Day 15: Egirdir to Goreme

Sunday 7th October

Slept reasonably well and awoke to voices talking about the showers being cold. Lucinda announced later they had warmed up and so I partook. The earlier voices were correct but it did wake me up. Have been suffering from a dickey stomach for the past two days. Caught short after a picnic in a garage forecourt and had to use a stand up for the first time in many a year. Das accompanied me to the loo, telling me was desperate, took one look and declared he’d sooner mess his trousers. I suspect he’ll use the bus and be in more trouble with Leighton over the vehicle’s condition. The back of the bus is the sanctuary of the young party goers’ and a tip compared with the front seat area.

We’ve just heard that Barry’s had some bad news from back home. His best friend died during the night. It seems he was an electrician and involved in a works accident and unknown to Barry had been on a life support machine since and the family decided to have it turned off in the early hours of today.

This journey from Egirdir to Goreme is some five hundred plus kilometres and has taken us through some varied and at times stunning scenery. Leaving Egirdir we followed the lake up the valley with its backdrop of mountains, for many miles. The valley is very fertile with apple orchards running the lake’s length and a few hundred yards beyond the road on up the lower slopes. Every few feet piles of apples lay in mounds waiting to be weighed and taken to market. Eventually the valley ran out and we had no option but to climb the mountains blocking our progress. The road rose very sharply and in no time we were looking down a couple of thousand feet below to a new wide valley floor below. The road snaked up until the tarmac gave way to hardcore and then gravel and sand and had the effect of quietening the bus.

We came out of the mountains as abruptly as we enter them and travelled along one of the straightest roads I have seen with bare fields but of the colours you see in a Dulux autumn colour chart of barley browns and faded yellows with the solitary tree every few hundred yards now and again.

After lunch on the forecourt of the Turkish equivalent to a British transport café we suddenly without warning came to Goreme and the stunning scenery of Coppaddocio. This amazing terrain of basalt plugs was created some fifty million years ago by volcanic action. Many of the plugs have been cut out by dwellers over the years. Tomorrow Anne goes hot air ballooning over the area. I have decided to give it a miss, saying it’s too expensive at one hundred pounds a piece but everyone knows it’s because I scared of heights.

Last night was a bit boring, we went into Goreme to eat and watch Scotland playing Argentina at rugby. Food nothing to write home about, the game even worse and the noise from the kids and the loud music made it virtually unbearable. Managed to get the mini bus driver to take us home and went to bed early only to be awoken by the drunken screaming and shouting of the other group returning at 2.30am. Even in a beautiful environment, they have to turn into a normal Saturday night in any typical British town.