They say St Anthony of the Desert, the prototype of Christian monks, kept retreating further into the Egyptian desert as his fame increased and visitors multiplied. In the fourth century they did not come in tour buses, but the sense is that many were tourists nonetheless. Visiting the cave monasteries of Cappadocia in Turkey last month, I wondered how Anthony or Macarius or Isaac and the other Fathers of the Desert would have reacted to the tourist invasions of today. However, people tend to cluster in crowded spaces and leave nearby areas virtually free. So, off the beaten track, you can climb some of the surreal dwellings of the Cappadocian desert carved out of weird volcanic rock formations. And you can sense the solitude in which the monks once wrestled with their demons and, perhaps