Rhodes- Dalyan, 14th June 2024
I have three hours to waste in the streets of Rhodes Town and it’s become a bit much. It’s still in the high thirties, but there’s cloud and the wind’s dropped, so it’s close as hell. Even though I've already checked out I return to the hotel and ask if I can wait in the shade. They're lovely - they're just sitting down to lunch and ask if I want to join them, but I decline as I still have my pitaroudia from last night.
A hellish 30 minute walk to the Tourist Port. They make us queue in the open for over an hour to pick up boarding cards and then passport control. Most of the passengers are Turkish and they announce that Europeans should use the unbothered kiosk to the right. 'You are not European!' a young guard shouts at me angrily. Ouch. Seeing how crestfallen I am, an older guy lets me jump the non-European queue. I don’t know if the ferry departed on time because I was fast asleep.
Fethiye is a sun trap and five degrees hotter than Rhodes - about 42c. The boat is late, passport control is understaffed, it takes a while to find a taxi and the otogar is further away then I thought. It’s amazing how an empty dolmuş fills up at the last second and how nobody except me is going from A-B, it’s always J-AK. So the bus takes 70 minutes to get to Ortaca because the driver’s constantly picking up and dropping off people and the door’s broken. To be fair, he does drive like a maniac when he’s able to. The bus smells awful. Then I realise that it's me.
There’s another dolmuş to catch to get me to Dalyan which used to be a serene riverside village. Looks like Las Vegas now. I get a taxi to the pension at 22:45 and the owner and his guests, seated around the outside bar, greet me like an old friend. I apologise and have a shower before joining them.
I watch the second half of Germany v Scotland. It’s taken 10 hours to get from Rhodes. I am never, I repeat never, going to travel like this again and, in the words of Steve Redgrave, if I ever suggest it you can shoot me.
Dalyan, 15th June 2024
The morning after my ordeal I’m reminded why I came to Dalyan. My box of a room might be a disappointment, but the breakfast view from the terrace across the tranquil river toward the Lycian rock tombs is stunning. The occasional passing tourist boat becomes a flotilla by 10:00.
The pansiyon is one of the nicest places I’ve ever stayed in. The moment I arrive everyone around the horseshoe bar says hi and introduces themselves, and the smiling loquacious host Altan opens an ice-cold beer. The football is on quietly in the background and there’s good music (Tom Waits, Nick Cave, the Doors - okay, that’s because it’s mainly me playing DJ), but everyone’s talking anyway. Propping up the bar there’s Otto from Berlin with his baby monitor, Jill and Gregory from Edinburgh, Maria from Spain and Felix and Monica from Hamburg. Felix used to be a rock and roll singer and played over 7,000 gigs until he got throat cancer. He saw the Beatles and Hendrix before they were famous. I make the mistake of asking whether he’s on Spotify and am rewarded with half an hour of YouTube footage from the early eighties of his Billy Idol covers, Felix wearing a thin white tie. Altan rolls his eyes at me.
Everyone’s telling me that they’ve been coming to Dalyan for 20-30 years, but I first came here in 1986 when there were three pensions, four restaurants and six rentable boats. There are now more than six hundred of each.
In the town there’s a long strip of bars, restaurants and gift shops, but it’s not too spoilt as it’s a conservation area on account of the loggerhead turtles. There are no buildings with more than three floors. Most visitors are British so there are English breakfasts, roast dinners and fish and chips on the menu, but I prefer the North end of town where they compete to sell the cheapest beer.
The heatwave has supposedly ended but it’s still 34c and the 15 minute shadeless walk to the car ferry is gruelling. As usual I have no idea what’s going on as I watch a tractor and trailer trying to manoeuvre itself sideways onto a tiny precarious boat so that other vehicles can board. After 30 or so attempts it fails, is ordered to leave and buggers off for the four-hour road trip to the other side. I jump on, it’s two minutes to cross the river and nobody’s bothering to charge me.
Kaunos is hot, even when the rest of the world isn’t. When it was affordable to hire your own boat for the day they’d drop you off somewhere else but it’s a 2km uphill walk which I don’t have to do as a guy on a bike with a sidecar offers me a lift. There’s a lovely view from the top of the ancient theatre down toward mosquito harbour and turtle beach, it's quite goaty and a woman is reciting Shakespeare in the orchestra.
She says her name is Emily and she’s an actress from Dundee. We walk back together to the river – long route as she’s come from Dalyan town itself – and she tells me that she was down to the last two in the world tour of War Horse but didn’t get the part, so came here as a consolation. I should ask her what else she’s been in but for some reason don’t. As we wait at a bar, sipping fresh juice, for the old man who rows you across the river for 50p, she tells me she comes down to London quite often and knows Brockwell Park well.
“Maybe I’ll bump into you sometime,” she says.
“You’ll have to wear your hat and glasses then,” I say. “As I won’t recognise you without them.”
She surreptitiously takes them off and she looks much younger than her 56-years, perhaps because she also works as a pilates instructor. I do the same (not the pilates) and, of course, the few remaining hairs on my head are drenched because she hogged all the shade on the walk. When I light up a cigarette, she suddenly remembers she’s due to fly home that evening.
Afterwards I google ‘Emily’ and ‘War Horse’ and there are hundreds of matches for award-winning actor Emily Watson. Could it be? Well, they look similar and are the same age. Then again, I doubt that Emily Watson has recently returned from panto on a cruise ship off New Zealand.
Or was she acting?
Tomorrow is Eid, but you wouldn’t notice it. I’m going to make a short trip to the beach because they’re not really my thing and then there’s the small matter of England v Serbia for which all the restaurants are hastily erecting big screen TVs.
Dalyan, 16th June 2024
Picked up from my private jetty by the co-operative taxi boat, we sail through the meandering Dalyan River, the ancient Lycian tombs to the right, the high Acropolis of Kaunos above, the reeds surrounding.
There are a lot of boats in the convoy, their wide Turkish flags rustling in the breeze. It used to be a course through the reeds, the expert pilots knowing which channels were passable and which were not. You used to be able to touch the foliage as you ambled through, but
now the Dalyan River estuary is much wider, the diesel spillages having made their impact over the decades. You no longer see the turtles in the daylight, or the fish caught in the weirs.
But most of the boats are not going to Iztuzu, they’re heading out for disappointing scuba and snorkling, meagre picnics on remote island etc. so when I get to the famous beach of the loggerhead turtles that I first visited in 1986, it’s not even changed that much. There may be one more snack bar, a few hundred more useless straw umbrellas, but otherwise there’s no shade and the sand is still molten lava. Turtle egg protection points are nice, but they’ve missed a few. It’s not too busy, the only difference being they no longer sell beer, which used to be the best thing about the place.
I test my guaranteed waterproof money belt. It isn’t. Even though my phone and reasonable money contingent is inner wrapped in zup zip, a couple of gentle waves render the contents distinctly moist. It’s only possible to last half an hour in the relentless heat, so I return to Dalyan.
Because of new regulations requiring all one’s lithium to be stored in a carry-on bag, I have room in Sean the slimmed down 17kg suitcase. I return to my perfect pansiyon, a 25 minute walk, to collect my wallet. I walk back to Dalyan and spend half an hour haggling for pointless presents for my family that they’ll hate. I point out that the sign outside says 'four football shirts for 20 euros' but apparently that only applies to last season's. Forgot my wallet. 25 minutes back to perfect pansiyon, wallet still in my room, 25 minutes back to Dalyan, pay for pointless presents, have chicken burger and chips for the second night running. Back to perfect pansiyon to pack pointless presents. One hour before the England game.
‘Looks like Blackpool out there,’ says gentle soft-spoken Scottish Gregory, accompanied by his lovely wife Jill. They were separated in the crowd.
It’s the last night of the trip, I’m too tired to be an English football wanker so I decide to watch the game with my new friends: pansiyon-owner-barkeep Altan, a Socialist-Worker supporting atheist who refers to Erdogan as ‘our dictator’ and helps himself to beer, raki and whisky throughout every evening; old rocker Felix, who loves me for some reason, and his much younger East German wife who speaks no English; and a young Dutch guy called Jamie, maybe, who’s initially a little reticent as he’s passing through with his Turkish-born girlfriend, and then realises he’s in the best bar ever.
At a quarter to two in the morning, a piss-poor win behind the football team I support, my new friends around me, I say to Altan: ‘I’ve only got a couple of things left to pack. I’ll set my alarm, have breakfast and pay you in the morning. Then you’ll put me in a cab to the airport. Does this sound sensible?’ We have another round.
Dalyan - Gatwick, 16th June 2024
A bit squiffy in the morning, but that's okay as I don't have to do much. Everybody has to go through a security search just to get into the airport. There's a huge queue to check in luggage and then a massive queue at passport control. Then there's another security search.
I thought I'd pick up some cigarettes duty-free. They're more than twice the price of those in the shops! I complain, but there's no point as they're still a third of the price of those in the UK, so I have to use a card. I would have bought some raki also, but I'm not giving any more money to these thieving bastards, which leaves me with about 30 quid's worth of Turkish lira which will be worth nothing if I return to Türkiye. I spend two quid's worth on a tiny bottle of water and eight on a sandwich. Dalaman is the most expensive airport I've ever been to in my life. You can just feel the Turks laughing at all the British tourists.
At the gate there's another security check and this time they're going through everything - thumbing through books 'n' all. However, one in four people seem to get a free pass, including me, so I'm the first past the checkpoint. Plane is over an hour late because the cabin crew have forgotten to turn up. A woman sarcastically claps them when they arrive, which is inadvisable given the plethora of machine guns all around us.
There's usually at least three trains you can take from Gatwick around the same time, on different platforms. I inevitably make the wrong choice as there's further delay because of an earlier intruder on the line. The guard gives us a long lecture over the tannoy on how selfish and anti-social this is.
Home sweet home. Always someone in the toilet when you need to use it. Bloody hell, it's freezing.
So, how was it? Great, apart from all the horrible travelling and waiting to travel. It wasn't supposed to be that hot. In case you ever feel like doing something similar, here are my top tips:
1. Spend at least three nights in each place. Apart from everywhere in Türkiye with the exception of Dalyan.
2. Travel light. I was away for nearly six weeks so took everything just in case. You can always buy stuff.
3. Don't go to Turkish duty-free. Go to Greek duty-free.
4. Try to avoid all planes, small buses, trains and ferries because they're no fun.
5. Travel with an attractive person. It might get you noticed and people might want to talk to you.
6. Be much younger.
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