Kayaköy Village

Today we went back to Kayaköy village, which was abandoned by its Greek Christian residents as part of the post first world war , Greco/Turkish war resettlement in 1923. The Macedonian Muslim people who were brought over in their place were farmers and did not settle here.
We paid a brief visit here on Sunday but today we explored the village properly.
There are around 500 houses, or the remains thereof. The roofs of the houses were made of timber and mud so disappeared quite quickly but the houses themselves are of stone and relatively intact although most of the wood has gone. They are built on a very steep hillside with no roads and only steep uneven paths to get around on.
It put me in mind of the film Zorba the Greek and seeing children and others running around on steep hillside paths.
There are a couple of large church buildings, one of which has beautiful pebble mosaic patterns on the main floor and in the grounds around it. The church was built in the 19 th century and it was easy to imagine the decoration being done by local people, all taking responsibility for decorating their section.
We went up to the highest building, a small chapel at the very top of the hill overlooking the hillside and the village to the north and to the West out over the sea. It was a tough climb with scrambling necessary at times.
Coming back down we found an alternative path which had irregular steps and led all the way down to the road level. Our way up though had allowed us to see and explore far more of the village with its wells and chimneys and some interestingly designed fireplaces.
There was next to no space between the houses, so life must have been very crowded with little or no room for keeping any animals or growing things. It is believed many of the residents were leather workers. The original settlement dated back over 2000 years but most of what is left is only 3-400 years old.
The extra shows some of the animals we saw in the area, camels which were at the bottom on the road in, (don't really know why), a swallowtail butterfly, one of the many wild tortoises we saw and a beautiful small butterfly which I hope somebody can identify for me.
The wild flowers in the area were beautiful too. Many were varieties I recognised, but plenty were new to me too.
We headed back to the hotel in time for lunch and spent most of the afternoon by the pool. Walking today was 12777 steps. Not bad for my day off. Target met this week, 7/7