From Symi to Ancient Knidos
Vasco da Gama
Ian Strathcarron
Wed 24 Aug 2011 15:34
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Our passage from Symi, heading north west, took us
back to Turkey. We left early after making way for the water tanker, which
arrived at sunrise at the mouth of the bay looking like a leviathan, with horns
and whistles blowing to warn all the smaller boats to get out of its path.
Our route was to take us to Datca, the main port on the Turkish peninsula, where
we had to check out of Turkey, but we found ideal sailing conditions and carried
on for several hours of sailing to the charming small harbour of
Palamut.
We stayed in Palamut two years ago on the way
East. It was September and very quiet. This year it was full of
holiday makers, but it's very inaccessible, so people either come by boat or by
driving down miles of twisting mountain roads. The people come from
Istanbul, Izmir or Ankara to enjoy the quiet fishing port, rather as in England
city dwellers like to visit Cornwall for an escape to an earlier and more simple
way of life.
I walked along the beach passing rows of palm
roofed huts containing little shops and restaurants. In the shops the
country women, dressed in baggy flowery trousers with scarves wound around their
heads, baked bread or cakes, or sold dried flowers and tablets of olive oil
soap, while other women sat by the side of the path, cracking open
piles of almonds, or selling jars of pickled olives. Almonds and olives
are the main crops of the country area. The restaurants on the beach were
all packed, with waiters running across the road carrying trays of
food and tea in tulip shaped beakers, or foaming glasses of beer. Nobody
was observing Ramadan, unlike in the old city of Jerusalem where we were during
Ramadan last year. There we saw Arab boys looking parched and
famished, swaying outside their shops in the souk, as no food or water is
allowed during the daylight hours. Even swimming is forbidden to a strict
Muslim, as water must not enter the mouth; an edict cheerfully ignored by
the Turkish holidaymakers.
From Palamut we had another brilliant morning
sail. The sea was deep indigo in the deep water where we were sailing, but
azure in the shallower patches in the bays nearer the coast. We headed for
Ancient Knidos, so called because it was the site of an important port in
ancient times, built at the end of a peninsula, straddling two natural
harbours. All that's left now are piles of stones, but you can identify
two theatres, a market place and the terraces on which the city was built.
Two years ago we were in a storm which raged overnight in the larger harbour,
but this year it was a perfect and safe
anchorage.
Knidos and other ancient sites on this coast were
explored and plundered by European archeologists in the nineteenth
century. The lion of Knidos, a magnificent marble beast, ten feet in
length and weighing about 11 tons, once stood on top of a tomb built
outside Knidos, but now stands on the ground floor atrium at the British
Museum next to the Information Desk. I have visited him many times
since learning of his existence two years ago. When discovered by the
archeologist Charles Newton in 1858, he was half buried on his side after
being neglected for perhaps two thousand years, so I tell
myself he is happier in London, although it seems like a cage after the
quiet mountainside. Ian thinks a replica should be made to stand guard on
Knidos harbour.
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