Turkey HAS ITS PERKS
A week-long voyage on a traditional sailing vessel exploring the Ceramic Coast is an unforgettable dream, writes Paul Ash
IT is a sunny April morning in the Mediterranean and a strong wind is powering up the Kos Channel, the strip of churning blue that divides mainland and Turkey Kos. from the Greek islands of Rhodes feetI canas our feel gulet — a traditional Turkish sailingthe timbers quivering beneath my vessel founded — 360 motors to Knidos, an anchorageyears before the birth of Christ.
A lighthouse on the high cliffs marks the ragged end of the Datça peninsula and we give it a wide berth as we round the headland where a half-sunken freighter lies in the shallows.
“That sort of thing,” says our guide, “is what made Knidos so important.”
We ease into the bay and suddenly it is flat calm. It is the perfect anchorage, protected from the weather and sited at the extreme southwestern tip of Asia Minor — right on the growing sea route between the Mediterranean and Aegean seas. The city — which could be seen from miles out to sea — was built for effect. Terraces rose in ranks up the mountainside and on these were the classic façades, temples and theatres, with a temple to Aphrodite at the very top. Some 70 000 people once called it home.
Knidos is one of many treasures we visited on a week-long voyage down Turkey’s Ceramic Coast.
and At grazingIasos, under a hill studded with olive trees cattle, we clambered around ruins stamped with the marks of successive civilisations — a theatre dedicated to Dionysus, Roman tombs, and two Byzantine churches. At the top of the hill, in a secluded olive grove, is a Roman villa with mosaic tiled floors and red paint still on its walls. (The city, occupied as far back as the Bronze Age, was famous, apparently, for its fish and judging by the number of cats waiting on the dockside for the boats, this is still true.)
In Bodrum, we gazed at Samian wine amphorae and fragile glass unguentaria — which look as if they were made yesterday — retrieved from Byzantine merchant ships that wrecked on this coast thousands of years ago. There were copper ingots from Cyprus, glass billets, storage jars from the Levant and seals and fragments of gold scrap from Egypt, a time capsule of Bronze Age trade.
we tavernascook Whenwere delighted eatingor we aboard the gulet itself where theweren’t stepping through history, us with local treats such as and drinking — at waterfront imam tomato, byaladi onion — aubergines stuffed withand peppers — and chickpeas served with leek and celery, bell peppers stuffed with spicy meats and thick, creamy yoghurt and minty potatoes.
In between sailing, eating and lolling on the loungers on deck, we swam in the bracing, clear sea in secluded bays and hiked up hillsides studded with ollive trees. At the top we looked down on bays and anchorages which felt as old as time itself.
It was, simply, the best holiday ever.