Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast for Thursday the 16th of March,

which I calculate is exactly halfway through March and I'd just like to talk about the

benefits of a mid-March trip because while I'm speaking to you from Bodrum in Turkey

and it is a very, very different experience from, well, anything from April onwards.

It's also a very different experience from the deep midwinter.

I think that the tides of March are perfect.

I've been lucky enough to be plunging into the Mediterranean with and without a wetsuit.

And in either condition, it is just a joy.

I've also enjoyed going to site after site,

archaeological and otherwise,

and not finding any other tourists there at all.

You can go to Ephesus,

perhaps the optimum archaeological site in the whole of Turkey,

and find that there's, well, really nobody there. If you want to be sure there's absolutely

nobody there, they can get there close to opening time, which is 8.30 in the morning.

You will thoroughly enjoy the sunshine and well gosh it did take a few days before I actually felt hot but even so the weather is going to be that

much better. The fares are going to be far, far lower than you would find in

high summer and so are the crowds. Now I love tourists. I can't get enough of them but they can get you

down especially when the cruise ships are in town. Bottom is a key cruise port,

so is Kusherdasi, which is the big port, which they actually call Kusherdersi, for Ephesus,

because it is closest to that site. And they don't really get going until second half of April so now is a good time to go away

of course once you get to the end of March then you're into the school Easter holidays usually

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