The guests this month have been surprised by the cool evenings but loved the hot sunny days. It’s a great time of year to explore, the crowds are less, the attractions still warm enough for a leisurely stroll through and you can still swim in the sea even if the pool is now full of metaphorical icebergs.
Pammukale is looking particularly glorious this year, the travertine’s are in great shape and the hot water pools a soothing 34 degrees and every guest who has gone there this year has said it was a highlight of their trip.
I’m busy; writing and cooking and helping Nick with the tortuous formalities of moving his pensions to Turkey. It involved reading more tedious laws than I would have wanted but the benefits are enormous and given the hideous falls on the UK stock market the sooner he is out of that theatre of investment the better!
Kurban Bayram is just around the corner and the neighbours are in a frenzy of preparations, our vacuum cleaner has been appropriated and even the outside walls are being hovered as they prepare for the festival which starts on 6th November.
Down in the valley serious man in flat caps and wellies are making decisions about next years crops and the snaky coils and complicated manifolds of irrigation pipes are going in to service new vineyards being carved out of old orchards.
We’re all planning next year already, I have my first booking for 2012 and it’s an early one. The season gets longer every year, certainly for us, and with guests due next month we’re now welcoming people to Kirazli between early April and the end of November and as we’re open all year I’d expect to get a few last minute bookings during January and February from guests enjoying exploring Turkey in winter.
Everyone in the village is waiting for Kurban Bayram to be out of the way before they get started on the olive harvest. This is a brief interlude between one harvest and the next, a short time of planning and relaxing and feasting before the long cold days of the olive trees are upon us again.
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- Flowering on into Winter
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- Harvesting the last of the grapes
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- The valley, one morning in late October
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- Late plum caught in a pocket of frost
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- The orchards turning gold
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- Hazy, misty, October days
Lovely – just lovely. I am enjoying the cool nights followed by sunny, Andalucian-skied days. Seems like the best of both worlds where we can snuggle under a blanket and sleep at just the right temperature, but feel the sun on our backs (and even swim) whilst having the beach to ourselves. It seems only right that we should give these lovely days their due recognition and your photographs are just wonderful.
Axx
We should definately recognise how great autumn is. All Summer we couldn’t move because of the heat and I do find it easier to warm up than cool down, there are only so many layers of clothes you can take off before you’re down to just skin and you’re boiling in that! Mum and Dad are out in Spain and loving the weather once those weekend storms passed. Karen
Gorgeous photos and such lovely, lyrical writing, Karen. I really got the feel of autumn in Turkey.
It is a lovely season but rather extreme at times. I’ve just come in from watering the garden because it still dries out in the daytime and yet I’m drawing the curtains and turning the heating on because the nights are cold. I was sweating buckets standing in the sun down by the tea shop this lunchtime and the farmers were bringing in the last of the grapes and the melons, the grapes were rose ones and huge, the melons looked like sunshine in a rind, and yet tomorrow morning, if I go out early I can find frost pockets in the valley. Best of both worlds I guess. Karen