Yesterday was my first full day in Turkey, and I can confirm that things are indeed good here.
After waking up with the tent-in-carpark scenario surrounded by cute rabbits, I hit the road and headed for Sile to get my morning coffee. “Nescafe, or good coffee?” was the question I was greeted with. Things were shaping up nicely.
After pootling around the northern coast roads for a bit, and uploading the previous blog entry, I ended up on a road reminiscent of those in Romania. It started off proper, got narrower, got bumpier, got pothole-ier and then just stopped. The stopping was fine though as I found myself at a glorious headland (see pic).
Turning back brought me to a crossroads, of sorts, that I’d seen on the way up. Two great big long dirt tracks, each leading up to is own hill crest. After not very much decision-making time I turned left, wondering where I’d end up. What a hoot the ride was too, with the bike springing into life like a dog let off the lead in a park full of frisbees. I urgently needed to find a Swiss hiker to find out what this track was all about. Luckily there was one part-way along so we stopped for a quick chat. The nutter had walked all the way from Switzerland! I told him to get a motorbike (much easier) and then topped up his water supply. He explained that the track is actually an under-construction motorway. Shame, they should make it into an off road bikers’ paradise. Hey ho.
Lots more pootling, stopping, map-checking and u-turning later and I’m at the beach looking out over the Black Sea. Before I can get the map out I find myself being gestured at to ‘come over here’ by two guys sharing what looked like a bottle of wine (with a motorbike next to them).
Sure enough, they were munching on nuts and fruit from the garden, singing songs and sharing wine. Of these two chaps, the bike belonged to the one of them who’s a policeman and he tells me to jump on my bike and follow him to meet his mate, who runs a café. This was all a bit surreal to me, and I’m struggling with communication here, but we muddled through. After a bit of free grub, and they’d all called me ‘mad’ for taking on this journey, the café owner’s son takes me to a nearby tea shop to meet his mates. The bike was quite the centre of attention for the younger lads, and I must confess to finding it a bit overwhelming myself. To go from spending the day solo-riding to suddenly being in the middle of a happy throng was quite juxtaposing, and utterly brilliant too.
This planet has lovely and interesting people in great abundance, I feel quite humble surrounded by such folk and I suspect this sort of thing will happen many times more.
I’m not just saying the because I gave them my blog address 🙂
Anyway, I’m camped right next to the beach tonight but there’s no net connection nearby so I’ll have to find a coffee shop in the next town so I can upload it. Maybe that means I can squeeze in a picture of the sunrise too.
