The rites of spring

Wildflowers at Hierapolis

Yesterday it was our turn to be ticked off by the marina staff for flying a sub-standard Turkish flag. We'd heard of others who'd had their faded and/or ragged courtesy flags lowered and tossed onto the pontoon. No ambiguity about the message. Turks take respect for their flag seriously, and its red should be as vivid as field poppies or young blood - not dried blood, as ours was. No problem. New flag hoisted that afternoon, with due respect.

Refreshing the flag is probably a seasonal rite here, as much as lifting your boat to have its bottom cleaned and its hull and topsides polished. We're due to be lifted in four days. The yard gets busier and busier. We've locked in tradesmen to clean the fuel tanks (remembering last year's drama) and "polish" the fuel, and to tune the rig which was new last year and has stretched. Alex is a fair way towards getting the solar and wind power up and running, and of the few jobs that remain, most are straightforward. Except, of course, we're talking about a boat...straightforward does not seem to exist in the boating vocabulary.

Ed and Sue Kelly (right) at the northern entrance to Hierapolis

To keep a sense of perspective, you need to get out among the ruins. Remember how fleeting life is? Back in the 1st century BC, the citizens of a luxury spa resort called Hierapolis thought it was really important to have a solidly-built house in which to rest their (dead) bodies. On Sunday, with Ed and Sue Kelly, we walked through fields of wildflowers and shattered stone mansions which are what remains of their illusions after earthquakes and centuries of pillaging and weathering have done their work.

Hierapolis tombs - they are spread along a 2km road

Hierapolis (about three hours north of Marmaris, near Denizli) had one of the biggest graveyards in Asia Minor, not to mention a huge marketplace and grandiose baths. On the first day of spring, hang gliders floated over its scattered ruins and the limestone terraces of Pamakkale which cascade down from Hierapolis in spooky mimicry of a glacier....and everywhere there were people, and life was good for them, and for us.

Local tourists at Hierapolis

Paddling on the travertine terraces

Turkey is so chock full of ruins that you can get a bit blase about yet another ancient city. But not one place we've been to thus far has failed to astonish us at some point. The warm mineral waters at Pamakkale which were (and still are) reputed to be therapeutic are certainly lovely to dangle your feet in, and the icing-sugar terraces are one of the marvels of Turkey. But Hierapolis's city fathers, who came from the very splendid city of Pergamon further to the north, built the most amazing theatre which Italian archeologists are restoring - and that's what took us by surprise, even more so than the often-photographed terraces.

Hierapolis theatre now (above) and as it was in 1955 (below)

A statue of Triton, taken from Hierapolis theatre

While we were on the road, Kevin and Mei slipped away on Whisper HR, the first of our Netsel marina winter crowd to set off cruising this season. They're headed towards Croatia, and then perhaps Italy next winter. We've enjoyed their company but we're learning that what you say is not "goodbye" but "see you down the track".

Floating home

The sweet vanilla-and-fruit smell of cake just out of the oven fills the cabin. This morning I felt the urge to bake. It's been a while, but we're home now, our bags stowed, clothes back in their lockers, and books, trinkets and cheaper-from-America boat paraphernalia filed. There's fruit on the table and Diana Krall sings to me live from Paris - Alex woke early and spent a couple of hours transferring new music onto our iTunes library (thanks Bridget and Tony).

Outside a fresh south-easterly wind blusters and rain is falling in fits and starts, but down below we're snug and content. Friends who have spent the entire winter in Turkey and Europe are weary of damp cold and sun-less skies, and who can blame them, but late March is very early spring and we think it will be another month before we're out of here.

Others are sniffing the air, anxious to be gone. They'll take a chance with the April firtana (storms) predicted in Turkish annual storm table. Kevin and Mei, our Melbourne friends on Whisper HR, have a pick-up in Rhodes mid-April. Mei has been cooking for the freezer. The yard has a buzz about it. People are doing those boat jobs they've been talking about doing since November, and firming up on their cruising plans. Ed and Sue have Angel Louise out of the water, getting her ready for the long haul back to their beloved St Katherine's dock in London. They too have decided to delay their Atlantic crossing by a year. What's the hurry to get home? they asked themselves and decided there was none after all. It's a familiar story.

So many tulips to admire

The garden path leading to Topkapi palace

Fresco in the Chora church, Istanbul

Istanbul, with its heavenly tulip plantings and forests of minarets, heaving crowds and sleepless streets seems far away now. There's only a month before the first wave of holidaymakers from the north dumps on Marmaris and the town still looks like the backwater it is out of season. The main shopping street is a shambles, impassable by car. At every corner there's a road being pulled up.

The state of chandlery street

But this is a town which leans towards the water, and when the skies clear and the wind drops, as it did on the day we came back, there are a lot of Turks and ex-pats who will tell you that you can keep your Golden Horn and your glittery Byzantine mosaics. They'd rather be living on Marmaris Bay.

Chora church mosaics 

Change of season

The faith I spoke of, you know my line about giving our children the freedom to get on with their lives without us for a bit, well, that took a hammering as we took our leave from Sydney. It probably didn't help that I'd planned our departure for just after my birthday which we celebrated, without irony, at a Turkish restaurant. Feel the love, as they say. I did, and I do. As does Alex.

The  goodbyes are something you just have to get through in the belief that life is long, that it has its seasons and that for us, there will come a season when staying put while others come and go is a given. Now is our time to go.

Besides, how often can a person expect to be in Istanbul in the spring? Two months ago, in the cold half light of late January, we watched teams of men carefully digging tulip bulbs into garden beds in the parkland surrounding the Topkaki palace and I was excited for our return. Paris has its chestnut blossom, and London its daffodils but Istanbul's spring motif is the tulip.

But tulips in March? My mother (my gardening guru) wasn't hopeful. So when I saw shadowy thickets of buds on the side of the road on our way in from Ataturk airport to Cihangir, I was ecstatic. "The tulips are up!"

 

Yesterday we walked across the Galata bridge, where the fish must no longer be running becasue the crowds on the railings have thinned, and up to the glory which is the Suleymaniye mosque. Up the steep winding streets and past the sagging wooden Ottoman houses.

We walked past the tin merchants, the washing strung across the road between houses, past young men shovelling coal and toting trays, past old men shouldering and pushing great unwieldy loads - work is so visible in Turkey - and through the gate and into the tranquillity of the great mosque, the one less visited, and for that reason alone, the best to visit in Istanbul.

In that vast space, sitting on fine carpet, and looking up into the huge dome's salmon pink interior, painted with flowers, for the first time I felt at ease in a mosque. Perhaps it was the stained glass windows, which are unusual in a mosque and which reminded me of other places of worship, those I know better.

Then, because we could, we crossed the Bosphorous to Kadikoy for lunch at Ciya Sofrasi. In between the traffic and the parking lots, there they were again. Tulips. Squat red ones with saw-toothed petals, white ones on long stems. The early bloomers.

While we've been lolling in the summer sun on the other side of the world, they've have pushed their way through the hard earth, towards the light and the warmth. Not only tulips, but daffodils and hyacyinths, and grape hyacinths painting intense purple borders around the tulip beds. And irises amongst the gravestones in the locked cemetery at Suleymaniye mosque where Suleyman the Magnifcent and his wife Roxelanne are buried. Ataturk wanted modern Turks to forget the Ottomans, but their flowers come up every spring.

Break in transmission

However many times I do it, flying directly from one side of the world to the other numbs my brain. I'm not talking about the hours in the trip, or the jet lag it produces, though that too. It's that the very possibility of being able to transplant your body overnight from, say, Istanbul to Sydney and hit the ground running (to abuse a cliche) is kind of unbelievable, isn't it? A lot of us do it, often even. Big bird travel provides the quick turnaround time which life as we know it demands. But I find myself resisting the speed too. I need a longer period in which to make the mental shift between cultures. Plus I want the thrill of doing 100-miles between sunrise and sunset in fair winds to stay sharp, and for that it helps to be moving slowly across the planet as a matter of course.

Gardeners planting tulip bulbs at Topkapi palace in Istanbul

The skyline at Broadway in Sydney

But we're modern types, and we've flown home to see our nearest and dearest.

Mikey

Dave

Pauline

Sam

Madi

Freddy and Clem

Pops

The necessary business of letting go of our grown children hasn't been that straightforward for us, for all the words we've spilled on the subject. I think we needed to reassure ourselves that both they and we are in the right place.

Last week we were briefly in Sydney, but this week the right place is the beach house in New Zealand which, however long it is between visits, has outlasted every other home I've ever known. It's where my dad taught me how much fun it can be mucking about in small sailing boats, it's where my children have spent many many summers with their grandparents and cousins, it's where no matter how claustrophobic or wet your holiday - "soft rain"my sister Barb learned from the Irish this past British  summer to call the kind of dismal weather we're having now - you always make more good memories.

Sisters

There are eight of us here - sons and daughters minus Sam who toils in Sydney and his girlfriend Madi who toils in Papua New Guinea.  Last night, on account of the persistent drizzle, we canned the barbecue and roasted a leg of lamb. Of course, you say. New Zealand lamb. It was good as you're imagining. And my mother called to say she'd bought a house. Never a dull moment with my mum. I am a little out of practice at reading and responding to the currents which swirl about and under the surface here, but give me a week and I'll have forgotten I'm on a remote island at the southern extremity of the globe. New Zealand and its norms will have reasserted their position at the centre of the universe. But isn't that why we've flown so far? To reset the compass? Find our true north? GPS tells you one story, but your heart tells you another.