Fairy chimneys and other pointy shapes

The rock formations in Cappadocia are outstanding - and they are everywhere you look.  I have wanted to come to Cappadocia since I was about 6 or 8 and saw a picture of a group of rock formations with doors and windows cut into them in an old book called "The World's Greatest Wonders".  The picture fascinated me, and  as it was right at the start of the book, it was one I looked at over and over again.  It took me many years to work out that I could actually go to the place where these rocks were. I don't think I found the same rocks as in the picture, but I saw enough to  be very happy!

 I spent five days walking in the valleys and hills around Goreme with the walking group and every day was different. The first day we walked to some of the most infamous rocks at Love Valley:

This was one of the few times we came across other groups as these formations are close to bus parking. Most days we were well off the bus route circuit.

This area is volcanic, made up of ash layers that have resulted in soft, easily erodable rock, except where there is a harder granite stone giving them a harder cap, as above and below.

The ash layers are different colours - white and red predominating, but some patches of yellow too.  This is in White Valley:

And this is around Rose Valley:

While the natural features are stunning in themselves, what is even more fascinating in Cappadocia is how people have used them.  All through the valleys are rock cut churches from the early Christian settlements - around the 3rd-12th centuries.  Some are tiny monastic cells, and others are small chapels with painted ceilings, while several are much larger with carved pillars and multiple chambers.

This is from the Grape church:

Once people converted to Islam, the churches were then reused as stables and pigeon houses - we saw huge numbers of pigeon houses through the valleys, many with painted windows to attract the pigeons:

And here are more pigeon houses in Pigeon Valley, where we met a man who had just lost ten pigeons to a buzzard - we were shown the "scene  of the crime", a mass of white feathers. There's not as many pigeons in the valleys as previously, buzzards and other predators reducing the numbers, but everywhere we went we saw the pigeon houses:

At Uchisar a huge rock outcrop has been used as a castle, one of three we could see, but the only that we had to climb up.

Others have been used as houses or store rooms:

And some are still used today:

It's quite hard to walk quickly in the area as there is so much to look at - go around a corner and there are more quirkily shaped rocks:

 And still there are rocks to see and photograph:

So that old black and white photograph in the book has led me to a place that is totally absorbing and I got to see it in the best way possible, walking through the valleys and up and over the rocks themselves: