We rose early and prepared for the 14 km walk from Ihlara down the gorge, back to Selime. We had asked about bus times but everyone in Selime seemed terribly vague about it except one man who told us that the teacher service went past at 8.20 and we could go on that. When we went out for breakfast at 7.30, the staff were still asleep and the high gate was closed and possibly locked. Despite our rush, we had the usual varied breakfast with cups of tea, but even if Keith had left his last few pieces of bread and jam, and even if the gate had been unlocked, we would not have caught the teacher service that sailed past at 8.05. All prepared and hoping for another bus to come soon, we sat on the roadside from 8.10 until 10.25 – no bus.
At last we saw a bus coming so we jumped up and flagged it. It zoomed past. We sat down again. We were amazed to see the bus return for us a minute later. It turned out to be a tour bus for a German church choir and they had begged their guide to pick us up. It is against the rules so they had a vote and everyone was for it. One lady, Margret, had the same hat as me so she was very friendly and insisted we have a photo together and that we contact her if we get to Hamburg. They drove us right up to the start of the gorge walk.
The River Melendiz Suyu runs between high rock walls at Ihlara but the valley opens up about halfway and is quite wide by the time it reaches Selime. This was a protected valley where Christians safely led their lives and had monasteries and churches, and were unaffected by the Arab invasions. Many of the churches are quite a climb up rock piles which have eroded and crashed down into the valley. They were mostly very small in size, looking as if they would accommodate only about twenty or so worshippers at a time. Great care was taken to carve out architectural details similar to free standing churches at the time. One church, called the Snake church, had a three headed snake with sinners in its mouth and women who had failed to breast feed their babies bing punished with nipple clamps. Another had an early painting of St George killing what looked like a snake, and which later, presumably, morphed into a dragon. It's tragic that virtually every painting has graffiti drawn or scratched into it.
Some churches had associated carved out buildings which looked like residences and all along the valley, groups of dug out rooms and complexes of rooms showed that many people had lived there. Great chunks of rock have split off and crashed down, so you can see the side of a room with an arched cupboard carved out of it, upside down on the valley floor, or stairs leading up a cliff with nowhere to go anymore.
Climbing down into the valley was like entering another time altogether – a time which clearly no longer existed but with so much evidence of the struggle and effort of the people around us, and the simple beauty of the frescoes in the churches, it was impossible not to feel a kind of presence. As the valley widened, we came upon people toiling in tiny stretches of land, and it was easy to think that they would be going home to their cave homes.
Half way along the valley, the village of Belesirma rises up the cliffs, literally built into them with some houses still being caves. Restaurants line the river at this point. There was a sign saying ‘No Picnics’, and another saying ‘Camping Allowed’, so I suspect that the restaurants were behind the signs.
The walk was so beautiful – not too strenuous and yet varied all the way. As in Selime, coppiced willows lined the river with stands of poplars every now and then. Most other vegetation was scrubby grass and prickly shrubs but I saw catoneastors and yarrow which reminded me of home. 
After Belesirma we walked along farm tracks, between gardens and orchards. 
At one spot we saw an abandoned soccer field, the goals rusted and the ground covered with strange heaps of fine dirt. We found out what caused the little hills when we caught a mole in the act of digging out a tunnel and pushing out all the excess dirt as a mole hill.
Another meal at the restaurant ended a wonderful day. Tomorrow would be my birthday and another move to the town with perhaps the worst name ever, Guzelyurt.
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