Most visitors to Ephesus head for the marble street and the big theatre, but a few kilometres away, on the edge of the plain, a low earth mound hides an earlier story. Çukuriçi Höyük is the remains of a village that people began to settle about 8,500 years ago, in the Neolithic, long before Greek colonists came to the river mouth and long before anyone built a temple to Artemis. Archaeologists have found houses of mudbrick, obsidian tools traded from far-off islands, and signs of early farming. It is the kind of place where you have to read the information boards and use your imagination, because there are no towers or columns. What you see is a gentle hump in the ground, olive trees, and a view toward the hills.
That is exactly why it is worth the short detour. The Ephesus area, with its modest town of Selçuk, makes a good base for a day's riding, because so much lies close together. The marble ruins of Ephesus are a short ride away, the huge Basilica of St John stands on a hill above Selçuk, and a lone column is all that is left of the Temple of Artemis, once counted among the Seven Wonders. Storks nest on the old Byzantine aqueduct in town, and you will see them clacking from their nests in spring.
Roads here are flat or gently rolling, running between orchards, fig trees, olive groves and fields of cotton. Surfaces are mostly good, but local traffic includes tractors, scooters and tourist minibuses. Leave early in summer when midday temperatures climb above thirty-five, and take water. West of Selçuk the road leads to the beach towns around Kuşadası, with the Aegean glittering beyond, and in the other direction toward the mountains and the village of Şirince, known for fruit wines and stone houses.
Selçuk has about thirty thousand people, so fuel stations, cafes and pensions are plentiful. Try gözleme, a thin flatbread stuffed with cheese or spinach and cooked on a griddle, and have a glass of tea under the plane trees. April, May and October are the best months, warm and quiet.