Rides bikes, paddles sea kayaks, takes pictures. Life on the road & my home in Cornwall.
apples to Afyon
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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 peeled away as I watched my shadow grow shorter then longer again… One of those days on the road I might well get all misty-eyed about when I’m a boring old duffer… (thus opening myself up to all sorts of commentary….).
So now I am in the town of Afyonkarahisar, or Afyon for short… it is, on the face of it, an unremarkable provincial town with very little prospect for tourism.. but it does have an ancient castle on a mountain in the middle of town (tomorrow’s plan… legs were too tired to bother with the 570 steps up there) and a wonderfully crumbly old town. The locals are conservative and don’t show the same openness as the country folk.. but once the ice is broken they are equally lovely. There is a (very quiet…) tourist office in town and they have a map showing features of interest… and to my mind any town whose tourist map includes features such as the Provincial Directorate of Hydraulic Works and the prison, not to mention the cement factory, has to be worth a visit even if only in recognition of the effort to attract folk. The town is also famous as being the place where Ataturk kicked a lot of Greek arse during the 1922 Battle of Dumlupinar.
I’ve been for a wander around the old town with my camera, found it hard to find my street photo groove.. tired from riding and also very aware of the conservative nature of the locals so not wishing to be rude or intrusive in any way at all. I have tomorrow too… I have decided that although I could flog myself and get back to the Sea of Marmara and a ferry to Istanbul in time for my flight.. I have no great desire to ride through all those busy,industrial places again so instead winding down and going to savour the ride between here and Eskesihir, ending the journey there and hopping a bus back into Istanbul before heading home. I am comfortable with my laziness…
Anyway, some Afyon pics… probably more tomorrow.
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9 thoughts on “apples to Afyon”
Some wonderful images here. Must’ve been quite a journey!
h hey Ben, good to hear from you… the road is a great place to be, really not looking forward to coming home. too short a trip… but a busy winter ahead.hope all is good with you?!
dunno, doesn’t feel like I have any mojo. am finding Afyon a bit weird… probably I’m just tired so perhaps a good thing just two more days riding… I’m actually quite looking forward to getting back to Istanbul for a couple of days.
Something I’ve always wondered, but never got around to asking, is how many languages do you speak? Or in Turkey is a cup of tea the only language you need? ;-)
hahaha, at any one time anywhere between 1.2 and 1.8 I reckon… I pick up languages v quickly but can’t easily switch between… only seems to be room in my head for English and one other, the others get ‘archived’… used to be pretty handy in Bahasa Indonesia of all things, then French and then Spanish kind of got in the way of that but without practice it gets very bad very quickly. Turkish has been hard to make anything stick, it’s an agglutinating language which I really struggle with so have only really bothered to learn the word ‘roots’ I need to be able to get by.. basic stuff that folk always want to know like where are you from, what’s your name, and the essentials for me like the numbers, days, asking for stuff…like tea and beer, asking and understanding directions. very basic but have always found that really don’t need much at all to get by. lots of folk on the coast have a bit of English thanks to tourism but not inland. it’s been alternately fun and frustrating that it’s been so hard to remember the words I need and how to construct them. I have also been a bit lazy in that respect given it is such a short trip.
Some wonderful images here. Must’ve been quite a journey!
cheers, yeh it was a nice ride :-)
some great shots , makes me miss the open road
h hey Ben, good to hear from you… the road is a great place to be, really not looking forward to coming home. too short a trip… but a busy winter ahead.hope all is good with you?!
How I envy you – Pat
When are you are going to set up your street photography school in Afyon? Looks like you got your MoJo back.
dunno, doesn’t feel like I have any mojo. am finding Afyon a bit weird… probably I’m just tired so perhaps a good thing just two more days riding… I’m actually quite looking forward to getting back to Istanbul for a couple of days.
Something I’ve always wondered, but never got around to asking, is how many languages do you speak? Or in Turkey is a cup of tea the only language you need? ;-)
hahaha, at any one time anywhere between 1.2 and 1.8 I reckon… I pick up languages v quickly but can’t easily switch between… only seems to be room in my head for English and one other, the others get ‘archived’… used to be pretty handy in Bahasa Indonesia of all things, then French and then Spanish kind of got in the way of that but without practice it gets very bad very quickly. Turkish has been hard to make anything stick, it’s an agglutinating language which I really struggle with so have only really bothered to learn the word ‘roots’ I need to be able to get by.. basic stuff that folk always want to know like where are you from, what’s your name, and the essentials for me like the numbers, days, asking for stuff…like tea and beer, asking and understanding directions. very basic but have always found that really don’t need much at all to get by. lots of folk on the coast have a bit of English thanks to tourism but not inland. it’s been alternately fun and frustrating that it’s been so hard to remember the words I need and how to construct them. I have also been a bit lazy in that respect given it is such a short trip.