The next morning we stepped onto our terrace and were stunned by the view across the river to a bluff where, half way up, a row of pillared and carved tomb entrances were etched into the rockface. We took the rowing boat across the river and walked through lemon groves to the ruined city of Kaunos, where the Lycian tomb makers had lived, and shared its amphitheatre with goats and lizards.

We drove through the pine forests to the sandy arc of Iztuzu beach which was scored with the drunken tracks of recently hatched loggerhead turtles, and discovered that the beach had just been rescued from development by a group of conservationists. We strolled along the main street, past the school where children were playing tag, and I haggled for and bought my first piece of Turkish silver jewellery. We heard the call for prayer echoing across the town twice a day.

For several years after this, holidays were once again UK based. Then one summer we thought we all deserved a week in the Mediterranean sun. Scanning the ads, I spotted the magic word Dalyan. A very reasonable villa with a pool and an English owner. She was friendly and helpful, the villa was free, so we booked.

The villa was brand new, one of three in a delightful garden with a shared pool, on the other side of town to the hotel and looking across cotton fields to the Taurus Mountains. Although only ten minutes walk to the main street, which was now a bit busier, with more restaurants, we were among the local people.

There was the old lady who led her cow past the villa, every morning and evening, on a rope, cajoling it to keep moving. There were chickens scratching around the gardens, countless kittens and puppies for the children to pet on our way to the shops. There were frogs in the drainage ditches, storks in the fields, crickets at dusk and our neighbour’s cock who crowed at night.

We learned how to greet the people we met and to buy the essentials from corner shop. We took the local bus to the beach and went out to sea with Captain Sale who dropped anchor in a secluded bay and prepared lunch for us under the shade of a fig tree while we snorkelled in the turquoise waters.

We returned to the villa three years in a row, each time growing to know and love the place more, never needing to hire a car as there were wonderful trips to be done, mostly by boat, from the town – to the lake where you could spot river turtles and kingfishers; to the mud baths and sulphur springs; to the restaurant on the other side of the lake where they made a tiered cake with fizzing candles for our son’s fourteenth birthday. And then came years of exams, and the children sometimes went on holiday with friends.

Out of the blue, in 2002, I received an email from the English owner asking when were we going to come out to Dalyan again. I replied, in a fog of nostalgia, that I didn’t know but had always harboured a secret wish to have a place of our own there. Well, she said, I am building four houses, with a 50-metre shared pool, and have one left. Are you interested?

We had just been having one of those uncomfortable conversations with a financial advisor about my lack of pension. Speedily I asked him if buying a property abroad would be a good alternative. He said yes and six weeks later we had borrowed enough to put the deposit down.

We made several trips over to choose fittings and fixtures, furnish the house and plant up the garden. We spent our first nights there at the end of a very hot August two years later when we slept on the floor on borrowed mattresses and lolled in the magnificent pool by day.

Now as owners we go in the quieter times of the year and rent it out the rest of the time. We have discovered that April is when the forest floor is carpeted with wild flowers of every description; that in October the lake and sea are still deliciously warm and the pomegranates are ready to pick.We have time to hunt out the best places to have a traditional Turkish breakfast or a mezze lunch, to find the cheapest places to hire scooters for trips up into the mountains.

This year we stayed into November and experienced the first of the rains – stair rods that lasted for hours and hours - and felt very privileged to be invited to join a guided walk through the hills that takes place on Sundays, once the tourists have left. We still have a long way to go with our Turkish lessons, but we are beginning to feel that we belong.

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