Turkish delight!

I needed a week of relaxation, so have travelled back to my house in Foca, near Izmir in Turkey.  It is a simple little fishing town, with a seafront full of little restaurants and lots of tiny backstreets with unexpected treasures tucked away.  One of the main reasons I love Foca is that it is not so easy to get to, so only the Turkish people use it as their summer retreat, and not often will you hear another English voice - perfect!
Little did I know when I booked my flights that I would be arriving in the midst of Foca Festival - a celebration of the town and its' people.  This included the biggest barbecue I have ever seen, cooking fresh fish which was then put into huge chunks of bread and given to everybody free of charge.  This was followed by the fishermen racing their boats in the harbour and then a net mending competition - it was amazing to watch, the concentration on their faces showed what skill they really have.

After this was Turkish folk dancing, not only by the experts, but the crowd were also expected to join in, and did so with great enthusiasm!
Later at night they held a concert in the town square, with music and singing by well-known musicians.  The grand finale was a firework display over the bay - amazing.  Unfortunately I missed the concert, although I had every intention of attending.  Instead my Turkish neighbours invited me to a celebration dinner - their son had just returned home after 5 months conscription to the Turkish army (every day of which he hated he later told me).  But we were not without our own concert as the son Murat plays classical guitar and his friend who had arrived with him was an opera singer.  I felt I had landed in a completely different world  - it was amazing.  I am not sure how I will be able to host a dinner party as impressive in return!

Since then my days have been filled with swimming in the beautiful sea, eating out late at night, and wandering around the backstreets of the town with my camera - my days are pretty busy, as you can see!

I had been told to look for one certain shop whilst on my wanderings, and this has turned out to be such a great find - Meltem craft shop is run by a lovely Turkish lady and her English husband.  The shop is full of local crafts and Meltem's wonderful home-made jams and chutneys, with such unusual flavours as crunchy pumpkin and molasses, crunchy apple, or even carrot jam.  Next year they are intending to open a coffee house and private dining, which I will certainly be visiting.
Each time I come here I learn new things about the people and their culture, and each time it makes me want to come back and learn and experience more.
Last night I was invited to another dinner party, this one just as delicious as the last.  Each meal starts with a mezza, which goes on for quite a long time and has to be accompanied by Raki!  Lots of little dishes of amazing flavours - fava, houmous, bean salad, green salad, stuffed peppers, cheese pastries, anchovies....the list goes on.  And then, just when you think you are full, the main dish arrives!  Sometimes it will be meat, either kebabs or meatballs, but last night for me they cooked local fish, it was so tasty.  And the great thing about Foca is the cats - when you want to clear your plate of fish-heads you just throw them over your shoulder!

Peddle power and Thames Clean-up

So, the World Masters is over for another year, and now it's on to the next event - a triathlon.  But not your normal run-of-the-mill triathlon - I am a slow 'breast-stroke, head in the air' swimmer, so swimming in open water with hundreds of other swimmers splashing and wacking me over the head is not an option!  Luckily for me the Marlow Rowers Revenge was started a few years ago, giving us rowers a chance to compete in a fun event that we may just have a chance of winning.

But for the non-rowers amongst you, don't worry, the rowing bit is done on dry land - on rowing machines (otherwise known as ergs).  4000metre row, 23.40km bike ride (in the Chiltern Hills) and 7.15km run.
So this weekend saw me puffing up and over the Surrey Hills, sporting my SPDs for the very first time - and yes, it was scary - I was in a state of panic at the sight of any junction, car, or even horse that may turn in front of me!  But I made it....twenty miles and no cuts or bruises, just one flat tyre (which was easily fixed by my co-rider Tim - sometimes being a girl is just perfect!).
I'm also back training on the Thames, but over the last couple of days have a feeling that I may have picked up something from the river water, so am feeling a little 'tender'.  It happens a lot and most people are unaware of what is pumped into our lovely river.  Fortunately there are a number of organisations that try to help in cleaning up the river and it's banks.  If you fancy joining in do take a look at Thames21 who organise clean ups - every little bit helps.

FISA World Masters, St Catharines Ontario, Canada

Every fourth year FISA holds the World Masters outside Europe, so this year we travelled across the pond to Canada, to meet up with approximately 2,600 other rowers and scullers, a huge number of whom are ex-olympians or ex-world champions, so the standard is pretty high.

One of the difficulties with travelling so far is that you can't take your own boat, so organising boat hire as well as hotels, car hire, and obviously what we were going to wear, was all pretty stressful leading up to the event.

For me the other thing that becomes an issue is food.  What to eat before and after races is always easy to plan at home but being in another country means there is less control, and this was certainly an issue in Canada, where the portion sizes are enormous, everything has a huge amount of salt and sugar, and most things come with chips (apart from these delightful chocolate apple things on sticks, which were just obscene!).  Breakfast in the hotel consisted of 'brown food' - bread, waffles, coffee, peanut butter and cornflakes - nothing that had been alive for a long, long time.  So trips to the supermarket to buy fresh fruit, muesli, snack bars and dried fruit and nuts was high on the agenda on day two!

After racing all day going out for dinner is not so much about a great experience but more about getting food in quickly, in large amounts, so most nights we were fine.  When racing was finally over (and this happened sooner than it should have done due to Hurricane Earl!) it was time for me to take control of dinner plans, to make sure we got some great food.  How lucky were we that one of the best restaurants in the area was only a short drive from our hotel - Treadwell, a restaurant that specialises in 'farm to table' food, with all the ingredients being grown or bred locally, or in the case of the perch and pickerel, coming straight out of the Lake Erie!  The food was amazing and the service just perfect.

One thing Ontario is famed for (apart from a little waterfall that everyone raves about!), is the vineyards.  Although we don't seem to get much of the wine in the UK (something to do with the export laws in Canada apparently), they do make a few good wines, one of which is Icewine - a honeyed, desert wine that is produced from grapes that are frozen on the vine (the temperature has to drop to below 10-13 degrees Celcius), and then picked by hand, sometimes at night.

Hillebrand Winery make one of the best I have tasted (it is not cheap!), and we found the best way to sample it was over lunch in their fantastic restaurant.  If you want to learn about wine making however, do not take their tour - we taught the guide more than he taught us!