Turkey Archive

A little bit of Anatolia…

In the absence of anything interesting to write about this week (I’m swamped with development work, and with the start of the race season less than 2 months away also spending a majority of spare time on two wheels) this post is just going to continue the theme started in the preceding post of ‘a few favourites from the road that were only ever published in low-res ‘crap-o-vision’ from  the 7″ android tablet I carry when …

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Beyoğlu

Rio, Jakarta, Fes, Istanbul… wherever you are in the world there is a law of nature that says that sooner or later you will stumble across someone playing the theme to the movie Titanic .. on pan-pipes. The only thing that can make it worse is if Celine Dion is accompanying the performance on a cheap tape player. Such was the soundtrack to my morning as I wandered around the Beyoğlu district for a couple …

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while I’m on… Eskişehir

I understand that for some folk who received the email version of my last post, rather than clicking through to the blog , itself pictures were missing. No idea why, sorry about that. If you were missing pictures then click through  to https://www.seasurfdirt.com/2013/10/13/eskisehir-the-end-of-my-road and all should make sense.. While I’m on.. here’s a couple more pics of Eskişehir, a really lovely town. I spent my last evening there sitting in a cafe on the canal, …

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Eskişehir… the end of my road

It is only 140km from Afyon to Eskişehir but it is very much a journey that needs to be taken slowly over 2 days and savoured.. and it is worth a decent post here… it was a wonderful ride. There are plenty of reasons and opportunities to dawdle from enjoying the fine landscape of the Phygian Valley to the enormous rock carvings and cliff tombs left behind by the Phyrgians after whom the valley is named. …

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Afyon

I wasn’t going to bother with another post but this evening changed my mind… Afyon has been a strange experience, partly I think because it is the biggest place I have been since Istanbul.. it’s a small city rather than a town… and hence is something of a shock to the system after rural Anatolia. I have failed miserably to get a feel for the place.. it is a town of enormous contrasts.. there is …

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apples to Afyon

The weather was perfect leaving Eğirdir… not a breath of wind, clear sky and chilly enough to need a jacket. The wind did pick up a little later from the north, so a headwind, but no more than a force 3 and thus didn’t detract at all from what turned into the best day so far on the road here… a day on which the bike felt properly a part of me and the kilometres …

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Eğirdir etc

If a backpacker says that a place is not worth visiting because there ‘is nothing to do there’ it can generally be assumed that the opposite is true. Such is the case with Eğirdir (pronounced ‘E-irdir’)… I have really enjoyed my couple of days here. Yesterday was my first proper rest day in some 900km, since Troy in fact, and was much needed. I did very little…almost bugger all in fact.. Then today I took …

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Extremes…

Hard to believe it is just a few days ago that  I was sweating.. I mistyped as swearing but on reflection that too… at something like 35 degs C… and now putting up with temperatures more than 40 degs colder.. but more on that in a mo… Despite the cold very glad I didn’t choose to ride the Black Sea coast, saw in one tea shop that there has been heavy snow and some pretty …

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Pamukkale

back on the road tomorrow, up into the mountains and what looks like about 400km to my next stop so slinging up a few pics of Pamukkale now… The storm continued to rage all night and it was still raining first thing this morning… the air is clearer however as a result and my bike is sparkling clean :-) The weather appears to have thoroughly broken, the forecast on my route for the next few …

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a storm brews…

It’s a funny thing but a least once on every bike journey I will meet a very lovely Parisien girl(s) and invariably they will walk away with my heart, haha.. something to do with the loneliness of the solo cyclist.. my heart is very easy to walk away with… the last time was in Chaiten, Patagonia…. but I have yet to ditch my bicycle in favour of running after it, something about being grounded and …

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a quick bit of Ephesus…

…as I am back on the road tomorrow.. and this afternoon I am doing very little having slept very little… I like the fact that the alcohol can flow freely, very freely in this moslem state when there is a birthday to celebrate.. I very nearly didn’t come here, the temptation to simply start riding inland from Ayvalik being very great indeed, however I owe it to a couple of two-wheeled friends for making me …

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Otobüs tüm iyi yapmak

hmmm, my Turkish is not yet good enough but google says roughly translated that could mean ‘bus make it all better’.. my Turkish is improving but being such a very different language stuff doesn’t stick very well… anyway, back to the otobüs. The last straw I suppose was the day and half ride from Assos to Ayvalik.. It started off well, a tiny coastal road, quiet and pretty right above the water for the first …

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Assos…

The ride to Assos was a good one… at last, the preceeding couple of days of riding had been pretty rubbish really with no option other than the highway west to get clear of all the industrial crap around the sea of Marmara so to be on properly small, quiet roads was great. Sadly, looking at the map there is no choice but to keep returning to the main road from time to time… but …

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A gift of two melons…

There are few things in life as delicious as a siesta in the shade of a tree on a hot afternoon beneath a sapphire blue sky with nothing but the sound of the wind painted onto the peace.. especially when it’s somewhere with such a legendary status as Troy. I took an easy day of just 70km to reach Homer’s fabled city having broken all my rules about limiting my efforts on the first day …

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