Road to Bodrum

With the onset of winter rain, we are enjoying the comforts of the improved road to our village house. When we started building in 1991, our access lane looked like this.  Bumpy in summer and very muddy in winter.  Experience was needed to negotiate the puddles and several friends' cars ended up bogged down half way along. 

Last year the road was widened and gravelled. This is a double-edged sword; boy racers have taken to whizzing past on their drunken way back from village weddings but our VW's chassis will last a few years longer and I don't have to keep my wellies in the car.  

Of all the changes in Turkey over the years, the most obvious is  the amount of road building.  Despite having lived in Bitez for 2 years, I now hesitate to visit friends there as I keep getting lost. 

When we moved to a Bitez mandarin garden in 1983, there was only one road (marked in red) and one river bed that was sometimes a road and other times a raging torrent that tumbled cars from the village down to the beach. 

To really appreciate the changes a born and bred Bodrumite of senior years has seen in the transport infrastructure, the grainy photograph below was taken by Freya Stark in 1950 of the road between Bodrum and Milas. 

This is the access road to Bodrum today. 

"If one were given a single window from which to look upon the changing Eastern world, it should face, I think, the road"  Freya Stark,  East is West. 

Winter Warmth in Bodrum

Why do I like living in Bodrum? Because on the 15th January in what by any calendar is the middle of winter,  Spring is in the air.  For the past 3 days we have had glorious sunshine and temperatures around 16 degrees C.  Heavy coats have been abandoned for sleeveless jackets and every roof has flapping laundry.  The puddles left by the heavy rain on Friday night have almost dried up and the bedding plants that looked almost certainly  frozen then drowned along the harbour front, might just survive.  This is what I missed in my 12 winters in England - these little mini respites from the relentless winter weather.  We've just taken an late walk around the town and the south wind is blowing a pleasantly warm breeze landwards.  This southerly lodos is the harbinger of rain so we will probably say goodbye to the sun for a few days, but after the cold spell last week, it was lovely to have a mini summer for a few days.
Spring flowers are starting to appear. I brought a bunch of narcissus home from the market on Friday and they are still filling the room with their heady scent.  One sniff of these delicate flowers takes me back to Bitez 30 odd years ago.  In what is now an urban mass of hotels, houses, roads and shops, there were water logged fields that would fill with nergis, narcissus in the winter.  I wonder if any still appear in the gardens of the new houses and hotels. I'd like to think that a few bulbs survived the bulldozers.

Christmas Greetings.

The mince pies are made, the truffles are in the fridge and the gingerbread was finished off days ago.  Christmas day is a normal working day in Turkey but the expats have been busy with Christmas fairs and markets.  The annual Carol Singing was held on Friday night which got everyone in the festive mood.  I've asked several people and no one can be quite sure when the first carol singing event started in Bodrum, but it's been going for at least 20 to 25 years. I've missed the last 13 years but I don't think the song sheet has changed while I've been away.  It began to raise money for the Orphanage in Muğla but for the last few years, the proceeds have stayed on the Bodrum peninsula and been donated to the Special Needs school in Yahşi.
This year's format was a bit different with a junior choir starting the proceedings, then the rest of us got a chance to waggle our vocal chords, lubricated with ample mulled wine.

The Junior Chorus

Priscilla and Geoff

Stalwarts of Carol Concert organization



Christmas Greetings.