Fethiye is a thriving yacht chartering town, and we docked in a great marina with lovely facilities, packed with yachts ready and spick and span for the season. Fethiye was the ancient town of Telmessus, the principal port of Lycia, and the ancient Roman theatre is right next to the marina. Fethiye was also the modern town of Megri until 1914 when Fethie Bey, a 27 year old aviator hero, tried to fly from Istanbul to Cairo but crashed and died. The town was renamed in his honour and his statue shares pride of place with the inevitable Ataturk statue.

The ghost town of Kaya Koy or Levissi was a must as we had all read 'Birds Without Wings', and here was the village on which the sad story of the expulsion of the Greeks from Turkey in 1923 was based. The town had over 2000 inhabitants, 400 houses, and Orthodox churches and now they stand deserted and picturesquely decaying. We also stopped at the (more) Lycian rock tombs carved into the face of the cliffs, now directly above the town, in the 4th century BC. The town itself has good restaurants, appealing streets, warren like alleyways and shops.

Next was the sail to the small rocky island of Gemiler, where Beth and Frank had been some 17 years earlier. The entrance to the anchorage behind the island was hard to find so it would have been a perfect hiding place for boats. The Byzantine stone village on the island was abandoned during the 12th century because of attacks from Barbary pirates. One travel book told us the residents moved across the water and up the mountain to Kaya Koy. If this was so, the residents had another eight hundred years before they would be forced to move again.

The island is also known as St Nicholas's Island and he was reputed to have lived on the island for a while. There were four churches in this tiny vertical area, and pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land would stop here to worship and rest. The cemetery with its slab stone in-ground sarcophagi was amongst one of the highest buildings. The higher we climbed the more beautiful the view became, with the water an even more amazing blue than we had seen to date. The most interesting structure was a long covered stone tunnel that connected two of the churches and seemed to go all the way down to the sea - possibly also an escape route.

The night was spent surrounded by five Sunsail chartered yachts sailing in convoy and a couple of bigger yachts including a traditional gulet. At sunset, the hillside echoed to the sounds of Coo-ee! We assumed there were Australians on board the gulet who were overwhelmed by the view from the top of the village. A beautiful and intriguing place. We can see why pilgrims stopped here, with about 350, probably gruelling, nautical miles to Jerusalem.