Sunflowers

Monday 8 July 2013

I love sunflowers. Over the past two weeks we have driven past field upon field of these beautiful brightly coloured flowers. In the northern parts of Turkey they were planted in very uniform rows, in Greece they seem to have been planted in a much more haphazard way! 

In Turkey they are called ‘ayçiçek’ which translates to ‘moonflower’. I'm not sure why that is.

The 'supermoon' whilst we were in Turkey - can't see the similarity!

Good old Wikipedia has loads of information on these seemingly very complex flowers.Did you know, for example, that it is a common misconception that a sunflower head tracks the sun? In reality the head is fixed and faces east.

They may be facing east - but it's the wrong way for my photo

As well as the more common uses, in oil and seed production, sunflowers have been used to extract toxins, such as lead, arsenic and uranium, from polluted soils after the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters. Clever old sunflowers.

Sunflowers, I've also read, have a really complex spiral pattern with specific floret orientation and 'golden angles'. They even have their own mathematical formula which is  r =c√ n,  θ = n x 137.5 ◦ (where θ is the angle, r is the radius or distance from the centre, n is the index number of the floret and c is a constant scaling factor). Typically they will have 34 spirals in one direction and 55 in another although in large sunflowers this could be 89 and 144. Who knew and who is counting?

But where do you start counting from?

All I know is that I kept making poor Dave stop so I could get some really close up shots and I now have a collection of about 50 photos in their own little folder in Picasa.

 

I love poppies too and we saw lots growing wild around the ANZAC war cemeteries in Turkey.

Another favourite of mine is the tulip – so perhaps we’ll have to detour back through Amsterdam!  

If you want to get ahead...get a hat

Thursday 4 July 2013

We’re in Halkidiki or that could be Chalkidiki, Chalcidice or Chalkidike. Like most places in Greece it seems to have at least 4 variations of its name. So far we have just about managed with our road map, which gives 2 variations on a towns name, and the Sat Nav and we’ve only got lost a few times. Anyway it’s all very nice and, along with loads of other campervaners, we’re ignoring the signs below and still managing to wild-camp in some fantastic places.

After leaving Alexandroupolis we pottered along the coast finding it hard not to keep stopping every hour or so as we stumble across yet another dreamy sandy cove. Turkey is a great country to travel around but the Greek beaches are just fantastic and the sea is so warm. It’s quiet too, although the tourists are here the coastline is so vast they are few and far between.

 

Halkidiki is the part of northern mainland Greece that looks like a cows udder, or if you prefer the brochure blurb of the Greek Tourist Board its ‘shaped like Poseidon’s trident, sticking out into the Aegean Sea’. The most easterly peninsula is mainly monks, monasteries and Mount Athos. Women are forbidden from visiting it – good, that means a photo of the 2033m high mountain from the middle peninsula will have to do.

There are plenty of ancient sites here in Greece but to be honest we’ve been mesmerised by the beautiful beaches and clear blue sea. We drove past this huge stone lion at Amphipolis, parts of it date to the 4th C BC, and today we are parked up on Toroni beach which has a Byzantine fortress. Unfortunately it is all locked up with a sign saying ‘Works in progress’ – not that there is anything obvious going on.

As well as driving and swimming we’ve also been doing a bit of retail therapy buying things we have been meaning to get for some time. In Dikili in Turkey we found the perfect ‘coffee table’ for our sundowners. Here in Greece we have bought a tray, a fly-swat, a fan that runs off a USB connection and a hat.

Had we known that this lady would be walking past us on the beach I might have waited before buying my hat – if only to pretend I wanted the one at the bottom in the hope that she would have to take them all off one by one – I count 20! Any advances on that?

Beach vendor rockin that multi-hat look....

My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Sunday 30 June 2013

I didn't sleep much last night. We arrived in the town of Alexandroupolis at about 7pm and parked up in a huge empty car park just off the sea front. Dave went for a swim before we took a stroll along the promenade returning to the van at about 9pm for a bite to eat. There were few people around - it seemed like a quiet little town.

We hadn't bargained on the hotel opposite hosting a huge wedding which didn't get going until about 10pm and the live band were still belting it out way past 4am, even a quick rain shower didn't dampen their enthusiasm to have a good time. The car park was now crammed full so we couldn't have moved if we'd wanted to. So as the old saying goes  'if you can't beat them join them' we went out for another walk at about 11pm, well past our normal bed time, to find the town had come alive with families, couples, groups of girls closely followed by groups of boys - all out walking, cycling, roller skating, buggy pushing and chatting away. The restaurants which has been completely empty earlier were now heaving with customers and the bars very lively.

It had been quite a long day as we had earlier crossed the border from Turkey to Greece through the small town of Ipsala in the Thrace region. Turkish border posts employ lots of staff all with specific roles - initial document checker, passport control, customs, final document checker and plenty of guards in between. The initial document checker person didn't tell us that campervans had to be x-rayed so having breezed through steps 1 - 3 we then had to drive back to the beginning and wait in line with all the TIR lorries. Thankfully they took pity on us and we were allowed to 'jump' the huge queue - it still took half an hour to get scanned and given the all clear though.

We wondered whether the x-ray could have spotted Dave's broken toe!

Having now jumped through all the hoops, although not in the correct order, we were off and crossing two long bridges over the vast marsh area that forms the 'no-mans land' border between the two countries. We passed four lots of armed guards on this section before arriving at the ramshackle Greek border post - all smiles and waves and a very quick process. Welcome to Greece.

It's all Greek to me!

Big sunflower or little bird?

I am looking forward to joining the Greeks in their 3 hour 'siesta' this afternoon to catch up on my beauty sleep!

Melting away

Saturday 29 June 2013

Heading north and retracing our steps we parked up on a beach we had stopped at 5 weeks ago – finding a very different scene now. Then we we were the only visitors, the sea was decidedly chilly and the van was sand blasted by strong southerly winds all night. Now plenty of stalls and cafés are set out, the sea is warm and inviting and the wind much calmer. It’s a bit of a hidden gem this 12km stretch of golden sand north of Kusadasi. The locals arrive in all manner of vehicles cramming in as much paraphernalia as could possibly be needed for their day out with all their family and friends.

Not far from the beach is the ancient site of Notion. Parking up on the main road we walked down the rutted track and wandered around the free and largely unexcavated site. The only recognisable building was the theatre but we walked around for a good hour under the mid-day sun looking for other remains trying to avoid the prickly undergrowth and huge flying insects. It was probably the heat playing tricks with my mind but I couldn’t get the lyrics to the 70’s hit ‘Rock the boat’ out of my head the whole time we were there. The song writers must have had a mental block when they were trying to find words to rhyme with devotion and ocean......

"So I’d like to know where you got the notion...."

Back on the road we headed inland and up into the mountains – and this is the point at which the road started to melt! It was like driving on treacle – with sticky black tar oozing out of the surface. We slowly overtook a council vehicle with exhausted workers half-heartedly throwing out small shovel fulls of grit every meter or so – it was hardly worth their effort really as it made no noticeable difference. As our thermometer (best purchase yet from the Lidl ‘man-aisle’) peaked at 41.6 C (107 Fahrenheit)  we found a shady tree to park under for lunch and were joined by a string of other vehicles needing to stop to let their engines cool down. We get plenty of curious stares and cheery waves in Turkey – campervans still very much a novelty here.

Down the other side of the mountain range we arrived at Sardis, paid our 8tl each and tried to see as much of the site as possible by staying in the shade. Whilst we were sweating and stripping off layers a young couple in full wedding regalia were having their photos taken together with assorted props - the renovated bath-gymnasium complex providing an amazing backdrop. The synagogue has also been extensively restored and there are many colourful and intricate mosaic floor panels resembling carpets dating mainly to the 4th and 5th centuries AD. It felt wrong to be walking over these delicate 1500 year old floor coverings but there were no signs or barriers indicating otherwise.

Mosaic montage.....using Picasa's clever collage tool

The ancient site covered over 300 acres and sits in a fertile area of mountain pastures,  flowing rivers and alluvial plains. It has an interesting history having been occupied for over 3000 years by different civilisations and is a real hotch-potch of architectural styles. The Lydians occupied the site in 7th C BC and when metallurgists found a method of minting almost pure gold and silver coins, and thus a trusted currency, the kings became fabulously wealthy. Their burial mounds in nearby Bin Tepe, visible from afar,  were a testament to their power and wealth.  

Further up the valley lies the temple of Artemis – the photo below, taken in 1910, shows the soil level at that time and all that could be seen were the top half of two columns. Slowly over the past 100 years of painstaking excavation and reconstruction the ruins of the temple and altar have been revealed. Information boards explain how the temple was built and the different stages of its construction – and later destruction, through earthquakes and latterly removal for stone quarrying. Travellers  reported seeing 12 columns in 1444, 5 in 1750, 3 in 1812 and 2 in 1824.

In amongst the huge pieces of rock is a little piece of British engineering. A crane, with a lifting capacity of 5 tons, which was manufactured by Dorman Long in Middlesborough then shipped out and reassembled at Sardis in 1911. 

We headed back towards the coast in search of the sea and a cooling breeze and found quirky Dikili. A very traditional holiday resort with the Turks with no foreigners around at all - it reminded us of Altinkum when we visited over 20 years ago. We had a drink in a seafront cafe watching the sun go down and camped up on the beach. Just brilliant... sad to be leaving Turkey but looking forward to Greece and hopefully Albania.