By early November about 50 yachts from the Eastern Mediterranean have gathered for their hibernation.

Newcomers are immediately introduced into the social whirl that is a Kemer winter. The Daily Net announces them all: tennis tournaments, keep fit, art group, line dancing, card schools, circular suppers, visiting string quartets, film shows, yoga, sewing, local markets, taxi sharing, people coming and going, birthdays and anniversaries, DVD and book swaps, library sorting, visa runs, jumble sales, laundry shifts, Turkish conversation and every evening the big get-together for Happy Hour (actually two hours) in The Navigator, the marina bar/restaurant/library and general HQ. On every national holiday or saint’s day, there’s a big bunfight there too.

All this is in the marina; outside there are weekly trips to a symphony, opera or ballet in Antalya, shopping expeditions to the malls, hikes along the Lycian Way, bike rides, picnic lunches in the hills and skiing trips to the resorts nearby in the spring.

Nearby are Ancient Olympus and Phaselis amongst the usual Old Testament/New testament Greco-Roman treasures of the Turkish coast. I tell you this place needs its own Time Out.

There are only two disadvantages: the town and the yard.

Kemer town is a drab resort for newly-but-only-slightly-enriched Russians, and although harmless enough is totally uninspiring.

The yard – where to begin? Let’s just say it is cataclysmically incompetent and outrageously expensive, and Kemerites trust them with nothing more than hauling and squirting, and if you’ve just won the lottery letting them antifoul.

But overall one has to say:

Kemer is a very agreeable place to spend the winter

Lord Strathcarron

SY Vasco da Gama

www.strathcarrons-ahoy.com [BROKENLINK]