Travel Tips

It was a long eleven day crawl along the Mediterranean coast east. We made a few stops en route out of both necessity and to rest.

In Antalia we stopped to buy new tubes tyres. The best we could find. That day alone I had suffered three infuriating punctures. My tightfisted approach to buying equipment had backfired and our tyres just weren’t up to the job. We walked the city for hours without any luck. A hostel owner insisted he knew where to find a good shop, wrote down the address and suggested, "Take my bicycle, no problem."

Why I did, when Hagar was locked up only ten feet away, beats me. So I took off on his pink bike, built for a girl of around ten years old, with no breaks and searched the city into the night with no lights and to no avail.

Side, pronounced 'Cedar', was a travelers hell. A huge package tourist resort, thousands of gift shops, menus in German and all prices in euros.

Beyond Alanya and the road narrowed, twisting and turning heavenwards over huge hills. Up 450m and back down to sea level. Up again and down, time and again. Hard work, yes, but some stunning scenery and great cycling.

These mountains demarked the divide between tourist Turkey and authentic Turkey. The huge ugly hotels were replaced with pine forest. The beaches were all but deserted.

This is where the daytime temperature dropped one degree below thirty centigrade for the first time since Prague, around two months previous.

Cycling into Anamur epitomized the spirit of the Turkish people when tourist are a rarity. A man invites us to join him for a hearty breakfast to discuss Middle East politics. A chap on a motorcycle swerves in front of us (Mybike crashes into the back of Hagar) to offer us bananas from his plantation. Dropping into the service station to buy water and we are sat down and plied with tea.

One of our most pleasant stops was camped right on a deserted beach, the tent shadowed by over-hanging trees. Nearby a huge Roman castle had been built right out onto the sand. A chance to relax and repair punctures, the visor on my helmet, holes in the tent, splitting shoes, temperamental cooker, split 'Spork' (fork – cum – knife gadget) and do washing.

At the eastern end of the Mediterranean we set off from the scruffy city of Hatay (also called Antakya) east for the border. This was the part of the journey I had dreamt of all along. The reason for leaving. Until now it had been primarily about the challenge, but as the Syrian border came into view my heart missed a beat with excitement. The Passion was back.

END OF UPDATE.