Three Go Cycling

My father Cdr Stanley Ewart Davies RNR was one of a tiny number of men awarded the Distinguished Service Cross three times for his wartime service. As Senior Officer of the 159th Minesweeper Flotilla (MSF) he was awarded the second bar to his DSC  “for gallantry, skill, determination and undaunted devotion to duty during the landing of the Allied forces on the coast of Normandy”. This involved sweeping in advance of the bombarding fleet close to Juno beach some 40 minutes before ‘H’ hour on 6 June 1944. He survived the war and made it to the age of 53 before shrapnel damage and the enormous stresses he had born overwhelmed him with a massive stroke. I was eight years old.

By any and all of Kiplings criteria in his marvellous poem If  he had earned the right to call himself a man.

I, on the other hand, at the age of 68 set out with Sarıbelen Baz and the Durban Dynamo P K Reis aka ‘Peaky’ for a Boys Weekend.

The free, peaceful life my generation has enjoyed and continues to enjoy has been built on the sacrifices of men and women like my father.

Although making a tit of oneself in the company of a couple of similar minded males may seem a strange kind of tribute, I offer it from my heart. Lest we forget.

So as we strap the bikes on the roof bars of the Duster and prepare to set off, let me explain a Kalkan Boys weekend; basically we are not boys and we never go on a weekend. Apart from that there is a single golden rule

Do Not Put the Toilet Seat Down.

Both Peaky and I are partnered with demanding partners who have schooled us well in this. In consequence we had to pay several fines because we lost concentration after relieving ourselves. Baz, who only has his own furrow to plough, has not put a toilet seat down in decades

We were heading for the lakeside resort of Köyceğiz above Dalyan’s green waters. Here was the first difficulty. Of 51 mentions of the word over the three days I never heard the Boys pronounce it the same way twice. It is a beast of a word as it contains several letters that are not what they seem c, ğ and ö. It is a word that has to be vomited from the back of the throat to achieve the flattened guttural sound that comes effortlessly to the Turk but is almost unachievable to the English speaker. We wrestled with it the whole duration. It was more exhausting than the cycling.

First stop en route was at Migros in Fethiye for provisions.

Little Peaky was our evening chef. Baz was short order breakfast chef. You can take the man out of South Africa but you cannot take South Africa out of the man. South Africans are born to barbecue. Stick a beer in one hand, a spatula in the other, a pile of meat and a heap of coals and they have the look that I imagine Houdini had when he discovered his first set of handcuffs at the back of his fathers bedside cabinet.

The shopping list was not complicated

Beer and wine, Lamb chops, Chicken wings, Sausage, Steak, BBQ fuel

Then we were are on our way. We are staying with an artist friend of a friend. She and her partner have a magnificent house and cottage 4km above Köyceğiz. We are their guests in the cottage

Given our lack of training we have decided to reduce the level of challenge by getting up at 5 in the morning and breakfasting at the Thermal Springs Sultaniye Kaplıca around nine. This would enable us to do the most demanding cycling in the cool early hours.

That plan disintegrated as the empty bottles stacked up and the barbecue had still not reached grill heat by 10.00 pm. Sense and Sensibility are not what Boys’ Weekends are about. It is more Pride and Prejudice. A bit of macho posturing with a splash of bigotry stirred in as you set the world to rights on the fifth bottle.

Our wonderful hosts Chris and Sara joined us for a late supper. Thoughts of tomorrow evaporated.

So the plan required a little tweaking. Finally we set off around 10.30 the next morning, after a copious breakfast of Cumberland sausage and omelettes. A merciless sun beat down upon us from its high point in the sky.

Let us skip over the next few hours. They involve a level of effort and pain that even my father might have accorded a grudging respect. It was an enormous relief to coast in to the mud baths at Sultaniye two hours later.

After a day close quartered with Peaky and Baz the sulphurous reek of thermal springs was never going to be a problem for me. We spent a splendid two hours there. To our surprise it was licensed. The fact that none of us even looked at a beer should tell you all you need to know.

We reluctantly remounted and completed the ride around as far as Dalyan village. There we readily agreed a price of 300 tl to take us the 80 min trip by boat to Köyceğiz. If the poor Kaptan had known how much we were ready to part with to avoid cycling back he could have retired early.

A plate of grilled octopus and rakı on the lakeside before the last cycle up the hill to home. An excellent supper then collapse.

The next morning we took a car ride up to bathe in the cool shaded water of the waterfalls in the hills (B and P’s enthusiasm for cycling was at a low point. I fear it may stay there for some while).

Our adventure came to a most enjoyable finish

Dedicated to my father and the men and women of his generation who gave so much in the Second World War to preserve free expression, human rights and peace.

Şerefe