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DO GET YOUR hair cut in Turkey if you have the chance. That was how our day started... and it ended by sleeping with the dead. By mistake. The stiffies didn't mind but it did lead to two moonlight interventions by village worthies.

But, first, the haircut.

I've always felt it the mark of a worthwhile journey that you need a trim while you're away. It's a measure of time, recognition that your life is on the road. The first cut was back in Croatia, by two popsies who could manage a whole thought between them. Today's, infinitely superior, was by a master of his art. If you ever get to Can, look out the small shopping centre and go up to the first floor. Relish the moment.

The barber - he would object to being called a hairdresser - was a short, stumpy man with a slow, warm smile and, surprisingly for a man whose main trade seemed to be shaving townsfolk, two days' stubble. The salon had two chairs faced by mirrors, four chairs along the wall for waiting customers, and a small table and chair by the door with a newspaper for quiet moments. The whole thing couldn't have been much more than four metres by two.

Above the mirrors, which reflected others above the waiting customers so the view during snipping was both fore and aft, was a shallow wooden shelf. It supported a small, old porcelain jug on a saucer, both white and enamelled with the sort of pattern out of favour when Victoria died. Near them, incongruously, was a spray can of rust remover.

The single window overlooked the street. In a corner between metal struts holding telephone lines, the barber had wedged a blue-grey plastic basket, a small version of baskets for carrying bread. In it, a pigeon had nested and was feeding offspring that poked a thin neck and head above the parapets before withdrawing. So there is such a thing as a baby pigeon and we have seen one.

The theatre of the haircut wasn't flamboyance. It was the joy of a man who knew he could do a good job and wanted to do it thoroughly and properly, decades after he had started in the trade and decades after boredom could have lowered his standards. But first he had to summon tea. It was brought on a silver plate, in glass cups, by a girl called Kate - although she may not have spelled it that way - working her way through school holidays.

'I like speaking English,' she said. 'I learn it at school.'

She asked where we were from and said she had seen our loaded bikes in the street. She translated our replies for the barber, who smiled even more. He demonstrated scissors and shaver and asked me to choose. I was trimmed and assessed. He snipped off stray hair that had escaped the shaver, assessed me once more and finessed with a comb and finer scissors. He approached the job like a conductor seeing an orchestra through a largo movement.

A short candle was lit, poked into each ear, withdrawn before it could cause further damage, and a small rotary shaver used to do the rest. I was inspected from all sides, my hair was combed upright and then shaved again until nothing that remained was a micrometre's difference from its neighbour. The shaver and comb was put aside. In their place, a cut-throat razor to trim all the edges and the back of my neck. Only then, and having arranged for Kate to bring coffee, was the job finished. My view was never sought; what mattered was that he had done his best and that he was satisfied.

And the cost? Five lira, or two and a half euros.

Well, the riding today didn't add up to much, just a lot of struggling against a monstrous wind once more on narrow roads with no shoulder and increasing traffic, broken every so often by random kilometres on perfect new road not opened to traffic.

We reached Biga and decided to camp beyond the single road that led to the ferry for Istanbul, at Bandirma. Wild camping hasn't been difficult on this trip but this evening our hearts sank because beyond the road was flat, open farmland with trees at kilometre intervals. An excursion down an unmade road brought nothing but a visit by the landowner to whom we gestured sleeping in a tent but who translated our request by telling us there was a hotel back in town.

We rode back through the village, taking a different route from the way in, and found a sloping parkland beyond an open gate, with rows of pines. It wasn't perfect because it was still in the village but the nearest buildings were a tactful distance and the darkness of a pine wood would soon hide us. Just a single man was anywhere around, peering over the wall of the wood in the hope his fallen cap would leap back to his head. We handed it back, showed the picture of a tent we carry for just such moments, and gestured to the wood.

'Go ahead,' he mimed back. We went ahead.

When you camp, you keep the hours of the birds. You sleep at dusk and you rise at dawn. There's no other way if there's no light. And so, after cooking, we settled down in the tent.

We had been there a couple of hours when a motorbike approached. A man got off and began talking, not to us but to his pals. I feared a visit from troublemakers and made brave sounds before getting out of the tent. But instead of strapping teenagers looking for a lark, our visitor was a small man in blue farming overalls, with crooked teeth and wearing glasses. He was talking on a mobile phone, which was why I thought there was more than one, and the light came from his propped-up motorbike.

He seemed amused rather than distressed and tried to explain with words we didn't understand but which amused him. He talked again on his phone and then, saying nothing to us, drove away again.

Nothing happened for long enough that we thought peace had returned. And then he was back, this time with an older, cuddly man who acted as though he was the mayor or a village elder happy to resolve problems rather than fight them.

'Good evening,' he said in English before asking if we spoke German. We said we knew a few words, travellers' German, and we went from there. At first we didn't understand much but then he used a word I wouldn't have known had we not toured the D-Day beaches last year. It meant 'cemetery'. We had camped in a cemetery, which was why the toothy man was so amused.

The mayor was, too, although he felt we couldn't stay there. Both he and the toothy man spoke on their phones again, the mayor breaking off now and then to pass on questions we imagined came from a distant police station.

'How long are you staying here?'

'One night. At seven tomorrow we will be gone.'

'And where will you go?'

'Bandirma.'

He repeated the word as though he approved. Then he suggested we move to a school playing field. But by then it was dark and it would take an hour to pack up. He shone his torch at our dishes and cooker, stacked outside the tent.

'Ah, you have no light,' he realised and repeated the fact to the police. And then a moment later he turned and smiled and shook hands and said 'OK, all right. No problem. Have a good night.' And off the two men went, no doubt chuckling and looking forward to telling the story in the morning.