Turkey

In Erzurum, we both came down with a stomach bug. We had a fever, stomach cramps, nausea and were spending far too much time in the bathroom. Our recovery was slow, and we ended up spending five days in the city, until we finally got bored of counting mould stains on the ceiling of our hotel room. Erzurum was an ok city, with some nice cafes and restaurants, as well as some interesting buildings. Unfortunately they were also repaving the whole city at once, and most of the streets, footpaths and squares consisted only of rubble and mud, making it…

We were about to climb our highest pass yet, at 2,210m altitude, when we passed the 6,000km mark. This means that we have done over one third of our cycling distance so far in Turkey alone, having cycled more than 2,000km in this country! The scenery was remote and rugged, with few villages in between. A few minutes after this photo was taken, we were stopped by soldiers at a military checkpoint and ordered to drink tea immediately. ||…

Sivas – Erzurum Our rest day in Sivas was well chosen, as there was a thunderstorm and rain which lasted for most of the day. Unfortunately we found that the mosque and some of the seminaries we wanted to visit were closed for reconstruction, so the only one we visited was the Bürüciye Medresesi, which was built in 1271 in the Seljuk style, and most importantly had a lovely tea garden in the courtyard! We also found a very posh cafe and had our first cafe latte since Istanbul, along with a banana split made with Turkish ice cream, which…

Göreme – Sivas We spent a week in Cappadocia, exploring the area with Justin and Emma, and Roger and Catherine, a French Canadian cyclist couple we met at our campsite. We walked around the valleys oohing and aahing at the fairy chimney and manmade rock caves, and rented a car for the day to visit the underground city at Kaymakli, which was used by Christians between the 4th and 9th century. It is one of 200 underground cities in the area and has 7 storeys with…

Beypazari – Göreme Any town light on museums but heavy on gastronomic delights is always a star find for us as it means guilt free culinary feasting without the pressure of having to visit many museums. This is what was presented to us in Beypazari. Yes, the Ottoman style homes are kind of nice (how excited can you get over a timber home, especially considering Guy’s new found allergy to the treated timber ceilings) but once you’ve seen one, you pretty much get the gist of it. We discovered the most enjoyable soup to pass our lips for some time,…

We took this photo just after we had passed the 5,000 km mark, cycling through a dried-out salk lake, Tuz Gölü. We stopped to visit the caravanserai at Sultanhani, which was built in the 13th century as a resting place on the old silk road into Persia. This caravanserai is the largest in Turkey, and apparently one of the best examples of Seljuk architecture. We were the only visitors, so we snuck the bikes in with us. ||…

Istanbul is not a city designed for cyclists, and to avoid travelling out of the city on a 10 lane motorway, we decided to take a ferry instead. The ferry took us south-east across the Sea of Marmara, to a town called Yalova. From there, we headed inland. Turkey is a mountainous country, and over the next few days we had to conquer several passes to get up onto the Anatolian Plateau.|| The bikes felt very heavy and slow, probably in part due to loss of fitness during our time in Istanbul. After our first 300m climb,…

We spent a full 12 days in Istanbul, our longest break by far on our trip to date. We had quite a few visitors: First, Janna and Marco came out from London, then Freddie’s dad popped over for a short visit from Germany, and finally Gerry came over from London as well to spend a few days with us. It was really fantastic to catch up with friends and family again, it gave us a real mental break. We also enjoyed our last few days with Di before she went home to the UK, having finished her London – Istanbul…

When we left the UK, we were a little apprehensive about how we would cope with our bike trip. We had dreamed about cycling to Australia for a while, but then Freddie got a joint inflammation in her back. After many months of fruitless physio treatments, she finally had a cortisone injection a couple of weeks before we set off on our trip. Nobody knew at the time if it would really fix the problem. We set off towards Dover anyway, not knowing if we would make it past France. Luckily the injection worked like a dream and so…