Turkey for the girls and
Turkey for the boys
My favorite kind of pants
Are corduroys
Gobble gobble goo and
Gobble gobble gickel
I wish turkey
Only cost a nickel

(Adam Sandler)

So Kirk has asked his employer if he can bank his holidays and he received a positive response. So this means that we will possibly be heading for Turkey and up to six glorious weeks of sailing in 2013! The only issue I can think of will be finding someone (or someone’s) to live in our condo for the period and look after the monsters.

At least that’s the current train of thought!

So, time to haul out the charts and the reviews and start planning when and where! If anyone has any suggestions from past visits, do tell!

Some starting information on the coast of Turkey from sailingissues.com …….

Sailing in Turkey means cruising along the many gulfs and bays of the much indented Turkish coastline. It is also a journey back in time, with a plethora of archaeological sites, castles and temples that reflect its importance in ancient and medieval times. Especially the south-west coast – roughly speaking the stretch of coastline from Izmir via Kusadaşi, Bodrum, Marmaris, Fethiye and Kaş to Antalya – is an ideal cruising ground.

This stretch of Turkish coastline is usually divided into four different yacht charter areas:

• The Ionian Coast:   Izmir – Kusadasi – Güllük – Bodrum, a coastline which claims the to have the best climate and which shores brought forth the rich culture of the Ionians and their great philosophers.
• The Carian Coast:   Bodrum – Marmaris, the most popular sailing ground which includes the two largest yacht charter bases in Turkey: Bodrum and Marmaris.
• The west Lycian Coast:   Marmaris – Fethiye, the pirate coast with its wild, mountainous shores and hundreds of hidden coves.
• The east Lycian Coast:   Fethiye – Kas – Finike – Antalya, rock tombs and solid stone sarcophagi.

Turkey abounds with archaeological ruins dating from the dawn of civilization, inhabited by various Anatolian tribes, conquered, and occupied by Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Ottoman Turks, and finally establishing independence in the 1920’s under Ataturk. Besides the rock tombs and sarcophagi, most relics are of Greek and Roman origin. Many of the ruins are just part of the landscape, not fenced off.

….yes…we really only just barely returned….but if you don’t dream life becomes boring and stagnant so we are already thinking ahead to the next trip.

So…maybe three years from now…and five weeks of sailing?

We are thinking that the Turkish coast might be calling us.

We loved the Aegean, and the Ionian wasn’t exactly what we thought it would be, but by the same token, we never dreamed we’d meet people that we would want to travel halfway around the world to sail with again. But that’s what happened. So now we just need to convince them to come to Turkey and hang with us for a vacation….. stranger things have happened…like traveling halfway around the world to meet people we’d met online on a photography site….

Well, the trip home was relatively uneventful. We enjoyed a last British meal and a couple of pints of Strongbow at Heathrow and paid twice what we did anywhere else…but it is an airport and they do have you somewhat captive, so there you go.

Our plane departed a bit late, but we had a tailwind and made up the time and arrived promptly….if there is one thing I can say about British Airways, they are generally punctual. We did have to sit on the tarmac at Vancouver for a few minutes before being allowed to disembark, they announced that someone wasn’t feeling well and had paramedics coming to help the passenger off….not me!

Our luggage all arrived, customs was a breeze and Deb had just pulled in to pick us up when I gave her a call. So grateful to you Deb for the ride home!

When we got home, Charlotte was well, but looking forward to heading to her own home after such a long time away. We weren’t actually sure who was going to be at our condo when we arrived, could be either Mom, could be both… The cats snubbed us for a few moments then decided we deserved a bit of attention. Gizmo was a bit more excited to see us right off the bat. Sunny and hot here, sunny and hot everywhere it seemed.

I’ll have a few more photos to post, haven’t downloaded anything from the camera from England yet. Many to sort through!

So grateful to everyone who helped make this a wonderful trip for us. And so sad it’s over, but the good memories make planning the next trip something to look forward to. Not sure when that will be, for the next while we will most likely be constrained to boating in our own beautiful waters of Howe Sound… postings most likely in the other blog…http://the-philosophical-fish.ca

Thanks everyone for visiting us as we traveled!

Cheers,
Paige & Kirk!

After a very heavy sleep we got moving around 7:30 am and I did a quick email check. I seem to have become used to sitting in some strange corner at some odd angle, not breathing, while the computer attempts to connect to some unsecured internet wifi connection….Bournemouth was no different.

We headed out to find the New Forest. Oddly, it’s neither New nor really a Forest, but we were heading for breakfast with two more Flickr friends.

I have so many pictures since May 29th but I haven’t had time or a good enough connection to load them up….will have to wait until we are home now.

On we go, as we turn out of the hotel we immediately take a wrong turn on the first roundabout…not an auspicious start to the day. But we get sorted out and heading in the right direction and the computer takes us down some odd streets, but we make it out onto the main highway in the direction of the New Forest.

We arrive in Lyndhurst a bit early and start to fret about the fact that I can’t remember if we were supposed to meet Mary and Karen at the cafe (which I can’t remember the name of…) or in the parking lot. We have a bit of time so we grab the laptop and start wandering around looking for an unsecured wifi hotspot so I can check my Flickr mail where I know the answer lies. As we wander along the alley doing a classic “can you hear me now?” move with the laptop Kirk looks back and sees two women in a small blue car waving at us. They have found us! Whew!

The cafe hasn’t yet opened so we take a wander into the New Forest (which isn’t a forest…at least not by Canadian standards….open fields of scrub don’t usually attain the title of “forest” where we come from….did I mention that?). It is very pretty though…. and ponies and cattle wandering about freely add an interesting spin on things. The ponies have the right of way in the New Forest, and we see lines of cars as a pony wanders down the centre of the roadway. Apparently they release pigs in the forest as well at certain times. The pigs eat the acorns that fall from the trees The foals apparently eat them and it makes them ill as they are toxic to them, so the pigs help clean them up. Bit of natural way to keep the system running smoothly!

After breakfast we take a drive up to a pond and there are donkeys! One shaggy little fellow is crying out to have his photo taken but every time I point the camera at him his ears go back and he steps towards me. I know enough about livestock to understand that if I stand still things won’t end well for me…so I keep backing away. The little guy may be small, but I know he probably has strong teeth and I don’t need to arrive home with a donkey bite. We move on to a second pond and visit a swan family, take photos of water lilies and wander around the area. As Mary moves forward through the grass I hear a noise I have a bit of familiarity with and look down. Less than a foot from my foot is a small coiled snake valiantly hissing at me. I let out a surprised cry and step back laughing saying “garter snake”. At least that’s what I thought it was. Mary tells me to watch out, it’s an adder, and although not lethal, my bare toes pose an easy target and a potential visit to the hospital…hmm….don’t need that only hours before a flight. Hard to believe that little thing has such a nasty bite, I didn’t actually realize there was anything that nasty in England. No harm done, four camera geeks try to get a decent shot of him, he slips off into the grass and disappears. And we must take our leave. We say goodbye and offer yet again, should anyone visit Vancouver they must look us up.

As we are heading to Heathrow we make one last silly stop. Wouldn’t you know that there is a small community called Canada. So we did have to go so that we can visit Canada twice in one day! Yes, we are geeks.

We navigate our way to Heathrow, take a wrong turn trying to find the rental dropoff, end up circling around for a bit completely and utterly lost before we see the Car Rental Return sign. YAY! And at the last turn into the National rental lot…Kirk tries to turn immediately right instead of going around the roundabout. He’s done so amazingly well driving us safely around this country…….but let’s make one last attempt at a head on collission before we go… SCREECH!!! That’s me screaming, not car tires.

And now we sit in Heathrow waiting for our plane, enjoying a last pint of Strongbow.

It’s been a long trip, it’s been a wonderful trip. And interestingly enough, while it is usually the sights that make the trip for us, this one turned out to be the people. We met so many wonderful people. While we are tired and happy to go home, we can’t believe that five weeks have flown by so quickly.