The hostel we were staying in was run by a bit of a spiv, who had the manner of a cocky chap who rather fancied himself. He, unsurprisingly, also ran a carpet shop, which of course there was no pressure about. He had lived for most of his life in Australia. He had apparently returned to his home country, to make money from tourists and make his fellow Turks work long hours for little pay while he swanned around enjoying himself playing cards while his cousins had relations with the female consenting guests. There was something about his superficial friendliness that seemed unconvincing. (I don't think Helen liked him - Pat)

Ephesus (briefly mentioned before) was over a huge area and they seem to have only excavated the centre working on the basis that the most prestigious houses are likely to be on the main street. Let's face it, is an archeologist of the future likely to spend time unearthing Mosside or Hyson Green - I think not! Pat was unimpressed by the excellent job that Paddy had done of goboing in ill-matched cement to hold together perfectly Grecian cut stonework. Definite evidence of the decline of civilization.

Selcuk the home of one the 7 ancient wonders - the temple of Artemis looked rather sad in it's boggy surroundings. a single pillar has been rebuilt to give a indication of it's grandeur unfortunately even that is 70% gobo.

A short trip in the morning to the Basilica home of St. John they say. This seems to have been an architects design award project on the lines of the British Steel Challenge - with the brief: with 20 columns so much cornice and any other Greek inscribed remains from Ephesus and Artemis build a church. Recycling is all fair enough but it seems a bit cheeky to claim it's your own handy work when the language is someone else's - still it was pre-copyright. As we left a chap trying to sell us ancient coins accosted us. He furtively opened tins of a variety of coins. They seemed remarkably like old Lira when the coins still had a value that he had buried in the garden to make them rusty and distressed.

We passed up the chance to see the home of the Virgin Mary as we were unconvinced by the provenance associated with it - someone had dreamed that a house that looked the same as this one hosted the good Virgin at some time. Considering the huge entrance fee to see what is after all a general peasant's house, we passed on. No doubt one day we will regret not seeing it....... not.

It was a short ride to Bodrum on the map. This did not account for the twists of the coast road. We have become aware of short stretches of road that seem to be a straight line that have huge distances along side of them. The reason is that they can't show the squiggles at the scale involved and there is a huge amount of them.

Along the way, we nearly passed the ruins of Euromos. These were hardly sign-posted and not mentioned in any of the guides we had read. The temple to Zeus, here, is cited as one of the top 5 preserved ruins in Asia. The whole site that includes a completely un-excavated theatre delighted us. It was nice to be able to use ones imagination for once. The rest of the run to Bodrum was boredom itself until.......... We passed across an uplifted bay that now forms a huge area of farms on a road that was straight for 12 miles. Thereafter, we rose and rose up a series of sweeping curves with the most outrageously bad road surface. I was keen to make good time that had Hippy most unhappy when the bike started bucking about mid-corner from time to time.

When we arrived at Bodrum, we were unimpressed. I had expected an old fashioned fishing village, but was in fact confronted with wall to wall apartments facing down to a marina full of gin palaces. We moved on towards to the end of the peninsular in the hope of finding something more quiet and civilized. We did - the town of Turguseit - the Lytham St Annes to Bodrum's Blackpool. Hippy found us a pension charging 5 pounds a night for the two of us and so we were well chuffed.

Being Monday evening, the Trotters had a date with Spurs and so we set off to find a satellite venue. Dining with a Welsh emigrant called Helen, we soon got the required info about local venues. Football could be watched in The Bell under the watchful eye of the owner- Phil from Llanelli. We chatted for a while and it became clear that she had something of a Shirley Valentine - leaving behind grown up children and husband for a new with a guy she met at Ephesus while on holiday. Her grasp of Turkish seemed shaky to say the least despite having spent 8 years there, but she had acquired the ability to fleece tourists without any scruples.

The Bell was closed.

Never mind, we would go over top the cyber cafe and catch the game on line. Regrettably, there was no real player or anything like that and so we decided to simply do a bit of emailing and catch the game on the world service later. Then we found that we could not log onto our email provider as a Turkish underscore clearly has a different code in some way to an English underscore.

Deflated but unbeaten, we returned to our pension to listen to the game. Reception was poor. In fact the only transmission we could get was the African broadcast. Seemingly live Premiership football is not much of a pull in Africa and we had to make do with scores on the news bulletins. Half time and the score was most satisfactory. One nil to the Wanderers. Full time and ...... no report in the next news. Helen continued to knit the new lucky scarf. Next news - no report. Eventually, at half one in the morning the sad news was relayed to us that Bolton had squandered a sitter with 7 mins to go and then gifted Spurs a winner. Really worth staying up for, that.

Morning and we returned up the road to Bodrum to take in the sights. Next of the seven wonders of the ancient world (mausoleum of ... Mausolus, of course) ticked off in our jotter, we took in the castle and underwater archeology museum. We were much amused by the regular disclaimers around the museum that "None of the Museum is under water but most of our exhibits were rescued from the sea". And we had taken a facemask with us. Not really, but we could imagine the disappointment on little Jonny's face when Dad had to admit that he'd been mistaken. This museum was actually very varied and a delight to see. In fact as it is mostly built from the mausoleum, why not kill two birds with one stone and just visit this one.

We dined by the ruins of Mindos in a restaurant by ourselves. As the sun set behind the island 200 yards away from us connected to the shore by the submerged ruins of a Greek outpost, we whispered sweet nothings to each other and all that stuff that you really don't want to read about. And so to bed.

Wednesday (5th in case you're losing touch), and we flew along the main road back to the 'mainland' until stopped by a couple of policemen. I was in fact not doing anything wrong, it was simply a part of the ongoing program of annoying motorists by asking for their documents every five minutes. Not having insurance as usual, we were more than pleased that we did not have to bluff with our English document as plod seemed more interested upon finding out that we were British in telling us the Arsenal score than any meaningful police business. Once again relieved by the inefficiency of foreign police, we progressed cautiously to Fethiye by way of mountain passes and general fantastic scenery. Fethiye did not seem particularly inviting and so we went on to Oludeniz. Regrettably, this town was completely shut and so we returned to Fetty, this time finding the centre and easily finding a cheap gaff in this charming town.

The pitfall with the cheap room came after breakfast. We were just setting off to take in a couple of sites when the worried owner came up to us and asked if we were staying another night. Replying in the affirmative sent him into peculiar spasms. "But you must move out because inspectors are coming. I will find other room for you." We agreed with the proviso that the alternative was no more expensive and said that we would be back at 5.30. In something of a flap, still, he insisted that we had our bags packed and be ready to go. We did not have a problem with that - we weren't in too much of a hurry.

The sights were the deserted village (once inhabited by Greeks who were exchanged for Greek Turks in 1923) which is quite spooky and pleasantly unspoiled by the Turks. I was somewhat amused by the signs claiming that the reason for the lack of roofs on the buildings was entirely due to natural wastage. It is in fact entirely clear that every bit of wood has been stripped from the village except for the odd dangerous to remove lintel. There is no evidence of rot in the lintels. The smoking chimneys of the local houses seem to provide a more likely reason for the disappearance of the wood. The churches (not having timber fixtures of any note) were reasonably undisturbed. There is some work underway in the restoration of these buildings as the local tourist board has obviously cottoned to the pull factor. Much of the stone work in them is in pristine condition and very fine work.

After a flying visit to the tombs in the cliffs, of which I'm sure photos will be forthcoming, we did a spot of netting before returning to the pension at the appointed time to move out. There were no lights on and nobody home. Hippy banged on the door for a while and then discovered our bags in a shady spot by the door. We were a little miffed to find our belongings out in the open like this and decided to find somewhere else to settle, fast. Just as we were gathering up our stuff, the owner turned up and it seemed that he had been watching over the bags and awaiting our return. All our stuff in tow, he guided us to our new gaff. This was his other hostel which was closed for the winter and awaiting renovation.......... Still, it was a free night's accom so we mustn't grumble. The room was actually OK but as there was only a bit of solar heated tepid water, there wasn't much chance of a wash. As my mother will tell you, I was never one for washing anyway, so it wasn't a problem! Delighting in our good fortune of having a roof over our heads for nowt, we set off in search of food and entertainment.

Down the road a corpulent fellow swung out over the balcony of his restaurant and enticed us in with the magic words "half price menu". We fell for it and found ourselves facing grated radish and carrot served up as the house special salad. This being the most expensive salad that we had seen in Turkey before being halved in price and still quite excessive. When our main courses arrived hot foot from some other restaurant we were horrified by how poor it was. We complained quite vociferously, to which the geezer explained that it must be good because it had just come out of the freezer. We pointed out that this was little consolation when the food was burnt. Slipping him enough to cover the beer and bread, we beat a hasty retreat.

We were still hungry, of course, and so were coerced into the first kebabbery that we passed with great ease. Their fare had little to recommend it and even though it was sliced off the torso on a skewer before it was barely warm, never mind cooked, we were in no mood to argue and so ate our pink kebab in silence. We paid and left disappointed that this was tarnishing the reputation of Turkish tucker which had up until now been consistently excellent.

Grabbing a bottle of wine and snacks we headed back to our gloomy new abode and found the front door locked......... I guess it's appropriate to mention that there were other people in the same boat as us and it was fairly clear that they had locked the front door and gone out with the key. I had noticed the key in the door hen we left the gaff but left it knowing that there were others to check in. Now, Fitheye is a town of reasonable size and it is quite unlikely that you will find other travelers in a month of Sundays, so we resolved to sit on the balcony by the front door and take the air a while. It had been raining all day and it now started with a vengeance. Clearly, the watertightness of the local power was questionable and blackout seemed to happen at every lightening strike. After three hours of playing I spy in the dark and having eaten the snacks and drunk the booze, Pat was all ready to put his boot through the flimsy door. As if by magic, the owner arrived with a key for a side door. He seemed to have resolved to spend the night to watch over his guests - which is nice. We slept really rather well. Hippy heard the other residents arrive while I slept but thought it better not to tell me!

In the morning, I went down to settle up with yer man. He confessed that this was actually something like a stop-go penalty. He had been caught not paying his taxes and been ordered to close his pension for two days. He had felt honour bound to provide us with a roof over our heads - nice guy.

The plan was to move on to Olympos on the coast, which is some kind of hippy hangout in tree houses near some ruins and on the way take in some other ruins. I should point out that the coast of Turkey is fairly littered with Greek and Roman ruins each of which would put any of the like in Britain to shame. It seems that round each corner is another ampitheatre, set of tombs etc. On today's itinerary was Tlos.

Leaving the highway we got a little lost and ended up ground to a halt on a road full of goats clearly being herded. Having weaved our way through them and discovering that we going the wrong way we then had the embarrassment of having to drive back through the goats. The female herders and the goats looked at us like we were completely bananas. Hey ho! Now on the right road it wound up hill and we could not help but be impressed be the rock face facing us riddled with ancient tombs. It was clear there was more and we were not disappointed further up the hill, an ampitheatre - with guide. For some reason this particular chap either through boredom or desperation for some cash was hard to shake off. Pat did not seem bothered but I was getting increasingly tetchy. We finally lost him by riding off down to lower site of the tombs. We just got to the top of the acropolis and the sky went dark the sound of thunder made us made a hasty retreat.

Back the highway we had the choice of going over the mountains to Atalya or round by the coast at twice the distance. Looking at the rain and working on the principle of high means more rain and cold we headed South to the coast road. The rain stayed with us in a drizzly kind of a way and by the time we reached Demre [Myra] we had had enough and all we needed was a place with heating to dry off. The owner of an unassuming place rustled up an electric fire and we were quids in until......... Pat decided the move the fire and electrocuted himself - the metal surrounded fire was live and Pat was wet from the shower. Pat recovered, we were now going to treat the fire with a little more respect and work on the principle - if in doubt disconnect.

Strolling through town on our way to see some more tombs at dusk we decided that Demre was a straightforward kind of a place and pretty much dry (of alcohol that is, not rain). The winter darkness caught up with us faster than expected and we aborted back to centre and on finding the precinct found out why there had been a Santa Claus on a billboard as we entered the town. Apparently Demre was the home of Saint Nicholas. Why he ever moved to the North Pole, god only knows.

Fed and watered with a 2.5 litre bottle of pop [which turned out to be banana icy or to the non-Guyanese amongst you liquid pear drops] we returned to our warm room to practice the Turkish national game. Now those of you with a dirty mind can get those mucky ideas out of your mind. I was talking about backgammon. Three games later and a game of scrabble we slept.

Rain and thunder throughout the night. The outlook was a flooding road outside our gaff. Still the highway was clear. In fact it was so clear, that the water did not show up at all. The first puddle that we hit was about 6 inches deep and with the speed that we were travelling, the sploosh produced had Hippy's feet wrested from the foot rests, saved only from being swept off by the panniers. I was a little more careful after that. Riding the South Turkish coast is a delight - in summer. This day must have been the wettest for many years. Hippy had been keen to see a waterfall and today she got her fair share. These were at every cutting that the road went through. Water tumbled down the verge to the edge of the road and then followed the road in a torrent.

The rain was one thing. The wind was another. Where the road followed the coastline, with cliff above and cliff below down to the crashing waves, the road followed the ins and outs of the jagged headlands. Every time we rounded a corner to a new bay, we were hit by a huge blast. Fortunately these were easy to foresee as there was a bit of bush life about that bent double as an indicator. I took it easy round these corners especially slowing to about 15 mph on occasions. It's a perspective thing, I guess, but when you are only going about this speed and the wind is howling past at about 60mph, it appears that you are nearly stationary and about to fall over the cliff. Particularly from poor Hippy's seat!

There's more. Riding on an inland stretch on a road narrowed by roadworks, with gravel on the road, with torrents running down each side, the gale blowing a hooly, boulders in the road washed down from the embankment above and the other side of the road giving way where it was undercut................ Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, we rounded a corner to find the road covered in rotting leaf mulch. At least there was no small dog yapping at us and trying to bite our ankles, for a change.

Arriving in Antalya, the built up area had obviously affected the hydrological cycle to the point that water could not run off, but lodged in any contained areas. Like between kerbs. In places, the puddles were up to about 10 inches deep, which in a car is fun until your electrics fail. On a bike it's not too bad until your boots are full to the brim. The failing of waterproof boots is that it cuts both ways. To fill them, what you need is a transit van passing alongside through the deepest puddles sending a wave of spray whose crest is approximately head level. To dry them out again, you need 4 days in a boiler room.

We checked into the first hotel with heating that we could find. Bugger the expense. As Pat checked in, he had to step outside for a moment to wring himself as the growing puddle in the foyer was getting rather embarrassing. Hotels do not really go in for the radiator thing in Turkey as it doesn't get cold that much. We discovered though that the heat system coming through the air conditioning was such dry air that the clothes dried very efficiently (with the help of the hair dryer - whoever was in the next room had the grace not to complain about the noise).

The news on the telly that night showed cars and people being washed away all over the place. We strained to see if it was possible to make out a BMW R100 GS shooting through the puddles in the background but we had again not achieved our 15 minutes of fame. We had the good fortune to catch the finals of Model of the Year competition, also. Hippy picked fault with the poor girls while I merely oggled. Oh, yes, there was a males' competition, too, but I read during that.

The World Service gave us the dreadful news that the Trotters had failed to get even one point at Derby. Consolation came from Old Trafford. My how we laughed. We retired for the evening full of trepidation about 1) the state of the roads and 2) the height of the rivers in the morning.

In fact, the weather was top at dawn. We hastened to breakfast and packed all our gear as quickly as possible. Not that easy as everything was scattered and draped over any possible drying surface in the room. We got off fairly quickly and made good progress to Alanya, where we had been advised it might be possible to catch a ferry the remaining way to the bit above Syria. Enquiring of a bike cop where the ferryboat went from met with a puzzled expression. When we got the message over, it was clear that his failure to comprehend was due to the fact that our question had been so unlikely. Seemingly there has not been a ferry from there in some time. As the weather was holding, we decided to continue at speed and forget the ferry thing.

The windy roads following the coast line again would make a 'scratchers' paradise and even on an old lard bucket like ours, fun was to be had. Regrettably, the difference is that you can't keep it up for long when your wrestling with about half a ton. We poled up at Anamur tired, but nearer to our goal. In the dry, it was nice to be able to get around to changing a fuse to put the side lights back on at last.

Oh, and to write up this bit. Ta ta for now