Sad, don’t want our journey to end.

19.9.21

This morning’s fabulous view. Eğirdir lake is beautiful, we camped near here years ago.

Maisy was grizzling for a cuddle just after 6 am. As all our bedding is going in the wash later John picked her up to come up with us.

She was like a mad cartoon dog when John picked her up with legs splayed out totally filling all the van space panicking, not good for Johns back but she enjoyed her snuggles once she calmed down and we went back to sleep. She was terrified of jumping back down, she’s never going to complete an agility course. Wimp.

We went off as planned to Arzarva restaurant. It was much dearer than we’ve been used to paying at 130tl for 2 but it’s our last day.

After a while they brought everything wrapped in plastic, sachets of ketchup etc, but 3 slices of stale brown bread each, in plastic bags, well one was 2 slices and a small knobbly end bit.

We looked at each other and said we weren’t staying. We’ve been having fresh, hot baskets of tandır bread for half this price. It didn’t bode well for the rest of it. They said we could order more, they missed the point.

We ended up having breakfast a few doors away at 35tl each. It wasn’t the greatest but sufficient and a basket of lovely warm bread.

Just after 11.30am we were on the road, heading towards home.

The journey was uneventful, google said the 276 km would take 3hrs 48 mins.

We know that journey well, so I finally finished watching Fatma, a Turkish drama I started months ago. It’s subtitled but well worth a watch, on Netflix.

You always know you’re almost home when the standard of driving declines to the stage where we’re using expletives every few minutes. Absolute numpties is the polite version. The last stretch of the Antalya to Fethiye road really does exhibit stupidity at it’s worst.

We got home unscathed just after 3pm.

Our garden looks great, our tubs have never looked better as they’ve not been battered by Maisys tail.

We seem to only have one cat, little Kedi, who always stays near to home and loves us the most. The others will appear when they need a Dreamies fix.

Thank you our 11 year old neighbour Lottie for looking after the garden and cats. 🐱🌿😍

We unloaded the van, and got the first 2 loads of washing underway.

Our house is huge!!! And we’ve not banged our heads in over an hour. At 5 pm we decided to go to the Sunday market and get supplies, it’ll be weird cooking everyday again.

We’ve eaten copious amounts of bread in various forms, delicious homemade jams, lots of kunefe, the occasional ice cream – I’m usually sugar free.

The scales told me I’m the lowest I’ve been for years.

All the experts who say breakfast is the most important meal of the day didn’t specify what time, clearly driving around for hours without eating and having an enormous breakfast after 4pm is the way forward.

To help rectify the weight loss we had our usual Sunday breakfast at 6pm at the market. We’ve missed our weekly katmer, layers of very thin flaky dough filled with sesame paste and drizzled with loads of honey. The pancake stall staff have missed us too and wanted to know all about our trip.

Awww, no place like home, but we’ve had the most amazing time and so much love and support from friends and family especially during the sanay days.

From home to where Naz gave up was 4581 km.With all the things wrong with her that is incredible!!

The 1234 km back home after her repairs were definitely smoother, no getting hot on hills, John says she’s lovely to drive now.

A massive thanks to John for being my soul mate, we only had 1 argument, a couple of niggles, no problems manoeuvring in the van- apart from banging our heads a few times, and got through our sanay days with humour and just being with such very lovely special people there.

And I have a new tenant lined up for my house. Thanks Curt for doing all those viewings😍

Time to plan our next adventure 😍😍😍😍.

Would we dare venture into a different country or shall we continue exploring beautiful Turkey?