Barry's Blog #220 - The strangest winter

As I write this blog it's the first week of May 2022 and it's been a little over 11 weeks since my last blog.

The reason for that huge gap happening is because I am only just now coming to the end of 'long covid'. The physical symptoms were very mild, I had a slight fever for one night, there was a period of about 10 days where I was short of breath and I had a very phlegmy cough. However the mental symptoms have been a totally different story.

I have just proof read Aannsha's blog #220 and she has done such a fabulous job of explaining how the events rolled out that I recommend that you read the story from her perspective. There's no point in me repeating what she has already said so well. Here's an excerpt from her blog.

Inside my head, he told me. Something’s not right. I asked what he meant by “Not right”. I don’t know but something’s very wrong. I can’t think. I can’t get my head together. I don’t know who I am any more.

What I can tell you with hindsight, research and joining the dots is that it all began the evening of Tuesday 28th December 2021, the evening before I checked myself into A & E at Finike hospital.

Many people in the marina also contracted covid through the winter months and again the symptoms varied from person to person. As far as I know nobody had similar symptoms to me.

You may be wondering if Aannsha caught it from me, the answer is that she didn't, even living in close quarters on a boat. But about a month ago Aannsha wandered over to me with a lemon in her hand, stuck it under my nose and asked if I could smell it. A quick sniff and I confirmed it was a very zesty fresh lemon. She told me she couldn't smell anything. It took 3 days for her sense of smell and taste to come back but apart from a cough she experienced no other symptoms.

We're both so glad that we are at the end of this and that we now have natural immunity.

Aspendos ancient site

As winter began to slide into spring and the rains disappeared Aannsha did some research on ancient sites we hadn't visited in the area and persuaded me that getting off the boat and go exploring might help with my recovery.

We checked the weather forecasts and when everything looked good we hired a car for a week.

Berthed on the same pontoon as us is SV Impavidus so we invited Ant and Cid to join us on our first trip out. Being fellow YouTubers they had been telling us that they were getting low on banked footage so they happily accepted.

The 160km (99.5 miles) trip is 2 hours and 20 minutes by car and the trusty lady who lives inside our satnav got us there without problem.

Aspendos is famous for being the most intact Roman amphitheatre in the world and it was built in 155 AD by the Greek architect Zenon, a native of the city. It has seating for 15,000 people. Again we were blown away by the construction methods and attention to detail. The entry price is 50 TL (AU$5) or free if you have a museum card.

After climbing to the top to get a birds eye view of the magnificent structure I discovered another symptom of covid. Vertigo. Now I've never been a fan of heights but it has never stopped me from scrambling up mountains and structures. But this was something totally different.

Being an amphitheatre there are several sets of stone steps for people to get up and down. The steps directly in front of me were open on both sides and as I looked down my legs turned to jelly and I was convinced that if I attempted to climb down I'd stumble and fall. Fortunately at each end of the semi-circle seating there were steps which had a sturdy stone wall along one side, I chose to go down that way. As you can see in the short clip in this week's YouTube episode I am still super cautious. Aannsha said I looked like a doddery old lady.

After fully checking out the amphitheatre the four of us set out to tour the rest of the ancient site. A lot of the structures are clearly earthquake damaged which makes the condition of the amphitheatre even more impressive.

The remains of a 19 km (11.8 miles) long Roman aqueduct are a wonder to behold. The amount of effort put into the construction simply to bring pressurised water to the city is astounding.

Next week we'll take you to the ancient site of Perge which was an ancient Greek city and once the capital of Pamphylia Secunda. Until then stay safe and healthy.

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