Turkey - The Black Sea Coast -Day 367 (26,356 Miles)

Our route back west to Istanbul saw us stick mainly to the Black Sea coast with a couple of detours inland, this coastline gets few foreign visitors as most favour the Med and Aegean. We did know that it's popular with Turks especially from Ankara and Istanbul and as it was July and therefore the school holidays it was rather silly of us to be surprised at how busy and how expensive it was! We had a couple of spare days that we planned to use to extend a stay and have a little seaside mini-break if we got to somewhere on the coast that we really liked but to be honest there wasn't anywhere that we liked enough and could afford. If we had been there at a quieter, cooler time of year I think we would have appreciated it alot more and probably explored more of the villages.

An early morning paddle before getting into the riding gear.

Our first inland stop was the very pretty town of Amasya, lots of historic tombs, mosques and Ottoman houses. We stayed at a pension in one of these houses with a balcony over the river.







A fuel and chay stop that turned into a bit of a party.

As did the next lunch and chay stop! I don't think we've mentioned that most fuel stations give you free chay when you stop to fill up and although we usually just have one glass each you get the impression they would happily let you sit there all day drinking free tea. We weren't allowed to pay at our lunch stop on this day either and left with the local policeman and another gentleman's mail addresses and phone numbers and an invitation to dinner had we been stopping there longer.

These stork's nests are a regular site along the roads in Turkey, they're huge.

Day 365, yes that's right 1 year on the road! Should we mark the occasion with Champagne or lobster? No way on our budget, instead we chose a celebratory salad! This magnificent creation looked like it should have had a sparkler on top.

So how does a year of travelling feel for us? Well at this moment in time we would have to say we're both a bit tired and John is suffering with pains in his arms that we are assuming may be something to do with the amount of time on the bike or his riding position. But, we have and hopefully will continue to love the journey, visiting new places and meeting new people.


Another inland town we visited that we liked enough to stay an extra day was Safranbolu, a maze of cobbled streets and historical buildings.






These ladies were handmaking little turkish ravioli (I meant to make a note of the name and forgot). Each are filled with a tiny amount of minced mutton, cooked and served with garlicky yoghurt. This was John's dinner choice that night.

This was an old caravansara (roadside inn) these were found along the ancient trade routes across the middle east, this one is now a fancy hotel that we couldn't afford to stay in but treated ourselves to chay and baklava at the end of an evening to get a look around the place.

While travelling through some particularly dusty roadworks we crossed paths with Maciek who is on a route south and east from Poland for a while. He is travelling on a tight budget and pretty self sufficient so quickly whipped out a stove and pot and we pooled resources to have tea and biscuits at the side of the road, how civilised. He is riding a new Yamaha XT660R which was given to him by a dealer in Poland (very generous). We wish him a safe and enjoyable adventure. As those of you who know John well will understand Maciek's method of packing brought him out in a cold sweat!

You may be able to see a cloud of dust behind the guys in the above photo, the absolutely huge roadwork programme currently underway in Turkey means tons of rock are constantly being excavated from the rock faces. It it not uncommon for these works to cause landslides and we saw a few boulders bouncing across this and other roads on our travels (never had the camera ready unfortunately!)


A beautiful little bay but it was the middle of the day and too hot to stop!