We arrived well after dark at our Dalyan hotel, so yesterday was our first chance to explore. Staying ‘green’, at least until we’ve acclimatised, I took a dawn stroll around the hotel which is on the edge of town. Past a couple of smaller hotels, a few cultivated plots, across the canal and I was down at the river, with the sandstone cliffs rising steeply from the opposite bank. By the time I returned for breakfast I’d seen close on twenty species – a good reminder of Turkish birding. It was still mid-morning when we decided to set off to do a local walk to the ‘Eskikoy Rocky Outcrop’, as highlighted on a Dalyan birding website – now defunct I think. We stuck to the track leaving town, adding a few more species to the list, before finding the start of the walk proper. As the temperature started to rise I did a quick check that we were up for this. I’d got a small bottle of water in my pocket so we decided to continue. By the time we reached the rocky outcrop – giving good views over lake Koycegiz – we were definitely feeling the effects of the sun. Jane sought out some shade between two rock slabs whilst I decided to reach ‘the summit’ and enjoy the views. It was only then that I started reflecting on the tragic case of Michael Mosley (a couple of years younger than me) who perished recently on a hillside walk on a remote Greek Island. We rationed the water and started back on the return journey – neither of us feeling quite right. As we turned off the main road, with only a couple of kilometres to go, we sipped the last of the water and it was then that I noticed Jane’s phone was missing from her pocket. It must have dropped out somewhere in the last 5k! Neither of us were in a fit state to retrace our steps. We made it back to our hotel room, sat under a cold shower and drank litres of water and coke. Jane spent the afternoon tracking her phone on her iPad. It appeared to have been lost on the roadside a couple of kilometres from when we first noticed it missing, but soon after it was showing at a location in the next town! Another check an hour later and it was in Dalyan – turns out at the police station! Jane and her phone (and her driving licence and bank cards) were happily reunited. The walk ended up being just shy of ten miles and the temperature an average of 35 deg. What a day, and following gentle admonishment from the kids, we promised to be less ‘green’ in the future!

To cut a long and painful story short, we were going to Spain for a well-deserved break – now we’re going to Turkey instead! Turns out that the expiry date in your UK passport (in my case March next year) is irrelevant to our European cousins. In a recent spiteful and petty anti-Brexit reaction EU bureaucrats apparently created the ‘ten year rule’ which means your passport isn’t valid beyond ten years after the issue date – in my case early August. Having travelled down to Luton on Monday, spent the night in an hotel, parked the car for the week and checked in our luggage, ready for an early departure to Malaga yesterday morning, I was stopped at the gate and told I couldn’t fly. It took an age to retrieve our bags, collect the car and drive back home. Jane managed to cancel some accommodation but we’ve lost the money for the flights, car hire, parking and accommodation – three cheers for Brussels! Determined to do something with our precious week we looked for last minute breaks to non-European countries and Turkey came up trumps. We’re off tomorrow to Dalyan a lovely lake-side resort in the south-west of the country – a destination we last birded with a GPOG group back in 2007 – what could possibly go wrong! More news on this blog in due course…