March 15, 2014
Nearing the end of Turkey: And a little sad to be leaving
Those of you hoping for an interesting story from my night in an all-girls boarding school may be disappointed to hear that Ayse locked me in the medical building. It was probably for the best.
Over the next couple of days I was blessed with warm sunny weather as I continued to follow the Black Sea coast. The scenery was very nice but the road was not, being a main highway and passing through a seemingly endless number of seaside towns. As soon as one town ended, the next began. This meant an awful lot of people were trying to call me over to talk with them, and I had to do my best to avoid stopping too much otherwise I would have made no progress at all. Besides, the usual questions seemed a lot less fun coming from old men now than they did from teenage girls. A highlight, however, was when I stopped to dry my tent on some grass by the sea and a family invited me to join their picnic in the sunshine. It was another gesture of kind hospitality from these wonderful people and I sat and thought about how near I was to leaving Turkey and how really wonderful it had all been.
On my way into the big city of Trabzon I switched across to the other side of the highway to pick up a bicycle path that ran alongside the sea. Shortly after doing this I heard someone calling to me and looked over to see two bearded cycle tourists on the shoulder of the highway that I had been riding on. But there was now four lines of traffic and a large crash barrier between us so there was no way to stop and exchange stories. I thought maybe we could meet up further along but having attracted my attention and waved they then sped off like Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome and I was left pottering along on the cycle path. It was a shame, I would have liked to meet them. In fact they were the first cycle tourists that I had seen actually cycling on the road since the French family that I met in Lithuania back in October! Almost six months without seeing any others, not that I expected to meet any in Moldova in winter, but it was good to know I was now back 'on season' with other cyclists.
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I was inspired to find some people to ride with and so the next day I cycled fast and I made it to Pazar where I knew that Kieran and Natasha (the couple that I met in Cappadocia) were staying. Their wonderful host, Merve, was kind enough to let me stay as well and the three of us crammed into her spare room. It was great to meet with Kieran and Natasha again and we exchanged stories about our respective journeys since we last met. Their's had been slightly different from mine featuring as it did an overnight bus journey from Cappadocia to Trabzon. Still my trials in the mountains were put in the shade by their own story of a pass that they had done in Greece on a closed road upon which they had to push their bikes for eight kilometres through the snow.
As Kieran and Natasha were spending another day in Pazar and because I was super tired I decided to also spend another day, and then we could cycle on together the following day, and I would have myself some company after all.
15/03/14 - 68km
16/03/14 - 108km
Today's ride: 176 km (109 miles)
Total: 14,954 km (9,286 miles)
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