On This Day – Terror on The High Seas

Yesterday I told you about the boat ride to Bodrum.  The return journey was many times worse…

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On This Day – Boat Ride to Bodrum

On 30th September 2014 I took an ill advised boat trip in Turkey.

After the debacle of the IMX excursion to Ephesus and Pamukkale and the road side break down we seriously considered cancelling our next IMX  trip to Bodrum because this was by boat and whilst breaking down in a car is bad enough, in a boat it could be catastrophic.

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On This Day – Truck Stop in Turkey

The visits to the Ancient sites of Turkey complete on 28th September 2014 we were making our painful return journey…

Hagi wasn’t in the AA roadside breakdown service or whatever the equivalent is in Turkey so there now followed a long winded debate as each of the passengers looked inside the engine compartment in turn as though they knew what they were talking about and offered alternative diagnoses and possible solutions.

There was a lot of head scratching, nodding and general agreement but the truth was however that there was no more engine technical knowledge between them than you could expect to find in an average reception class at a primary school and one by one the suggestions all inevitably failed.

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On This Day – Pamukkale and Heirapolis

Continuing the tour of Ancient Turkey on 27th September 2014 I was at the site of Heirapolis/Pamukkale  an ancient Hellenistic and then a Roman city because it benefits from a rejuvenating spa of constantly warm water that the ancients were rather fond of.

The source of the spring is carefully locked behind bars because as it emerges from the earth’s core it brings with it a lethal cocktail of poisonous toxic gasses that will overcome and kill in seconds.

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On This Day – Bus Ride from Ephesus to Pamukkale

On 26th September 2014 I was continuing the visit to Ancient historical sites in Turkey…

The young man that sold me the tour assured me that the journey from Ephesus to Pamukkale would take two hours so I was shocked when the driver now said that it would take three and a half.

I was dreading this part of the journey with the noisy Lithuanian family and the darts team chimps but then at a short stop we had a stroke of luck and were transferred to a smaller more comfortable vehicle with two young quiet couples.  This was much better and we were so pleased about that because as the car pulled away we could hear that the the other bus had broken out into a spontaneous medley of classic cockney knees-up songs!

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On This Day – Excursion to Ephesus

Even though travel restrictions are easing I am not yet minded to risk it so I still have no new stories to post so I continue to go through my picture archives and see where I was on this day at any time in the last few travelling years.

On 25th September 2014 I was on a coach excursion visiting Ancient historical sites in Turkey…

The problem with bus trips is that you cannot choose your travelling companions – it is a game of chance!

I imagined that we would be accompanied on this trip by middle aged historians in crumpled linen suits and battered panama hats, archaeologists carrying trowels and leather bound notebooks and the entire cast of a Merchant Ivory film but at the first pick up we were joined by a Geordie and boisterous Lithuanian family and then horror of horrors by a noisy bunch of women who looked as though they should really be going to a market rather than one of the World’s finest archaeological sites.

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On This Day, The Greek Island of Ios

Even though travel restrictions are easing I am not yet minded to risk it so I still have no new stories to post so I continue to go through my picture archives and see where I was on this day at any time in the last few travelling years.

On 27th August 2007 I was on the Greek Island of Ios in the Cyclades…

The walk to Valmas is interesting because of the derelict terraces and dry stone walls that separate the hillside into individual plots of land.  Ios is just one large inhospitable rock that has been baked in the sun for thousands of years but as recently as only fifty years ago people here were scraping away at the thin soil and the stones to try and make a living or to feed the family by growing fruit and vegetables.

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On This Day – The Edinburgh Military Tattoo

Even though travel restrictions are easing I am not yet minded to risk it so I still have no new stories to post so I continue to go through my picture archives and see where I was on this day at any time in the last few travelling years.

On 15th August 1972 I was in Edinburgh in Scotland…

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On This Day – The Blockhaus d’Éperlecques

Even though travel restrictions are easing I am not yet minded to risk it so I still have no new stories to post so I continue to go through my picture archives and see where I was on this day at any time in the last few travelling years.

On 11th August 2013 I was in Northern France…

The Blockhaus d’Éperlecques was a giant bunker built by Nazi Germany between March 1943 and July 1944 and was originally intended to be a launching facility for the V2 ballistic missile. It was designed to accommodate over one hundred missiles at a time and to launch up to thirty-six a day all destined to land and explode on London and the South-East of England.

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Windows and Doors in Northern France

Wimereux became a popular seaside resort at the time of the Second Empire, a hundred and fifty years ago and today retains an air of sophistication that presents a slightly faded but still elegant seaside resort with hotels, bars, cafés and restaurants, and an alternately sandy and rocky shoreline.

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