This trip was by midi-coach (5 midi-coaches actually, larger than mini-buses but not quite your full-blown, all-singing, all dancing coach), all travelling up into the high foothills of the Taurus mountains.

It didn't start too well, as I realised I'd been blessed with all the disabled passengers (again?). It's not the fact that they're disabled, but the fact that before any of them could get on the coach there was a good 15-minute walk from the ship to where the coaches were waiting. The problem is; there doesn't seem to be enough wheelchairs!! Now, call me naive, but I'd have thought that an organisation specialising in holidays for largely elderly people (and I'm trying to be careful here - actually, it's over-50s, and many over 50s are far from what you'd call elderly or infirm - I'm not so far off it myself) would have ample wheelchairs to cater for those passengers who need it. I've heard it said by several people how on this trip there seems to be more people with sticks and walking disabilities than normal. Yesterday, the wind was blowing particularly hard and the temperature was particularly cold, and I know for a fact that several people who were booked on tours pulled out, mainly due to the walk necessary to get them to the coaches! Bizarrely enough, the quay, along which everyone had to walk, although narrow, would have been more than capable of taking a midi coach - the port authorities, however, would not allow it! The upshot of all this meant we were the last coach to set off, making us late by almost 30 minutes, and one or two of the more able-bodied passengers were starting to get a little agitated.

In contrast to this poor start, our guide, named Sirdar (the driver was Osman) was brilliant. The drive up into the mountains was hairy to say the least. the roads didn't have barriers, were very narrow in places, and had many hairpin bends along their length.As we turned tight corners, often I found myself gazing out into steep drops, away towards where we'd come from.

Once we'd finally reached the area known as Gedevet, there seemd to be some confusion over exactly where we we going. At one point, our guide actually seemed to hang his head out of the window to ask a couple of blokes by the side of the road which was the way. When we finally arrived at what we assumed was the planned destination, the other 4 coaches were already there, but where in the process of turning around to go back towards where we'd come. Our driver spoke frantically to the other drivers, mainly on his mobile phone, but also out of the window, and we re-traced our route back to what turned out to be a large restaurant, overlooking the plateau (I say plateau, but that was another slightly confusing aspect to all of this - for a plateau, there didn't seem to very much in the way of flatness.

The restaurant was huge and round, and in the centre stood a large open fireplace, much welcomed by the poor frozen passengers. Again, there seemed confusion over whether or not the refreshments were included in the price of the tour (they usually are); turned out they weren't, again, much to the dismay of several passengers.

Having said all this, the trip was actually very enjoyable, and despite one or two early grumbles, most people seemed to enjoy it. Our guide was brilliant, stopping at any place we wanted to on the return journey in order to get good photographs (including a well-timed sunset-stop), and jumping around when we did stop, to pick flowers and tell us what they were. In fact, his knowledge of the area and the places we passed through was pretty extensive, and he had an answer for almost anything that was asked of him - good bloke!

When we returned, however, the job of getting all those infirm people back on board in time for sail-away turned into a farce. With only minutes to spare, passengers were ferried via any available wheels possible - including a silly plastic thing with wheels that kept getting stuck in cracks on the quay surface.