We flew to Izmir in the evening and were picked up by the Club’s people carrier. After a 1½
hour drive we arrived at 10.30 pm to be met with bowls of fruit, bread, cheese and soft drinks.
Our bags were whisked away to our rooms and we followed trying hard to make out what the local
terrain was like. Club Natura is a group of villas hidden in a hillside olive grove leading
down to the lake. There was no moon but I could see by the stars the silent lake and the
mountains beyond. Our room was spacious and comfortable. (The mosquito nets over the beds
were needed so do take an anti-mossie kit.)
The view from our balcony next morning was breath-taking. Beneath us was the 8 x 4 mile lake
without a ripple. It was bounded by the mysterious LatmosMountains where Endymion was put
to perpetual sleep by Zeus only to sire 70 children in this state by the goddess Selene! The
reputed scene of the many encounters is to the right on the far shore in the photograph below.
September 2006, © Wilder
We walked down through the olive grove to the restaurant by the beach for breakfast. Coffee,
cereal, yogurt, bread, honey, olives, cheese, fruit and eggs, all produced locally, then
straight onto the sunlounger. My wife informed me that during breakfast she had seen
cormorants, egrets, a kingfisher, herons, tits, pipits and a sandpiper. I informed her
that the yogurt and honey was to die for!
September 2006, © Wilder
My wife spent our first morning on the Club’s sun-deck by the lakeside. I spent it only yards
away in a hammock. No cars, no phones, no people – just tranquillity, a good book and the
feeling of ancient history all around me. I have never relaxed into a holiday so quickly.
Lunch was at 1.30 - local produce, mostly vegetarian, cooked with cheese, yogurt –
aubergines, okra, courgettes, white beans, tomatoes,
onions and several that I had never heard of.
In the afternoon back to the sunlounger and hammock and in the evening good food,
good wine, good company all against the background of a sunset that caused me to
use every colour in my watercolour palette.
On the second day I was informed by my wife that we had had our “do nothing” day and that
a local fisherman had been found to take us across the lake to Herakleia, once an important
port when the lake had been open to the Aegean.
Approaching the old town by water was just how the Greeks and Romans would have first seen
it. The buildings on the island at the harbour entrance, the large Agora at the back of the
town, the extensive fortifications on the promontory and the rock tombs on the shore must
have been impressive. They are all there today, now battered and in ruins, but still with
a presence that made me feel it was a privilege to be there. The whole town was littered
with archaeology – cows were eating out of stone troughs obviously carved in ancient times
and sheds were supported by Greek/ Roman (?) columns.
Whilst walking round Herakleia I only met 2 other visitors the whole day – an Australian
who had lived in a desert in Afghanistan and then with the Bedouin in North Africa and
was looking for his next wild place to live, and an Englishman who had been sailing in the
Mediterranean for 6 years. Interesting people in an interesting place.
September 2006, © Wilder
The island guarding the entrance to Heracleia harbour.
September 2006, © Wilder
The wife looking at the flamingos in the bay beside Heracleia.
Since getting home I have tried to find books in English about the LatmosMountains,
LakeBafa and Heracleia. There are a few in German and still fewer in English. The whole
area has hardly been discovered hence my meeting with people I would call travellers rather
than tourists.
Day three and off to Ephesus. Ornitravel provided us with the coach, the driver and the
guide. After breakfast they laid out a mountain of freshly cooked food and fruit so we could
put together the sort of packed lunches that most took our fancy. An hour later we were in
Ephesus.
Well, what can I say about Ephesus! An astounding place.
September 2006, © Wilder
September 2006, © Wilder
September 2006, © Wilder
September 2006, © Wilder
When we were walking around Heracleia we paused to talk to a farmer. He had a moustache
that Jimmy Edwards would have been proud of. He pointed out his house, the land around which
his family had tended for generations beyond counting. His English shamed our Turkish. He
pointed out sites of interest and then returned to his cattle. To our surprise he arrived,
scrubbed up and with a newly waxed moustache, when we were having dinner to sing some of
the most haunting folk songs I have ever heard. All the staff joined in to sing along with
the songs they all obviously knew from childhood. One of those magical evenings.
The next day off to Didyma and Milet with coach, guide and packed lunch. I don’t know what
it is about the historic sites in Turkey, but they seem so much more accessible than in Greece
or Italy. We were allowed to walk where ever we wanted. We were trusted to respect what we
were looking at.
Didyma was a huge temple to Apollo built to house an oracle. It was started in 600 BC. What
impressed me was the sheer size of the columns and the stone carvings that were everywhere.
Once again, there were few other visitors. It was one of those situations where, when there
were only two of us in the inner sanctum of the oracle, it seemed rude not to acknowledge
each other.
My sole companion was about 25 stone, had 3 earings, a shaven head and wore a welsh rugby
shirt. He enquired if I had been to Didyma before in a broad accent fresh from the valleys.
I replied no and made a frivolous observation about how impressive it was. To my arrogant
surprise he then gave me a tour of the whole site noting fine architectural points, hidden
carvings and telling me about the waves of history that had flooded over the site century
after century since it was built. He told me that he had been coming to the site for 15 years.
He was enthralled by it. His dream was to bring his grandchildren and share with them the
strong sense history that he felt within its boundaries. He offered to show me the 15
kilometre “sacred way” between Didyma and Miletus but time did not allow.
In all my visits to the GreekIslands and Italy I had not met such interesting travellers.
Each of them were entranced by a place or a myth in this magical part of south west Turkey.
They had each discovered something special just off the beaten track that had touched their
souls. I too was beginning to fall under the spell.
September 2006, © Wilder
Apart from the hair, this face did not look unlike my welsh guide!
In the afternoon we drove rather than walked the sacred way to Miletus. Miletus was the
strangest, somehow the most unreal of all the historic sites I visited. The silting up of
the Meander over the centuries has left this once busy port isolated in a more extreme
way than, say, Ephesus. Perhaps it is the land around it that is flatter causing it to
stand out more on its own in the landscape. I found myself trying to highlight the
loneliness of the place in a watercolour but without success. I went and sat on the stone
throne in the amphitheatre. In the foreground was the arena but, beyond it, stretched a
landscape with few trees and no people or animals. For me Miletus was a haunted place
and my presence was tolerated for a while after which I was expected to leave.
Oddly, unlike the other sites I visited, there was nobody else with whom I could share
these feelings. Miletus was somehow a cathartic and humbling place. I can conjure up the
feelings of that day more easily than any of the others.
September 2006, © Wilder
As so back to our lakeside retreat and another evening of great food eaten against the
background of a stunning sunset.
We had agreed that our last day was going to be spent relaxing by the lake so we had 1
day left to explore. We had “done” the more famous sites so where to go? After slaving over
a hot barbeque the chef joined us for a glass of the local firewater after dinner. I asked
him for his advice (through an interpreter). He simply pointed over the lake at an area
above Heracleia and clasped his hands together in supplication. He then drew a finger above
his head in a circle. It transpired he was talking about a derelict monastery an hours
walk above the town into the LatmosMountains.
At last! A chance to explore the strange mountains so much a part of our view beyond
the lake.
A guide had been arranged for us as if by magic overnight and we were introduced at
breakfast. The Club’s minibus took us to Heracleia and dropped us off just above the village
at 10.00 am. After 20 minutes walk it became obvious that we would have got completely lost
without a guide. Once again, I felt I was moving off the beaten track and moving towards
somewhere very special. I turned to look at the emerging view of LakeBafa in all its glory.
September 2006, © Wilder
You can just see the Club in the centre of the photo. Heracleia is below us.
September 2006, © Wilder
The climb was not particularly difficult but it was occasionally a little rough under foot.
After an hour’s gentle ascent we came round the corner of a large rock. And there it was –
imposing, still and silent – the deserted monastery of the Seven Brothers.
September 2006, © Wilder
What a remote place - beautiful but austere. It was one of those places I immediately
wanted to know all about. When had it been built and by whom? What history had it seen below
it on the Lake? Why was it now deserted? But without answering any of these questions, our
Guide beckoned towards some overhanging rocks nearby. Imagine my surprise when the paintings
below revealed themselves.
September 2006, © Wilder
No tourist tickets to buy, no tatty gift stalls, nobody trying to sell me a carpet – just
complete silence and only inches away early Christian images painted when Byzantium emperors
reigned in Constantinople and we in Britain were in the Dark Ages. Absolutely breathtaking!
I felt privileged.
Our Guide pointed further up the Mountain and told us that, if we walked for another 3
hours, we would come to an open cave within which we would find pre-historic paintings.
Again, sites known only to a few archaeologists and local sheep farmers - a place for
explorers and travellers not tourists.
The views of LakeBafa on our descent were beautiful but, alas, I could not stop at every
turn to try to paint what was before me. At dinner I wondered what the occupants of the
Seven Brothers monastery would have been having for their supper. Probably not very
different from what was set before us – fresh vegetables cooked with herbs, bread still
warm from the oven, yogurt with cucumber, ochra and tomatoes, fish caught in the Lake,
locally produced cheeses and sweet puddings, all washed down by excellent wines that I
had no idea Turkey could produce.
And so to our last day.
I had not done nearly as much painting as I had intended. But I felt that I had opened
a door on a world discovered by few other tourists. I was enchanted with the place, the
people, the legends and the mystery of LakeBafa. Like Brian Sewell, I cannot explain the
hold that it all now exerted on me. I want to go back in Spring to see the flowers and
in summer to climb high in the LatmosMountains to find prehistoric paintings, to discover
ancient buildings and to try to capture the essence of a timeless landscape in watercolour.
On returning to London I went to bookshops and searched the Internet for anything I
could lay my hands on about the area. As I suspected there is very little. “Aegean Turkey”
by George E Bean (now out of print but obtainable from dealers through Amazon) and ‘The
Western Shores of Turkey’ by John Freely describe the area. Apart from George Bean, most
research has been done by German archaeologists – and I do not read German! I have even
bought a book and CD to teach myself Turkish.
What an incurable romantic I have become. But what a holiday!
September 2006, © Wilder