Getting the mix right

How could I have skipped Plymouth? Whatever else I think about England – and thinking about England exercises my mind a lot while I’m here – she is the history queen. She never lets you forget that.

So many famous and infamous boat people left England, or were sent from England, from Plymouth’s docks – explorers, convicts, settlers, merchants, adventurers.  Huge stone steps dropping down from the cobbled quay to the kelpy waterline trip a switch in my memory. I’ve read enough books, seen my share of BBC dramas. I know this place.  I can fill in the missing details – the tall ships, the chaos, the excitement and the excrement.  The characters are still here though. I don’t need to invent them.

Something was happening on the Plymouth waterfront last Saturday night. Perhaps it was just summer. A bit of warmth turns people’s heads here. Still I thought the people looked a bit exaggerated, a bit distorted, like characters out of Little Britain. The Old Guys Rule gang were in town in their leathers, and far too many girls were out walking, arm in arm, in very high heels. They were wearing sashes across their lurid short dresses. Later on, the night noises outside our hotel turned feral. I thought of Harry Brown – I mean Michael Caine’s character in the movie called Harry Brown – and then some more about England, and what she is, and has been. Perhaps there isn’t much difference between the two. Plymouth, I reckon, was probably never a very safe place after dark.

With a day up our sleeves, we took the long road to from Plymouth to Bristol, our leaping off place for flying in and out of Belfast in a day. Antony House is close to Plymouth as the crow flies, but across the Tamar River. That distance from Plymouth would suit me. In fact, Antony House would suit me. You can see why in the pictures below.

I’d have to have been better born to get a look in though. The same family, called Crew Pole, has lived in the place continuously for 600 years. That’s clever. Perhaps their daughters didn’t catch the king’s eye. Perhaps their sons kept clear of politics. Whatever, they hung onto a very beautiful piece of land, planted a garden of wonders and, in the 18^th century, built a new house which against the odds, still feels alive and lived in, because it is.

We’ve become far too familiar with the orange livery of the budget airline Easy Jet. No point complaining about the horrible schedules and no frills processing. That’s the deal. Low cost air travel along with wireless internet underpins this exhaustive (and exhausting) boat search.  

The boat we went to see in Northern Ireland held out so much promise. She was a late contender, but a strong one, we thought, with a hard-top and the layout I prefer i.e. a centerline bed and chairs in the saloon. She wasn’t easy to view, hanging as she was on a mooring on Strangford Loch. The broker begged to differ. Almost all her boats, she told us, were on moorings, and this one was relatively straightforward to access compared to most. Marinas, you understand, are not the norm in Ireland. Strangford Loch reminded me of New Zealand, where marinas are not the norm either.

Here’s where we picked up a tender to drive out to the boat. As usual, we spent a few hours aboard her. She was the last boat on our list.

That brings us back to The Stag, in Lyndhurst, where we’ve parked ourselves for the past two nights to chew over our options.  Yesterday, as well as watching Andy Murray beat a lack lustre Spaniard on centre court, we went to Bucklers Hard to top up the history levels – on the recommendation of my mother. Thanks mum. I have a soft spot for that grand old man of the sea, Francis Chichester, and Bucklers Hard, though I hadn’t recalled it, is where he kept his Gipsy Moth yachts for 30 years. There’s an elegantly carved memorial to Chichester in the tiny chapel in the village. The maritime history museum there has his cap and camera. Yes, I’m a Chichester groupie.

The main draw at Bucklers Hard is its 18^th century ship-building history. Many of Nelson’s war ships were built right in the village, on the Beaulieu River, by a shipwright called Henry Adams, and his lads. We had a good time there, and given that my temper is now horribly frayed, that was important. My stamina levels are well below what is needed for this kind of mission. I don’t like shopping of any kind, even boat shopping. If it were up to me, I’d have bought the first boat we both liked, and damn the expense.  Alex, on the other hand, is a trader through and through. He likes to weigh his choices. He likes to have choices. He might buy the first boat he saw, but not before he’s seen everything there is to see. He loves to check out the merchandise. I get bored very quickly by merchandise. When I get raw, he applies balm – wine and food are good, but history, applied in the correct manner, both soothes and stimulates a Termagant Wife (cf a certain Duchess of Malborough, whose portrait is labelled as such at Antony House).

Time out

Another day, another country, another boat...This has got to stop!

We're so shattered this evening after yet another big drive followed by several hours of intense boat inspection that we've turned on television to watch Wimbledon - in the right time zone, for a change. That great  Cypriot entertainer Baghdatis is giving an off-his-game Djokovic a big fright on centre court in the gentlemen's singles, and the crowd is loving him for it.  The lingering light outside is probably lovely, and we're only a hop, step and a jump from Plymouth's waterfront with its enormous maritime history. But it's line ball whether we'll leave the hotel room tonight.

Turkey wrap

We cut loose after Fethiye.  Two other boats we’d hoped to inspect in Turkey evaporated, for different reasons, and with four boat-free (ha!) days to fill, Alex suggested we “pop up to Ephesus”. I thought that

sounded romantic. I hadn’t given Ephesus a thought since my Bible-reading youth, of which no more.

Alex had gone to Ephesus as a young man, en route to India in a VW combi van. Different youths we had, and were.

Venus (above) and Marcus Aurelius, both from Ephesus originally - take your pick

The road to Ephesus (which is just short of Izmir, about five hours north of Fethiye) took Alex by surprise.  His Turkey of 35 years ago was a place of slow travel, of donkeys and dust. We didn’t see any donkeys, but there’s still plenty of dust. Turkey seems to be literally bursting out of her crusty old skin, heavy machinery, cutting, digging, pushing, scooping her features into a new shape…As with any work in progress, what catches on the eye are the unfinished seams, the raw edges.



The  beauty we found en route was not  generally in the towns (functional at best, and more commonly ugly) but in the natural landscape - olive trees, millions of olive trees, which cover those flinty mountains which have not had their lids blown off for road metal; pink and white oleanders in bloom everywhere; groves of fig trees; citrus and apricot orchards; fast-running streams. I took great delight in finding storks nesting opposite Hotel Bella in the old quarter of Selcuk, the town nearest Ephesus.

  

We travelled quickly and in air-conditioned comfort, enjoying marvellous roads which swept up and over seemingly impassable rocky fronts and back down into fertile river valleys. We sped through tunnels which compare well with anything in Europe. That’s the idea, I imagine.

The summer heat has set in in Turkey in June. We were hot in Fethiye, but we melted at Ephesus.  Melted both physically, and into crowds such as we could not have imagined. “Holy shit,” I said to Alex early in the morning when, from the window of our bottom-of-the-bucket Kusadasi hotel, I spied three cruise ships slipping into that lovely harbour. The biggest was a floating city, the second smaller,  and the third smaller still, like Russian dolls. 

We drove early to Ephesus to be there when the gates opened -  "the first private car here,” Alex noted, with some satisfaction. I wondered why so many empty coaches were driving into the carpark. Perhaps the cruise ships had some arrangement with local companies? I thought no more about it. 

We’d beaten the crowds, we thought, as we went through the turnstiles more or less alone and ambled past the great amphitheatre, which once seated 24,000 people, and down the Marble Road towards the ruins of the agora, once the biggest commercial marketplace in the Roman empire. A couple of tour groups appeared from the opposite direction. Strange. Where did they come from? Perhaps they were VIPs with special passes.  We waited for them to go by before we got to the centrepiece of the ruins, the Celcus library. We wanted to enjoy it in comparative solitude.

We walked through the arches before we saw it – a solid procession of humanity moving towards us from as far as the eye could see up Ceretes St.  

The coaches were letting their cargo off at a second entrance at the top of the ruins, so the tour groups needed to walk only one-way, downhill, and would be met by their coaches (those empty ones we’d seen at the main entrance). We were the odd ones, pushing against the tide. Thousands of people were being tipped into Ephesus. They came in sets, like waves. We found shade,  took our time, waited for the lulls.  That’s how Alex got this photo below of the smaller theatre, without a soul in it. The people came from everywhere – Poland, France, England, Russia, Japan, the US. Their guides told them what to look at. They took their photos, and like schoolchildren on excursion, moved on command with their eyes glazed.

Alex remembered coming to Ephesus in the mid 70s, and sharing it with (he guesses) no more than 500 others. We reckon you could have filled the great Ephesus amphitheatre twice over the day we went. That’s not to diminish the impact of the ruins, but it did get us thinking about what it means for our plans to be tourists, albeit on the water, in Turkey over the summer.

A woman restoring frescoes in what were the houses of the rich in Ephesus

From Ephesus, once the most sophisticated Roman city in Asia minor, we went to a more modern hub. This is what we saw.

This is the Marmaris Yacht marina (the biggest of three marinas at Marmaris) as seen from our lodgings at the Pupa Yacht Hotel (a simple little establishment about 8 km from Marmaris town, and one we’d highly recommend to those not into clubbing, for which Marmaris is apparently famous).

A boat up on the hard at Kusadasi. The same technique is used in Marmaris.

Back to boats after all. Just for a quick look, he said, then we’ll go back to the hotel for a swim (the sea, the Mediterranean sea – astonishingly clear and very warm) and send some emails, do the blog. By noon we were well grilled by an unforgiving sun.  We'd checked out the hard stands (the Turkish variety, above) and the boats in the water.  We were pounding the marina arms, getting an idea of who was there, what the facilities were like should we want work done in the future on our boat, and what, by chance, might be for sale.  “Just one more, Mary”, he said.  Always just one more. 

I insisted on a water break. That’s when we saw the Hallberg Rassey 48, Destiny of Scarborough, with a backside on her just like Enki’s.

There were noises coming from down below. I called out, and the owner, a Yorkshireman who introduced himself as David,  put his head above decks. To cut this very long story short, we stopped right there. David, we learned, had bought his boat only two months ago, and was still playing with her, figuring out how she fitted together. As he warmed to Alex's well-informed questions, he mentioned that he would be taking her for her first sail, just a short one,  that afternoon. Would we like to come? We would. Very much so. He seemed pleased. It was a deal. 

Alex talked David through the in-mast furling (there were a few loose ends, literally). I made myself handy with the lines and fenders as she came out of the marina. There was a gentle breeze blowing and Destiny did what she was designed to do. She surged across the flat blue water, picking up even more speed as Alex and David tweaked her sails. I made myself at home. It was good to be on the water again. Very good. The HR 48 is a bigger boat than we've been used to, but we liked how she felt.

That was last night, and tonight we’re in England. It's cold, and the sound of tyres on wet streets outside our pub, The Stag in Lyndhurst, makes me feel more at home than I have for a few days.  Tomorrow morning, we're heading off first thing for Plymouth to meet another man about another boat, and on Monday we fly in and out of Belfast for the day - same thing.  Two more HR 46s to see.  I’m tired. They’re big days, and as we get closer to making a decision on what to buy, we talk endlessly about the heart of the matter .This quest of ours is not just about what we want to sail in, but why we want to sail, and where....Those different youths we had, they make a difference. 

KInd of blue

On the waterfront at Fethiye

Just behind our hotel, which is beside the water at what seems to be the smarter end of Fethiye, there’s a new mosque hung about with loudspeakers. Every so often, through the day and into the night, the mosque puts out an amplified call to prayer, sternly over-riding the sounds of pleasure – young women’s full-bodied laughter, children’s squeals and watery splashes, the flirtatious chatter of drinkers perched under the shade of the poolside bar, the drone of yachties swapping yarns as they imbibe the creature comforts of the hotel, which has a marina attached to it.

It seems to me a strange partnering, that of Turkey and mass tourism, but then again, I’m new to this part of the world, and who am I to know what’s strange? People have been moving in and out of Fethiye since the 5^th century BC and I guess, as Alex said to me while we were waiting on our order from one of those ubiquitous eateries which feed tourists such ordinary food that it seems a pity to have bothered cooking it, the Templar Knights would have appreciated the Mediterranean climate after England’s too.

Today, after we’d had the ancient treasures (above) of the Fethiye museum to ourselves for an hour or so (yet another gem, conforming to the “best museums are found in small towns” rule which my well-travelled daughter swears by), we followed the museum guardian’s directions to the amphitheatre which was built by the Romans, latecomers to the area.  Or rather, we tried to follow them, but of course, lost the trail and, because the sun was cruel, decided to go back to the hotel to snooze. Then I saw it, a pile of big stones which we’d walked past five or six times in the past two days. An ancient overgrown amphitheatre, no less, littered with broken glass and butts, but still, when you knew what you were looking at, a marvelous arena, perfect for outdoor concerts and spectacles – no better spot in the town still, but it’s a ruin.

We came here, of course, to look at a boat, and that’s what we’ve mostly been doing. Our object of desire this time has been a Contest 48, owned by a British couple who came to Turkey a few years ago to sail but made the mistake of going ashore and falling in love with a country house in a village not far from Fethiye. They bought it, and now they have horses and dogs and vegetable gardens and guests from back home, and the boat, a beautiful thing with a shiny navy blue hull and an interior of great character, lies for too many months on end unused in her marina pen. It’s too early to say yet whether we will be her new owners, but she needs to be taken to sea. All boats do.

The Contest signature cocktail cabinet -  vital kit

Fethiye is a sailing hub. There are the charter yachts, lined up along the marina arms like off-the-rack clothing, waiting for customers (the place is thick with British accents).  Then, where the town meets the sea, there are the gorgeous wooden Turkish sailing boats, each a little different from the next but all essentially buxom and heavily built, stern-to against the sea wall, touting for the tourist dollar (below).  

A day floating about on the ocean is very tempting, but the company wouldn’t be of our choosing and we’ve been spoilt rotten. Fethiye wouldn’t be a bad place to start our voyage though, not bad at all.


Compare the two photos below, taken in the same week in June  – the first around the docks in Lymington, the second on the marina in Fethiye  - and then ask yourself (as we are asking ourselves) where you’d prefer to be when the European summer begins in 2012. The south coast of England or the eastern Med?

 It’s a no-brainer really. If location were the most important criterion, we’d have put down a deposit on the Contest yesterday. But it isn’t, and we’ve got more boats to see back in the UK next week before we make up our minds. Again, spoilt rotten, it has to be said, and we’re grateful for that.

In the Midi sun

The joy of travelling with this new toy of mine, the smallest of Mac Airbooks, is that, as planned, I can stow it in my handbag. Look, no hands!  The pain is that I don’t really know how to use it, over and above the obvious.  All those tricks which make Mac so desirable are still beyond me. Neither, to compound the pain, have I paused long enough to learn the simple skill of taking photos off Alex’s new toy, the smallest of waterproof cameras which stows even more easily in the same handbag. So, rather than leaping into the blog, as also planned, I’ve been held back by good old technical ineptness.

Here I sit, in the gap between ostentatiously heavy brocade curtains and the bedroom windows of our lodgings in Lymington, dressed warmly for another sad summer’s day in the south of England.  Alex sleeps on in the muffled darkness on the other side while I wrangle sense out of a simple Microsoft Word document. Some time between the breakfast part of our B & B package and racing onto Southhampton to see the next boat, I’ll massage this into a New Post, complete with Photos. Hah! I wish.     

                 

It’s been hectic, as they say back home. Truly.  We’re a little further ahead in the boat-finding game than we were a week ago, but we’ve put some big distances in, and we’re about to fly a quarter of the way back to Australia just because….we’ve undertaken to see another man about another boat. From Provence to the Solent via the Costa Brava and Barcelona, and now onto the Turkish Riviera (I’m sure someone somewhere has described Fethiye as such) – when I put it like that, it sounds exotic, doesn’t it? It’s that too, in a mad, let’s-eat and-drink-our-way-around-the-marina-circuit-and-see-everything-worth-seeing-before-we-sit-down-with-yet-another-bottle-of-wine-and-make-our-decision kind of way. 

The loveliest surprise was Arles, where we arrived in the drawn out midsummer evening last Friday.

 We’d stayed longer than expected at Port Napoleon to help Christophe haul out Enki so as to put her on a hard stand (I've put her picture at the top).  By that stage, we were loathe to leave her.  We'd got rather too close to her and his story. But we needed to get moving, and Arles was close and curiously, neither of us had been there before (we’ve spent a bit of time in Provence over the years).  All it took was 40 km of freeway travel in the rented VW Polo, and we were in another world, where the star attractions did not have masts and keels but gloriously intact Roman arches and stepped terraces, magnificent Medieval stonework, peeling shutters, doorways and courtyards which spoke of cloaks and daggers and dark dastardly deeds.

We kept the Rhone with us all the way. Arles, like Avignon further to the north, is a river city. Julius Caesar gave it to his soldiers, a bit like the Australian government giving farms to veterans after the First World War. The Romans built an amphitheatre, and it’s awe-inspiring, appearing suddenly around a corner, in the midst of the town,  without fanfare, as if its presence there were as normal as a Westfield shopping mall.  

And then, equally unexpected, are the golden arches and hot-coloured flower beds in the courtyard of what was once the hospital where Vincent van Gogh was incarcerated.  I’d forgotten that Van Gogh lived in Arles.

You'd think with such a drawcard that everything would be van Gogh this, van Gogh that, but the town flows around him rather than to him. Arles seems to take in all those Roman soldiers, stern abbots and monks, painters and mystics, and still have a youthful pulse. Attractive towns are always about commerce first, and  the Saturday morning market is a beauty. 

I do love those cheeses and cherries and olives, but my most heady experience in Arles was at the Musee Reattu, a gem of a museum, brilliantly put together, where sketches by Picasso, carpets by Christian Lacroix, 18^th century painting and 21^st century sculpture work into and against each other and the building, an ancient priory of forbidding walls, coats of arms, flagstones and gargoyles.  I was in heaven.

The next stories of the boats will have to wait.  Alex is down at the Berthon boatyard now, tearing himself away from a glamorous 50 foot Oyster called White Wings. There’s a 49 foot Najad with a dreadfully dowdy name down the road in Southhampton waiting for our attention….Time to get back to the marina.