11.5.25

Half marathon Çesme

I slept well, John didn’t, he always struggles the night before a run. We were up at 7am, dressed and in the Belediye square by 7.40am. Banging tunes played and people stretching their muscles were raring to go.

It was a great atmosphere. There were several street dogs around, they all seem to be extremely obese and very friendly. While others were stretching and toning John made friends with them.

By the time we’d petted them all it was time for the off.

We had discovered another route to the square this morning, so my route back to the van was turn right by the waffle cafe, right again along an alley, through the white iron gates, up some steep steps between the houses, past an incredible cactus, up more steps, then up more steps, up the cobbled hill then along a bit back to Naz.

The best thing about this route was that it cut off some of the cobbled street of doom.

I prepared fried potato for this evening, did the washing up from last night, then sat watching downloads of Honesty Box while knitting. Soon it was time to go back down the cobbled street of doom and a million steps.

It wasn’t long before John spotted me, with less than half a kilometre to go to the finish line. He did brilliantly, 2 hours 10 minutes even though it was a tough hilly route.

When we got back to the van John snoozed, while I did more knitting and watched more trash tv.

Later we decided to find somewhere with a sea view and a place to sit outside. 12 minutes away was a recommended spot, across from some very impressive villas, mostly shuttered up, very peaceful and beautiful but blowing a gale. A short walk along the sandy beach was more than enough.

We had sausage and fried egg sandwiches and just chilled. Well, I mostly chilled. John had an sms saying there wasn’t sufficient on our HGS sticker account to pay for yesterdays green road fee. 2 hours later he still couldn’t find a way to pay it, so tomorrow we will find a post office to sort it out.

It was still blowing a gale. We began watching Pottery Throw Down after numerous people said its fab so I’d downloaded it much to Johns disbelief. It is fab and we got very hooked!

After schnitzels, fried potato and sweetcorn we watched the next Netflix film from our download list. A Simple Favour or something. I fell asleep on and off during the last half. I can’t ever remember us sitting and watching so much tv.

Tomorrow the sightseeing begins, although John has a large blister, so maybe not too much walking.

Goodnight from here