Mad
weather – I think spring is here! It has
been really warm all this week – over 20 degrees, people out in shorts and t-shirts,
doors and windows open all day sort of warm.
Then, early this morning, I heard thunder rumbling, followed by a huge
storm with HAIL that is still sitting around on the ground now (9am).
We
had our electric bill through from January – when we had the really cold weather
– and it was more than it’s ever been – about £100 for one month. We haven’t put up our wood-burning stove this
winter (my decision because it’s smoky and dirty and I can’t light it!) so we
were trying to keep the house warm with electric heaters. The houses here are hard to heat because they
don’t have cavity walls, are all tiles and marble and are basically designed to
be cool in summer. And as for the
temperature in the bathroom – I think it was close to zero some mornings, not
tempting when you want to take a shower!
Actually,
in place of the stove, I wanted to put in an air conditioning unit, one large
enough to heat our open-plan ground floor and fairly new as they are very
energy efficient. Some friends of ours
who were moving house, offered us theirs (new when they moved into the old
house 2 years ago) for free, so we have been hanging on for that. Unfortunately, the house they are moving to
has taken much longer to finish than expected so I finally got the a/c
yesterday – now it’s too warm to use it!
Oh well – it’ll be summer soon and we can use it to cool!
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| somewhere between Nif and Gocek - almond trees in flower |
Friends
Grant and Dawn are out for a holiday. We
went for a drive the other day – up to Uzumlu, where all the almond trees are
in blossom, then on to Nif and some of the mountain roads beyond. I’d looked at the map and knew that it was
fairly easy to get from there back down to Gocek so we meandered a long for a
while, guessing which way to go at junctions.
Unfortunately,
Turkish mountain roads have a habit of leading off merrily in one direction,
only to twist and turn and take you in the complete opposite direction. I had a similar experience last year trying
to get back down on to the Kas road from Arycanda. There was a short time when I thought we
might have to turn back, but eventually we managed to find a road that took us
down towards the sea and we came out at the top of the hill going into
Gocek. Had to stop and have lunch there
to recover!
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| a glimpse of Gocek |
