Battering winds and the coming storm

We have just about recovered from last weekend.  The group of students (from Pakistan) and the hen weekend girls kept us on our toes and ate us out of nearly everything in the kitchen!   The desserts particularly went down a treat and after they left on Sunday I had to go home to make more brownie, cheesecake and apple pie.  With my little helper Kaan of course, who loves doing things in the kitchen.

a few of the students trying our hat collection

The weather has actually been wonderful, relatively cool for this time of year.  The breeze is so pleasant that it feels several degrees cooler than it actually is; a couple of guests have been caught out, especially at the beach, getting burned because they didn’t notice how strong the sun was.  Anyone who has visited Çalış knows that we usually enjoy the breeze; it keeps us cool on even the hottest days of summer (much more comfortable than Fethiye or Ölüdeniz) and has made Çalış popular for windsurfing, even enabling it to host the Turkey kite-surf championships a couple of years ago. 

Yet one of the big travel guides used to describe Çalış as a stretch of sand and shingle beach ‘battered by winds’.  Why they want to make one of our selling points sound like a disadvantage I can’t imagine.  We might not fit their idea of homely pensions in rustic Turkish villages, but they could at least mention how popular Çalış is with families and older couples who are looking for a laid-back resort with beautiful scenery, stunning sunsets and a bit of Turkish flavour.

The hotel has been quieter this week, a short lull before the storm. We took the opportunity to empty and refill the pool on Sunday/Monday.  We do this once or twice over the summer as even with our best care, there is a point at which it is better to empty it, scrub it down and start afresh.  The only trouble is that the new water is always freezing when it first goes in.  Here is Emre ‘braving’ it while the pool was filling.  Doesn’t take long at this time of year to heat up though and at least it stops it getting too hot as some of the pools around do.

 Kaan and I went horse riding again. And today we are off to the beach – for the first time this year.  Going to go along to the surf café actually so we can enjoy watching some of the surfers being ‘battered by the wind’!