SOME people like to take it easy on holiday and try not to tear round at the same speed as they do for the rest of the year.

I take the opposite view. Released from workaday cares, I can indulge my passion for running and combine it with my urge to discover the hidden secrets of my holiday home.

Such treasures are numerous around the town of Bodrum in Turkey. This peninsula jutting into the Aegean has been the crucible of many pivotal events in classical and more recent history, from Alexander the Great, through the Crusades to the Ottoman era.

Heredotus, known as the father of history, was born in Bodrum in 484 BC, so it seems fitting then to take an historical journey to his home.

With my partner and four year old daughter, we stayed in an apartment in the sleepy village of Yalıkavak.

So from here, I pored over maps and plotted a route to take me up over the mountainside out of the village, with a tough road-side slog, before finally descending to the town of Bodrum some 15 miles away.

I started early so I was not running in the midday sun. It's alright for mad dogs and Englishmen, but even with a hat and sun cream, 25-30C can seriously sap the energy.

So I left Yalıkavak by a single lane road which quickly gave out to a farm track and then to goat tracks, weaving through scrub of myrtle over rough limestone tracks.

The countryside here is dotted with sarnıç, or water cisterns. These circular stone buildings are made to fill with the rains which deluge the country in autumn and then to water the land across the 11 otherwise dry months. Now, though, with reliable piped supplies, many of these are used to store animal feed or building supplies.

At the top of mountain stand a cluster of the area's distinctive windmills. Powered by the winds that blow in from the Aegean, these cloth-sailed mills, although no longer used by farmers to grind grains, stand as local symbols and their ceramic models can be bought in shops across the peninsula.

Rounding the top of the mountain, I stopped to take in the view of the town far below.

Such a view would have been enjoyed by Alexander the Great and his men as they marched from Ephesus in 334 BC on his march though Persian-held Asia Minor towards the region then known as Caria.

Alexander met strong resistance at the city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum). Unlike other towns his army encountered on the way, they put up stout resistance.

The town’s gates stayed defiantly closed. The gates formed a strong point at western end of the city on the old Gümbet road along which I ran. Trading estates sprawl and traffic roars now where Alexander's men would have camped as they laid siege to Halicarnassus.

I had been running for nearly an hour now and the heat began to tell. With a mere 15lb pack on my back though, I would have got scant sympathy from one of Alexander's Hoplites, weighed down as they were with 50-70 lbs of equipment in often sweltering heat.

I left the main road with their showrooms and garden centres for a silent monument to Bodrum's bloodiest episode - a three month siege when thousands were killed.

Large portions of the Myndos Gate survive. Two eight-metre square monumental towers still stand at either side. Then, the attackers would have faced ditches eight metres deep and fifteen metres long guarding this section of the city's walls.

Alexander's second assault on the Myndos gate saw his men build a wooden bridge over the moat and deploy siege towers and catapults.

The defenders burned down one of the towers and some catapults with hand-to-hand fighting following. The wooden bridge, unable to carry the weight of the hundreds of dead, collapsed, causing the death of still more soldiers from both sides.

The Persians and Carians then retreated, burning buildings as they went. Much of the city was then destroyed by the victors, save for one which has ensured the city's ancient name remains known today.

One of the seven wonders of the ancient world, it was the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. The name of this wondrous monument itself perpetuates the name of its founder.

King Mausolos made Halicarnassus his capital in 367 BC and set about adorning it with great buildings. He built walls around the city and laid the foundations of his monumental tomb. When he died, his wife, Artemesia completed the mausoleum.

As I left the Myndos Gate, I rejoined the noise of the Gümbet road and entered the narrow streets of Bodrum. Despite knowing the ruins of this great monument were nearby, I ran past them, so inconspicuous are they now.

All that remains are cellars, drainage work and some collapsed pillars, but together it is possible to sense the scale of what Pliny saw as a wonder of his ancient world.

Pliny tells us more about the size of the Mausoleum. Rectangular in shape, it was 63 ft in length and 411 ft in circumference. Its tall flanks were topped with a colonnade of 36 columns, known as the pteron. Above this was a pyramid of 24 steps crowned with 4 marble horse chariots with Mausolus and Artemisia standing in theirs some 140 ft from the ground.

The mausoleum survived Alexander's invasion and attacks by pirates in 62 and 58 BC, standing for sixteen centuries. It succumbed to a number of earthquakes, which by the twelfth century had reduced this once glorious structure mostly to rubble.

By the time the Knights of St John of Malta came in 1402, the remains of the mausoleum were used to build their castle. This was sited on the island at the mouth of the harbour previously home to Mausulos and Artemesia's palace. Polished stone from the mausoleum can still be seen in the castle walls.

It was to the castle I ran on to now, changing tack and turning towards the harbour. Bodrum, now a resort full of elegant eateries and sumptuous wooden yachts or gülets is every inch a sun-kissed Mediterranean resort. Overlooking the decorous harbour is the town's castle.

The Knights had gone to the Holy Land with the crusades and later came to, what was by then called, Bodrum giving a place of refuge for Christians.

Knights from across Europe built and manned the castle and this is reflected in the design of the stronghold, with each division or 'tongue' of the order having their own tower each built in their own style. The French is the tallest, and is joined by the English tower, known as the 'Lion Tower' because of the carved lion sitting atop the crest of Henry V on the west tower.

The castle stood as an outpost of European settlement in Asia Minor until 1522 when the Ottomans took the castle and the knights left Bodrum. The castle was then used as a military base, a prison and a public bath, but now houses a magnificent museum of underwater archaeology.

My journey was now almost at an end, and there remained one piece of Bodrum's history I wanted to sample. One of the best things about running is being able to bask in the glow of a hard slog done and what better way to do that but in a Turkish bath.

Bodrum's oldest hammam, the Bardaçı has soothed the aching limbs of this town since 1749 and after a 15 mile run in the heat, this is what I hoped for now.

I wasn't disappointed. After a delightfully quiet spell in the domed steam room, I was joined by the masseuse who proceeded to pummel me on a great marble slab. The soreness was eased out as his practised hands worked up and down my back.

I was given a vigorous shampooing, sluiced with some seriously hot water, and when I'd dried off, I was sat, like an OAP, in the sun with a cup of tea.

Feeling utter contentment, I sat recovering from my energetic lesson in Turkish history.