Today we hired a car in order to see some of the outlying sites. Our plan was to walk the Ihlara gorge. This is a 14km long gorge with a river running through it - again with churches hollowed out of the cliffs. We drove to Ihlara village (about 100km), the start of the gorge. We set off to find the gorge entrance - after a few wrong turns we found our way to it.

The gorge is 100m deep and varies in width from a few hundred metres up to a kilometre. The path mostly follows the valley floor except from side trails up the cliff to see the churches. The first 4km we saw a few tourists and scenery in the valley was idyllic. The churches were interesting - built by the early Christians to hide from the Romans. After 4km, there was a set of steps where the tour buses disgorged their passengers. Fortunately we were early enough to be in front of the tours so it was still relatively peaceful. We stopped for lunch at a café with the tables built out into the river. We then set off on the second part of the gorge and had this almost to ourselves - apart from some very happy Turkish picnickers who invited us to join them for chai (tea).

After finishing the hike (the 14Km had taken just over 5 hours with stops), we headed back to Ilhara and went on to see a former Greek village - this proved uninteresting so we moved on to the underground city at Derinkuyu. The city was started by the Hittites and has expanded significantly since - it was used by the early Christians when raiders from Persia descended on the area. It has 12 levels, they are still finding more. It held up to 10,000 people at its peak. Individual caves aren't that impressive but the sheer size and complexity is. Getting through it was difficult, as all the passages are low and you had to stoop to get through. We all ended up with sore heads (even Fran!).