sectors which are either linked by lift or by fairly level ski runs so it takes a bit of time to learn your way around. It is possible to ski all the way from the top at 3600m down to the town without using a lift and the run is just over 12km long with almost 2000m of vertical drop.
The views from Les Deux Alpes are spectacular and from the top it’s possible to see all the way to Mont Blanc and over back towards Alpe d’Huez. Going right to the top of the resort is a bit of a chore though with the final T-Bar lift only accessible after a bit of a trek over flat ground and the same on the way back. This is hard work at over 3000m.
There has been talk for a number of years of a lift linking Alpe d’Huez and Les Deux Alpes but the construction was delayed by Covid and there is no go live date currently fixed.
Alpe d’Huez Town
In order to keep our costs down we had booked most of our accommodation for our trip to the Alps in the town of Allemond in the valley below Alpe d’Huez. But for the middle two weeks we had decided to treat ourselves to an apartment in the resort itself. We figured that 2 months in the thick of a ski resort would probably be too much but it would be nice to have a short ‘holiday’ in the town where we would probably eat and drink too much and be grateful to get back to the peace and quiet of Allemond.
Alpe D’Huez town is divided into a number of quartiers, each with their own small centre of shops, bars and restaurants. Some of these quartiers are nearer the slopes than others with Cognet, Jeux and Bergers being closest to the slopes. For the other quartiers of Vieil Alpe, Passeuax, Eclose, Outaris and Huez Village there are both lifts and a free shuttle bus to make getting to the slopes easier. Fortunately, more through luck than anything else, we had booked accommodation in Jeux which was only 100m away from the nearest piste.
In hindsight, and fortunately, it looks like Jeux is one of the better places to be based with a lovely outdoor pool (heated of course), the ice-rink and a short walk to the luge, along with a good selection of bars and restaurants.
One of the disadvantages of ski resorts is that once the lifts shut, at around 5pm, you need to be back in your home town as by road the various settlements can be a long way from each other and potentially a very expensive taxi ride. So it was very fortuitous for us, that while we were staying in Alpe d’Huez town itself and not Allemond, the ESF (French Ski School) put on a fantastic evening show on one of the slopes straight above town.
The event show-cased all the different styles of skiing such as telemark, snowboarding, skiing, slalom, biathlon, monoskis and parapenting. This was interspersed by freestyle skiing and snowboarding over a jump.
The whole event ended with a spectacular torchlight procession down the mountain and a fireworks display.
Global Warming
One of the reasons we chose Alpe D’Huez for skiing was its high altitude, with slopes as high as 3300m. We wanted a snow sure resort that would guarantee snow for our whole trip.
This turned out to be a good decision as February has been one of the worst winter months for snowfall in history. Only 5cms of snow fell on the slopes throughout the whole of February. The normal expectation for this part of the Alps is around 62cms, so we are way off the average.
Not only has there been a lack of snow but almost every day since we arrived has been a blue-sky day. Curiously the ski areas and the immediately surrounding valleys have been clear of clouds but the valleys moving away from the Alps have been filled with thick cloud nearly every day. Some days we’ve seen a real cloud inversion in the surrounding valleys, which tends to clear by lunchtime.
The impact of this weather, with highs of 14C (the highest temperature I have seen while skiing in February), means that a lot of the snow cover from earlier in the season is melting. The pisteurs have been doing an amazing job at keeping the pistes in good shape but despite this, some of the lower slopes are now closed, several of them are surrounded by exposed grass and those that are open are becoming narrower by the day. Having said that, it is still possible to ski down to the lower lying towns of the ski area, it’s just that the ski conditions are what you might expect towards the end of the season, not at its peak.
There is no doubt that this hasn’t (so far – I’m still hoping!) been a great season for skiing in the Alps and while this may be a freaky one-off warm snap, I worry that this is a sign of things to come. For now I am just grateful to have had the opportunity to spend time on the snow.
It is not all doom and gloom though and the top of the resort, over around 2500m, is still in good condition with cold temperatures and full snow cover. The pistes are icy in the morning but soften as the day progresses, this softening does hasten the formation of moguls but these are kept under control by the pisteurs overnight, apart from on a small number of unpisted runs which are kept that way.
Skiing
We’ve always loved mountains and one of our favourite things to do in the mountains in winter is to ski. So before we started travelling we decided that we wanted to spend some time in the Alps in winter to try and improve our technique and to enjoy all that comes with skiing.
Our last trip out to the French Alps – Val Thorens in 2020, had ended very abruptly when about 2 hours after we arrived at our hotel the French government announced that from midnight all ski resorts were closing. Then ensued the utter chaos of independently trying to find our way home when our travel agency failed to step up to the plate. A week later, back in London, lockdown commenced.
There is no denying that skiing is a very expensive hobby and the prices in ski resorts are very high during the winter season so we had to find a way to ski for a couple of months without breaking the bank. We knew we wanted to ski in France – which is home to the biggest ski areas in the world and an easy drive from the UK.
After much research we came to realise that in recent years a number of the largest resorts have been building cable cars from the surrounding valleys to directly access the ski areas. These allow large car parks to be built and easy access without the long, slow, sometimes wheel-chained drive up the switchback roads for those who are not staying in resort. Another positive of course is that accommodation in the valleys, away from the resorts is much cheaper (and less busy). So, the small towns and villages surrounding the bigger resorts became our focus.
The small village of Allemond (at approx. 700m), better known for being on some of the best alpine cycle routes, has recently had a fast gondola lift built to directly access into Oz de Oisans, which is part of the sizable Alpe D’Huez Grande Domaine. There is a large car park at the bottom of the lift and a free shuttle bus through the village to and from the lift (although not as frequently as one would like).
The lift from Allemond is called the Eau D’Olle and takes about 10 minutes to reach Oz de Oisans. From Oz there are 2 different lifts which in another 10 minutes or so take you to over 2000m – one on the Vaujany side of the resort and one to the Alpe D’Huez side.
Unlike many of the valleys in the Alps, Allemond receives sunshine for most of the day which given its altitude of only 700m makes it a warm and pleasant place to be. It is a quiet and peaceful village (this may not be the case in the summer, there are quite a lot of campsites and public toilets for such a small place, which makes us wonder if it is much busier in the summer months with cyclists) with four cafes/restaurants, a Spar, post office, newsagent, medical centre, an excellent bakery, pharmacy, tourist office and church (in the upper village).
A pretty river runs through Allemond village from the large lake/hydroelectric dam (used for water sports in the summer), and in addition there is an outdoor swimming pool and climbing pinnacle (open only in the summer months). The village also has a square where they host a (small) market on Sunday mornings and live music and food/drinks tents on Wednesday evenings.
If like us you are staying in town for longer than a couple of weeks, then you can find a larger supermarket a 10 minute drive away (called Casino) in the larger town of Bourg de Oisans. The supermarket conveniently has washing machines outside. Very handy, if like us, your accommodation does not have a washing machine. I will admit when we first drove through the village we were underwhelmed and wondered what we would do with our time. However, after spending just a couple of weeks here we have grown quite fond of the village and its hidden gems.
The ski area of Alpe D’Huez is fairly large with the sprawling town itself in the middle at 1800m but stretching to a number of outlying villages which are lower down. The top of the ski area is at the peak of Pic Blanc which is at 3300m and the lowest point is Vaujany at 1250m. There is a good spread of different slopes with 35 greens, 30 blues, 31 reds and 19 blacks.
One of the highlights of the ski area is the 9km long Sarenne slope which drops from the top of Pic Blanc at 3300m down into the deep valley below Alpe D’Huez. It is categorised as a black but in reality it is more like a tough red although conditions can vary considerably along its length and parts can get fairly moguled later in the day.
My personal favourite is a fabulous run which drops from the 2800m Dome de Rousses to below the town of Vaujany. This goes down the black rated La Fare run which is a steep run through the trees to its own cable car. It is a pretty run, around 7.5km long with 1500m of vertical and tends to be a bit quieter than the rest of the resort, making it without doubt more serene than Sarenne.
The UK Lake District
When we were telling our friends what our plans were for the Winter the universal response was along the lines of “You’re nuts!”. Well no one has ever accused us of making sensible decisions.
So on returning from the balmy Mediterranean coast of Turkey, we picked up our car and headed North to spend two months in a rental cottage just outside the Lake District in Cumbria. Yes In the middle of Winter.
On arrival in Tebay – just off the M6 and sitting between the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales National Park – we were pleased to see that our two bedroom cottage was in lovely condition and although small, was much bigger than the studio apartments and hotel rooms we have been used to over the last few months. The lounge and kitchen are even separate rooms and there is a bath – Luxury!
We have spent most of our time exploring the Lakes but we haven’t entirely neglected the Yorkshire Dales. One trip was to the Ribblehead Viaduct which is 400m long, 32m high and opened in 1875.
The weather through December was bitterly cold, dropping to as low as -12c and covering the landscape in a cloak of hoar frost, but this came coupled with blue skies and beautiful days. Absolutely perfect for hiking as there was no snow to trudge through.
We soon discovered that those sort of temperatures meant that there was a huge amount of ice on the hiking paths, some paths becoming ice rinks.
A quick trip into the Climber’s Shop in Ambleside and we had purchased some Kahtoola Microspikes which are perfect for hiking in icy conditions. I soon tested them out and they helped me climb up a 45 degree slab of ice on the way to the peak of the Crinkle Crags. I just couldn’t have got to the top without them.
The Lake District is famous with British Hiker’s but we had only ever spent 1 weekend here previously so it was a real journey of exploration for us.
The lovely thing about the cottage we are renting is that it is possible to hike straight from the door. One way goes straight up onto the Howgills, a series of grassy fells, and the other way, once you are across the M6, is the Eastern edge of the Lake District and you come across a valley known as the Other Borrowdale.
I’ve hiked across to the Other Borrowdale a few times and the lovely thing about these fells is that you can come across herds of friendly fell ponies – I expect they are after a treat but one even let me pet it. The fell ponies are an endangered species of horse that is native to Cumbria and there are only around 6,500 of them. The fell ponies are great for the environment as their grazing promotes biodiversity by controlling the spread of gorse and trampling areas to allow seeds to have space to germinate.
December flew by with lots of hiking, climbing Helvellyn, Blencathra, the Crinkle Crags and ticking off multiple Wainwright’s with each hike.
Perhaps one of the most beautiful places that we have visted in the lakes is called Buttermere. This can be very still and have amazing reflections. It is easy to walk around the whole lake and there are also a number of hikes to up to the fells surrounding the lake.
We headed back South for Christmas with family and then it was a fairly miserable 9 hour journey back (should have been 4-5 hours) to the Lake District in terrible weather after Christmas. It felt like everyone was travelling on the same day and that combined with rail strikes and bad weather caused complete gridlock on the motorways.
Winter Time in The Lakes
Following beautiful cold but clear days in December, the first couple of weeks of January in the Lake District were absolutely terrible – near constant heavy rain coupled with low cloud and very poor visibility.
We pretty much hunkered down with only a couple of damp hikes on the best of the days to break the monotony and some binge watching of series on Netflix. Of course this is the risk you take in the Lakes in Winter.
And then the temperature dropped again and the snow and ice came. This was coupled with much better weather with blue skies and low temperatures. It was nowhere near as cold as before Christmas.
A fantastic hike in deep snow where I was the only person on the mountain up to Red Pike was the reward for my patience. I didn’t quite make it to the top as the snow kept getting deeper and over knee deep snow on a 45 degree slope was proving heavy going. However, the views back over Buttermere and of Ullswater were worth the effort.
Returning to Buttermere the wind had dropped and the lake was completely still, reflecting the surroundings perfectly. This is my favourite place in the Lakes so far.
The hike to Red Pike was actually a last minute decision as I wasn’t able to get to the walk I wanted to do at the other end of Buttermere. After so much rain and flooding, the mountain road was completely covered in ice and after several hair-raising attempts at getting up it, I eventually abandoned that idea.
I took the opportunity in the good weather to visit some of the iconic views in the Lake district; hiking up to Rydal Caves, the Sweden Bridge above Ambleside, some waterfalls around Grasmere and the stone circle at Castlerigg near Keswick.
The ice certainly made the roads interesting with the high passes pretty much impassable without chains and while the A roads had been gritted, a lot of the B roads were really sketchy.
After the snow and ice came the thaw and some pretty dense fog. This led to a very atmospheric hike around the Ingleton Waterfall trail in the Yorkshire Dales. But anywhere with grand landscapes was definitely due to the visibility, which was down to 50m or so.
The Ingleton Waterfall trail is around 8km long and is loop going up one river in a gorge and down another in a gorge. Both flow through the same small town of Ingleton. It is a curated trail and therefore there is a charge for doing the hike but no charge for parking so it actually works out around the same price as most of the parking in the Lakes.
Our time in the Lakes was drawing to a close so there was time for one last hike. A great day, in the now almost completely thawed landscape, climbing Glaramara. I didn’t see a single person on the entire hike and it felt like I had the mountains to myself – one of the benefits of hiking at this time of year.
So 2 months in the UK Lakes District in winter was an equally mixed bag of appalling weather and glorious winter days. When it isn’t raining it feels like the perfect time to be up here. The hills are deserted, there is no problem parking anywhere and winter conditions can make the hills more beautiful than ever. You do have to be careful driving on the B roads when it’s icy and sometimes have to make longer journeys to avoid the high passes but with such an amazing landscape there are still plenty of hikes to choose from. The cold conditions are not so bad if you dress right and hiking keeps you warm anyway.
When the rain falls (all day), the wind blows and the visibility reduces, it is definitely a less pleasant place to be and outdoor activities are off the agenda unless you are much hardier than me. It is also less easy to do the more touristy things on the rainy days like visiting castles and gardens etc., as many of them are only open from March to October. We did however visit Lowther Castle (open all year) and Brougham Castle (open only at weekends in Winter) and on a particularly bad day when we just had to be indoors, the infamous Keswick Pencil Museum!
Lowther Castle (below) was occupied from the middle ages by the Earls of Lonsdale and their families but the family fell on hard times and the castle was closed in 1937. It was used in WW2 by an army tank regiment but the roof was removed in 1957 in order to avoid taxes and it fell into ruin. It is still in the same family however, and a lot of work has been done, and is still on going with the help of the National Trust to restore some of the building and the gardens to their former glory. Definitely worth a visit.
The pencil museum is better than it sounds. Although the only part that really captured (excuse the pun) our attention was the use of the pencil in WW2 to smuggle maps and compasses across enemy lines to aid escape if captured. Charles Fraser Smith, the inspiration for Q in James Bond, asked the pencil company to produce a pencil containing a map and compass for Lancaster Bomber Crews to help them if shot down and it tells the story of how this was secretly created.
Overall though, I would recommend spending time up here in the winter if you have time to enjoy the fair weather days when they come. Some days it even looks like summer!
Travelling In Turkey
Entry Into Turkey
For UK and EU citizens entry into Turkey is possible on a visa free tourist basis for up to 90 days within any 180 day period. So it couldn’t be easier.
However US citizens are required to get an E-Visa prior to travel.
Driving In Turkey
We decided to hire a car for our month-long trip to the Southwest of Turkey. We wanted to be able to move around easily and not be tied down to tourist trips, particularly as we were outside of the main season. This proved to be a great decision.
We managed to find a car for a full month for £300. That works out at only £10 per day. We ended up driving around 3000km in total so I think we got our money’s worth and we went to lots of places off the beaten track which we just couldn’t have got to otherwise.
Our car was a Fiat Egea (Known as Tipo in the rest of Europe) and it had 68k KM on the clock when we got it. It had a couple of small scrapes but was in good condition and we didn’t have any problems with it.
We used a small car hire firm called Boycar that were based outside the airport. On arrival we had to give them a quick call and 10 minutes later we were picked up and taken to their office. About 10 minutes of paperwork and we were ready to go.
Overall we thought that the standard of driving in Turkey was pretty good although when we mentioned this to the locals they invariably found it hilarious… I guess they maybe haven’t driven through the centre of Lima or a little closer to home, Sicily – experiences not to the forgotten! Like anywhere there are some aggressive drivers but with some defensive driving and a cool head it was a pretty good place to drive.
Perhaps the only area that took some concentration were the roundabouts. The general rule in turkey is that you give way whilst on the roundabout to traffic entering the roundabout. However, this isn’t always the case and with some you give way to traffic already on the roundabout. You just have to keep an eye on the signs as there is generally clear indication which set of rules apply.
There are quite a lot of police checkpoints where the police cordon off part of the road to pull drivers over. We were waved through all but once and on that occasion as soon as the policeman realised we spoke English and were clearly tourists he waved us on, so we are still not sure what they are actually checking.
We really enjoyed seeing the fake police cars that are pretty common at the side of the road to encourage people to slow down !
Speed Limits are mostly marked with signs at the side of the road however they are rarely obeyed and speeding is common place. The motorway limit is 120km/h (although certain motorways have a 130 or even 140 limit we did not encounter this) and main roads are set at 90km/h. Urban areas have a 50km/h limit.
Where to Stay
As we were travelling in the off-season in Turkey there weren’t a huge amount of people in the hotels and therefore, despite some hotels shutting for the winter, there was a lot of availability.
We had decided to not book any accommodation for our trip but to remain flexible and book 1 or 2 days in advance when we were sure of our plans.
Booking.com is blocked in Turkey and you cannot make local bookings using this website. However you can get around this by using a VPN or there are plenty of other hotel booking sites that do work in Turkey. We found that using google maps to show hotels in an area worked really well and this then gives you the cheapest price for online booking.
Prices for hotels vary considerably and it is possible to pay £100’s per night to stay in very upscale places. However, if like us you are on a tight budget there is plenty of affordable accommodation.
In general we paid between £18-£25 per night over the course of our trip. Of course this was off-season. These prices have increased since last year as inflation was running high in Turkey while we were there. We booked almost all of our nights in advance over the internet however for a few nights we just wandered in off the street and found that it was possible to negotiate a reasonable rate.
A few nights we paid a bit more in the more expensive areas but our most expensive night was £30.
In almost all the hotels the cost included breakfast although the standard of the breakfast was very variable. From big buffet breakfasts with hot and cold options, traditional mezes, through to a plate with hard boiled egg, salad and bread we had a real variety.
Eating in Turkey
To be perfectly honest we had no idea what to expect from Turkish food and we were so happy when we got to Turkey and started dining out.
The prices in Turkish restaurants vary wildly from town to town but in each area most of the restaurants seem to have similar prices (although of course there is some variation). The most expensive places are unsurprisingly the most touristy and, for us, these were Antalya, Side and Goreme but even in the most touristy places you can still find cheap local eateries. As always, the general rule of thumb to getting quality food and good value for money is to check out where the locals eat.
Our cheapest meal of the whole trip was around 80TL for two which is about £4 and our most expensive meal was 500TL or around £25.
If you want to drink alcohol this is fairly expensive with a bottle of beer around 80TL (£4) and the price of this doesn’t vary much from place to place. Efes is the most common beer in Turkey and it’s pretty decent, although there are a number of different types (Pilsener, dark, malt and others) so plenty to work through to find your favourite!
In terms of food, some of the our favourite local dishes included Manti (Turkish pasta), Pide (Turkish Pizza), Lahmucan (Flatbread with Toppings), Tavuk Durum (chicken wrap), Beyti Kebab (meat in pastry) and Adana Kebab (spiced ground beef/lamb skewers).
Internet
Every hotel we stayed in had free WIFI available and almost all of them had good service. The speeds varied from around 10mb – 30mb but everywhere had decent speed.
For those with UK phone contracts it is unlikely that calls and data in Turkey will be included in your package and therefore will be a pricey extra. To overcome this we bought a local pay as you go Sim card for use while on the go. We particularly relied on mobile data for navigation while driving.
Signing up for a pay as you go Sim is simple. There are phone shop in all the towns, we visited Vodafone in Antalya and for £25 bought a sim with 20 gb of data and a large amount of calls and texts. This was a 30-day package which suited us perfectly. To recharge the sim with another 20gb of data is only £10. In order to sign up for this you do need to take your passport but it only took about 10 minutes to get set up.
The mobile phone signal was strong everywhere we went and I think the only place that we suffered a dead spot was deep in a Cappodocian valley.
Museum Pass
Almost all of the ancient sites in Turkey come with an entry charge which can vary from as low as 20 TL (less than £1) up to 200 TL (£10). Ephesus was the most expensive site we visited and in addition, they charge extra to access the excavated houses (85 TL/ £3.50) and the Ephesus museum (50TL/ £2).
When you are touring around these costs can add up really quickly. Fortunately, there is a multi-day pass that can be purchased called the Museum Pass. This can be bought at the entry to all of the ancient sites/museums and costs 1000 TL (€50 or £43) and lasts for 15 days. If you are travelling for two weeks and planning on visiting a lot of sites this will definitely be good value.
It is also possible to buy cheaper 7 day passes for the Mediterranean or Aegean regions, a three day pass for Cappadocia or a 5 day Istanbul pass. These all represent worse value than the 15 day pass though.
We definitely visited more sites and museums than we would have if we were paying individually and thought that the Museum Pass represented great value for money.
Coastal Bound
The drive back to Antalya from Cappadocia is over 500km so we decided to take a few days to drive back along the coast. Day one of this journey was to get down to the coast which was a drive of just over 300km and a total distance to Antalya of over 700km but we hoped it would be more interesting this way and we would get to see a bit more of the country.
Our first stop was right at the edge of the Cappadocia region to a little visited monastery called the Gümüşler Monastery. The monastery is hidden behind the rock face of a small cliff, peppered with cave dwellings along its full length. Once through the door you emerge into a square courtyard which is open to the sky and surrounded by carved walls on each side. Behind the walls are rooms and an ornate church.
The monastery also stretches below ground with a network of buried rooms and even contains a small hole carved between the levels of the courtyard and the deepest room for communication.
After exploring the caves at Gümüşler we carried on with our trip towards the coast, passing through a green, cold and windy deserted highland plateau, before dropping down to the coast where the temperature rose several degrees.
We had decided to spend a couple of nights on our route back in Kizkalesi, a Turkish holiday resort boasting 2 castles, 1 in the bay and one on the headland. You could probably swim or kayak to the castle in the bay but we didn’t attempt this.
At this time of year, most of the resorts and hotels in Kizkalesi were closed for the season but we were able to find a few options and although most of the restaurants on the seafront were also closed there were plenty to choose from on the main road through the town. One of the best (and cheapest) meals of our entire trip was at one of these restaurants. There was no menu, but a chiller full of marinated meats from which the owner suggested different meals. The Shish Kebab was fantastic.
There are a few things to occupy you in Kizkalesi, in particular the caves in the surrounding hillsides, known as The Caves of Heaven and Hell and the Asthma Caves.
Hell Cave is a deep but fairly open shaft which can’t be accessed but is viewed from a glass bottomed platform above, whereas Heaven Cave is a massive cave in a gorge which has a path that drops down into its depths. At the mouth of the cave is a ruined church and below this the path drops down about 500m into the bowels of the earth. At the bottom a rushing noise can be heard from an underground river.
Also near to these caves is the Asthma Cave (Astim in Turkish) (which is on the same ticket so make sure you don’t pay twice) where a spiral staircase leads down into a humid and hot cave with a circular path leading through the stalactites and stalagmites. The Asthma cave was the most spectacular of the 3 caves despite it being less of an attraction.
What really surprised us about the coast was how good the weather was, we actually spent some time on the beach and had a dip in the sea. A welcome surprise right at the end of November.
Also in Kizkalesi we visited the remains of the small ancient city of Elauiussa Sebaste. Not much has been excavated but there is a theatre and baths where mosaic floor tiles can still been seen in some sections, including images of fish and dolphins.
On leaving Kizkalesi we headed towards Alanya which is a big seaside resort town but on the way we decided to stop at our last ancient city, Anemurium. This is definitely off the beaten track and we were the only people there when we visited.
The city of Anemurium is spread across the hillside and slopes down to the pebbled beach. Anemurium was abandoned in the mid-7th century after the Arab occupation of Cyprus made this stretch of the coast unsafe.
From here we carried on to Alanya where we had booked a hotel right on the main strip. After driving past first time round on a one way dual carriage way, we had to stop and ask where to park in this very busy town – and the hotel directed us up a narrow dead end road which meant a tricky five point turn to get out.
Having loved pretty much everywhere we had been in Turkey it’s a real shame our last stop was Alanya as this was the place we liked least on our whole trip. It’s a busy tourist resort with all the chains like McDonalds and Dominos and most of the beachfront is inaccessible because of beach clubs blocking the access. They were of course all closed at this time of year but the town was still very busy. Many people of course would love Alanya for these very reasons, it’s just personal preference.
Having said this, there is plenty to do around Alanya if a busy town is not your thing. It is well placed to visit the Sapadere Canyon which is a lovely walk up a narrow gorge to a waterfall at the end and the drive there is through some beautiful countryside.
On the way back from Sapadere we also stopped off at the Dim Magarasi Cave. This is a much bigger cave than the Asthma Cave and the walkway through stretches around 500m until it reaches a small lake. The cave has incredible formations and is well worth a visit. Unfortunately it is lit by orange lights which are great for night vision but not so good for photography.
It was sadly our last day in Turkey which meant approximately a 2 hour drive back to Antalya.
On the way to the airport we stopped off at Manvangat, near Side (where we had been almost a month previously) to see the waterfalls and have some lunch. The waterfall was beautiful so it was nice to make the stop, however the restaurants and vendors were all closed for the season so lunch would have to wait.
We had time to spare on reaching Antalya so we stopped off at Duden Park to see the Lower Duden Falls which flows into the sea. As it was a sunny Sunday afternoon the park was full of families enjoying their day off. We had a lovely lunch at a restaurant in the Park and enjoyed watching one of the waitresses repeatedly trying to chase off three friendly stray dogs to no avail, eventually giving in and taking them a plate of food.
After a lazy lunch it was finally time to drop the car at the car hire shop, and head to the airport.
We had been told by the airline in a text message to arrive early for check-in as we should expect extra security checks. This just led to a long queue at check-in, which didn’t open early and meant there was a long queue of very frustrated passengers (2 of which almost came to blows) and no sign of any extra checks. Ah the joys of low cost international air travel!
Cappadocia
Cappadocia had been at the top of the list of things we were excited about when we planned our trip to Turkey. Fortunately we were not disappointed as Cappadocia lives up to its billing with a mixture of unreal landscapes, underground cities and ancient cave dwellings that make it a very special destination.
When we woke up on our first morning in Cappadocia we were more than a little surprised to find that it was snowing! Did I mention that the whole area is in the interior of the country and at around an altitude of 1000m. The climate here is completely different to the coast and we were getting both barrels on our first day.
The good news is that Cappadocia has a number of underground cities to be explored, which was a perfect excursion on a cold, snowy day.
These cities are multi-level living spaces which have been carved out of the rock stretching up to 12 levels down. They were built to allow the inhabitants to hide from invading armies, with little clue of their existence from the surface. Around 200 underground cities have been discovered in Cappadocia and it is believed there are more. Many of them are linked together with underground tunnels.
The first underground city we visited was Kaymakli, which is very popular and on the coach tour route. Only a small section (just 4 levels) of the city is open to tourists but in actual fact, the city is 40 metres deep on 8 levels. Up to 3000 people would have been able to live here.
Construction of this city is believed to have been started by the Phrygians in the 8th century BC.
It was hard work moving around in this city, we had assumed with it being underground that it would be cold and damp but it was in fact very warm despite the weather outside and the air was quite dry and dusty. Moving around was also a challenge in some sections due to the low ceiling height.
The second city we visited was called Derinkuyu, which is about 10km further from Goreme than Kaymakli and as a result was much quieter in terms of the number of tourists. That aside, the city is one of the biggest and stretches to a depth of 85m. It could house 20,000 people along with their livestock over 18 levels.
There is some debate as to whether these cities were permanently inhabited or only used when the people living above ground were threatened.
Derinkuyu was much cooler than Kaymakli and not quite as dusty (this was probably as there were less tourists) but the corridors were just as small.
Our second day in Cappadocia was completely different with blue skies and sunshine. One of the things that Cappadocia is famous for are the sunrise hot air balloon flights over the landscape, with over 200 taking off each day. They only fly on days with good weather and the government controls the flights not the balloon companies.
We booked a balloon trip on our last morning in Cappadocia but were disappointingly informed in the afternoon of the previous day that the forecast was for wind and the balloons would be grounded. Oh well, it gives us a good reason to come back. The price of the 1 hour balloon flights have been on the increase but we found a reputable company offering a trip for €130 per person.
Despite not being able to take our own flight, we were lucky to see the balloons flying two days in a row, firstly from the roof of our hotel and secondly, once we were more familiar with our surroundings, from an area known as sunset point (having first scraped a thick layer of ice off our rental car).
We had chosen to stay in the town of Goreme in Cappadocia, which is the largest tourist town and is in the perfect place to see the many highlights of this region.
Just down the road from the town is the Goreme Open Air Museum. This is an area of cave dwellings and a particularly large number of cave churches.
The highlight here is the Dark church (or Karanlik Kalise), which is not surprisingly quite dark inside, but has remarkably well preserved frescoes on all the walls. No pictures are allowed in here and there is a guard to enforce this.
These frescoes and the church itself date from around the 11th century AD. It is interesting to note that in nearly all of the frescoes in the rock churches in Cappadocia the eyes of the figures have been scratched out. I was told by a local resident that this was because in the past some locals believed that drinking tea with paint scrapings from the eyes of the frescoes had healing properties.
Just up the road from the Goreme museum we found a small site with a rock cut monastery (the Aynali Church). There was no one around when we arrived and a gate over the entrance was locked but a guy arrived and let us in for a nominal fee – also handing us a torch.
The ground floor was a church but on the upper floor there was a big room with a small passage at one end. The small passage was only big enough to crawl through and led via a 20m long snaking route to a large room with no windows.
We also visited the Zelve Open Air Museum which is a few miles drive from Goreme. It is not as busy as the Goreme museum and is over a bigger area. The Zelve churches are some of the oldest in Cappadocia dating back to the 500s. The dwellings in the Zelve valleys were occupied until the 1950’s when the danger of collapse forced the inhabitants to relocate.
There are two main valleys to this area both of which are lined with cave dwellings. Again there is an impressive rock cut church but with no photos allowed.
We visited the Zelve museum at the end of the day and ended up having to run around before getting escorted to the exit by a very friendly security guard as they wanted to lock up and go home.
Visible from far and wide in Cappadocia is the Rock Castle of Uchisar. This is a gigantic pillar of rock at the highest point in Cappadocia that has been tunnelled into and used as a fortress. It is possible to climb through a series of internal and external stairs to the top for views across Cappadocia.
One of the highlights of a visit to Cappadoccia is hiking through the valleys of this incredible landscape. It is possible to hike straight from Goreme and to do one valley at a time or link several into longer hikes.
While in the area we hiked through Pigeon valley, Rose and Red Valley as a circular hike and from Uchisar back to Goreme through White and Love valleys. All told I hiked over 30km in three days fitted in around visiting the sites mentioned above.
Each of the valleys has its own character and is worth visiting to see very different structures and colours in the rock.
One of the highlights of Rose valley is a well preserved rock cut church with frescoes. The landscape is littered with cave dwellings and churches. There are over 400 churches that have been recorded and I am sure there are many more undiscovered in the valleys.
Love valley is so named for its remarkably phallic fairy chimneys which are up to 30m high and are formed of eroded volcanic ash know as Tuff. Tuff is what makes up all the fairy chimneys in the Cappadocia region. The Tuff was covered with Basalt which has then eroded away to leave the bizarre landscape we see today. The softness of the Tuff is what makes it so easy to dig the cave dwellings, cities and churches of the region.
Goreme is a very touristy place and as a result the restaurants can be a bit hit or miss. Prices are high and quality is not necessarily so good. However we can wholly recommend a restaurant called Chef Kebap. We walked past and saw that it was busy with Turkish people. Like most traditional restaurants there was no alcohol licence. They served fantastic meze for free at the start.
We had been wanting to try a local speciality called Testi or Pottery Kebab which is a slow cooked stew (chicken, lamb or beef) that has been cooked in a single use clay pot sealed with a pastry lid for around 3 hours. These can be seen cooking over open fires in front of several of the Goreme restaurants. These were duly delivered in a flaming dish and a wonderful piece of theatre cracking the pot open with a large knife and serving it.
Overall we had an amazing time in Cappadocia but, due to the delay in Pamukkale, time was against us and we needed to start heading back towards Antalya for our flight home. I would thoroughly recommend visiting this region to anyone as it is unlike anywhere else we have ever been. The mix of fairy chimneys, amazing landscapes coupled with the history makes it a fabulous destination.
Ephesus and East
The main reason for heading West along the coast was to end up at our most Northern Point – Ephesus. This is the most complete classical metropolis in Europe and was a major city with over 250k inhabitants.
But before reaching Ephesus and its adjacent modern city of Selcuk we had a day of driving from Akyaka. We stopped off at two ancient but very different cities on the way though.
First up was Miletus which was a harbour city until the bay silted up after the 15th century leaving it over 10km inland and it became abandoned. This city is truly ancient and had been inhabited since it was established by the bronze age Minoans. Most of the large buildings of the city however relate to the Roman occupation from around 100 BC onwards. It was almost empty of tourists as it is off the beaten track, at least at this time of year.
Then we headed up the road to Priene, which is situated in the shadow of Mt Mykale on a wooded plateau.
The highlight of Priene is the Temple of Athena with its massive columns which was funded by Alexander the Great. The full temple would have been enormous when all the columns were standing.
Selcuk is the adjacent town to Ephesus and feels like a proper Turkish town untarnished by tourism. Most people visit Ephesus on a coach tour and are bussed in from the coast. We ate in some lovely local restaurants and enjoyed trying some different foods here during our two night stay at the grandly named Ephesus Palace Hotel.
Selcuk also holds the Ephesus museum which has lots of the statues and carvings taken from the site. It is also home to a large castle – Ayasoluk Castle.
Ephesus is just outside the town and is one of the most popular tourist sites in Turkey. In the summer season there are so many tourists that its difficult to actually see the ruins, fortunately in November there were less tourists and we arrived early before many of the tour groups. Despite this it was still the busiest ancient site that we visited in Turkey.
Ephesus was the capital of Roman Asia Minor and the fourth largest Roman city (after Rome, Alexandria and Antioch). It was a major centre of commerce and remained important even as Christianity took hold with St John supposedly settling here with the Virgin Mary after the death of Jesus and writing his gospel here.
The city began to decline in the 3rd century AD and was sacked by the Germanic goths and this coupled with earthquakes and the silting up of the harbour hastened the collapse of the city.
The highlight of Ephesus is the Library of Celsus which has been extensively rebuilt and was the third largest library in the ancient world.
For me however the most enjoyable part of the city was in a roofed complex which protects 7 well preserved terraced houses which would have been the homes of aristocratic Romans. The mosaics and painted frescoes are astonishing and give great insight into how ancient buildings were actually decorated.
After leaving Selcuk we drove East with a planned destination of Pamukkale. However, before getting there we stopped at the city of Aphrodisias which was very impressive and beautifully quiet after the crowds of Ephesus.
Aphrodisias is just over 100km east of Ephesus and is another large city that had 150,000 inhabitants in the 3rd Century AD. It was abandoned in the 12th century after having become a Christian Byzantine city from the 7th century.
This site is notable for the three-storey high Sebasteion which was decorated with carvings of Greek myths and imperial notables. This has been partially rebuilt but most of the carvings are actually held in the museum. It would have been an incredibly impressive building.
In addition there is a large (270m long) stadium which is one of the biggest and best preserved of the classical stadiums which would have been able to seat up to 30,000 spectators.
We finally made it to Pamukkale to see the famous Travertines planning only a brief 2 night stay. Unfortunately this was extended to 4 nights after we both fell ill with a stomach bug which happened to be while we were staying in one of the worst hotels of our trip, but that’s just travelling for you.
Pamukkale is famous for the bright white travertine terraces which tower above the town. At the top of the travertines is the Roman city of Hierapolis.
The town is a ramshackle tourist town that has few charms. The Travertines themselves are sold as one of the highlights of Turkey but the photos of bright blue ponds on the gleaming terraces are old and the natural ponds are currently empty and therefore much less striking. The ponds that exist are man made and lack the beauty of the natural ones and the whole area is a bit disappointing particularly as it gets very busy with tourists from bus tours during the day. It is possible to walk down the travertine terraces from Hierapolis, but you have to walk barefoot to protect the terraces which can be uncomfortable and slippery.
The town of Hierapolis was a Roman spa town and is spread out over a wide area. The central area gets busy with tour groups but they don’t seem to visit much of the city which can be wandered around in relative peace.
Laodicea is another city only 8km away from Pamukkale which was a situated across two major trade routes so was a bustling commercial city. It has none of the highlights of some of the more famous sites but is notable for having two theatres – one of which has not been excavated and one of which is in the process of being fully restored.
When we finally felt well enough to move on from Pamukkale we set off to travel further North and East to Cappadocia. This was 2 days driving so we decided to break the journey in Aksehir which is a decidedly untouristy agricultural city in the Turkish interior.
We stayed in perhaps our favourite hotel (Aksehir Butik Hotel) of the whole trip which was an historic building hidden down a side street in the town. The breakfast we got here was all included in the cost of the room and was definitely the best that we had on the whole trip with breads, cheeses, olives, a chorizo/egg mix, and a selection of pastes and jams.
Aksehir is the supposed burial site of Nasrettin Hodja who is a figure from Muslim folklore. He was a philosopher who was a wise witty man and is the centre of many stories designed to teach or provoke thought. In Aksehir there is an urban park devoted the Hodja with statues depicting various famous stories.
Miracle of the Turban – a Hodja Story
One day a man brought a letter to the Hodja and said:
Hodja Effendi, please read it to me.,
The Hodja saw that it was written in a foreign language and said:
I cannot read that, it isn’t written in Turkish.
The man became angry:
You are a teacher. You should be ashamed of your turban! You cannot read a letter.
The Hodja put the turban on the head of the man and said:
If the miracle is in the turban, take it and read the letter by yourself.
FromAtoB 