Experience Bodrum

From our balcony on the steep slope we could lean over and pick fruit off the vine from the terrace below and blow the grape pips in the direction of two large islands slumbering across the horizon. When the wind dropped in the evening it was so quiet that we could hear the muezzin’s chant from a mosque down the valley, a kilometre or two away away.

This was no Andalucian or Tuscan hillside; this was a villa on Turkey’s Lycian shore, and the slumbering islands on our horizon were Greek.

Villa holidays are old hat as far as most of Western Europe is concerned, but Turkish holidays have traditionally been the domain of self-contained resorts. The coastline is studded with Club Meds, Sunsails, Mark Warners and sprawling international hotels where the emphasis is on staying put and enjoying the sun, the sea and the facilities.

By renting a villa we prided ourselves on having broken that mould to go deeper, although how deep that would be remained to be seen. We had sourced the house through a company called Undiscovered Turkey (since re-named Turkish Places), although in this case the “undiscovered” turned out to refer to a portion of the very-much-discovered Bodrum peninsula.

Bodrum is the Turkish equivalent of Nice or Cannes. Wealthy locals and fast-living foreigners congregate around the town for the boat cruising, the boutique shopping and the nightlife. The surrounding hills are braided with new villa developments, many now being colonised by Brits. But outside the main metropolis the bays and beaches are predominantly Turkish, and the hills were dotted with old peasant villages that had been built many centuries ago to be out of harm’s way from piratical raids from the Greek islands.

Such was ours, Karakaya. A looping drive, about 3km (two miles) inland from the shore — although half that distance as the crow flies — it was built on a steep slope that guaranteed magnificent views of islands and sea, but continued to defy the motorcar. On our arrival we had to leave the car at the road end and lug our luggage 200m uphill through a network of footpaths reminiscent of a hill village in Nepal, with Mustafa, the caretaker, leading the way.

The house turned out to be a conversion of two small properties into something very spacious, on four levels. Interiors were of wood and polished stone, there was a choice of bathrooms and a plunge pool in the garden for when the heat got too much. Barring the absence of television or radio, there was nothing primitive here.

From Karakaya’s commanding position we could make sorties down to various points of the peninsula, trying out the villages, beaches and bays. We compared the local market at Yalikavak with the new supermarket at Ortakent, which turned out to be a close relative of Tesco. We tried the watersports at Bitez, and the Turkish bath in Bodrum itself. But the place we kept returning to was Gumusluk, our neighbourhood village 3km downhill. Gumusluk has a semi-hippy atmosphere, a beautiful sheltered harbour, the ruins of an ancient Greek city and lines of fish restaurants right on the beach.

It was Gumusluk which proved our biggest temptation on those languorous balcony evenings. A meal of fresh mezze incorporating mushrooms, aubergines, pine nuts, hoummos and yoghurt down by the sea was so much better than anything we could assemble for ourselves from the shops. And it generally cost well under £10 a head, including local ayran — a Turkish yoghurt-type drink — and beer. In fact, were it not for my in-bred Scottish parsimoniousness, and the 200m stagger back up through Karakaya in the dark, I daresay we would not have bothered with the self-catering bit of our Turkish villa holiday at all.