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. …
mountains Archive
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 …
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 …
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 …
Penne al’Arrabbiata al’Torres del Paine…
“well you’ll still need a tray.” “No, I will not need a tray. I do not need a tray to kill you. I can kill you without a tray, with the power of the Force – which is strong within me – even though I could kill you with a tray if I so wished. For I would hack at your neck with the thin bit until the blood flowed across the canteen floor…” “No, …
a salad of meat and beer…
It is strange how not being able to do something increases ones desire to do that very thing… in this case cycling, the motivation is back after a couple of days hiking and a couple of days chilling… but there is little point in rushing south from here. I have to go back into Chile to continue, either to Torres del Paine and at any rate to reach Ushuaia, isolated as it is on a …
to El Chalten…
I lost my lucky hat…. I lost it in the gale of wind crossing Lago O’Higgins on the boat. But it’s OK, being well prepared as always I have a back-up hat, a woolly one from home in Cornwall. Given its origins I may well find it to be attractive to birdshit instead :-) I was happy to stay in Villa O’Higgins as long as necessary, it was a great place and with access to …
Jedi cat & the end of the Carretera Austral
Surely cows need to sleep too? It was a question I asked myself many times while camped on a farm one night out from Cochrane. Throughout the night, like a foghorn going off and with the same mechanical regularity. Every 5 seconds or so a great bellow that not even my earplugs could attenuate. Still, it was not all bad.. a night in a beautiful spot on the banks of a river, oven-fresh bread courtesy …
Los Exploradores and other places..
Somewhat stupidly I never really expected Patagonia to do heat.. proper, intense, stuffy heat that causes your eyes to fill with sweat on the climbs and leaves the taste of flinty dust in your mouth as you ride. But it does and it does it well. The last 7 days have seen a spell of almost unbroken sunshine and increasing heat day by day. The last couple of evenings I’ve watched from my tent with …
Chaiten y la Carretera Austral
< a couple of caveats before I get on with the narrative.. it’s quite a long one so I hope you’re sitting comfortably.. and one or two of the photos might not appeal to the squeamish or those of a vegetarian disposition… > Post-apocalyptic Chaiten, 2 1/2 years ago a town of around 4000 people in the shadow of a volcano thought to be dead, its last eruption happened some 9000 years ago. In May …