Turkey

Continuing eastwards: Akçakoca to Ereğli along the coast. Ereğli is a major centre of shipbuilding and has many other industries that make the Black Sea Coast the economically more developed part of Turkey. From there we ascended back into the mountains and because of poor maps and information on road conditions stayed for wild camping on the Babadağ Geçedi Pass (Geçedi = Pass) at 720m asl. A fairly chilly night at around freezing point in our tents! Map reading skills are the more important the poorer the map is. Climbing and downhill rides can be estimated from the water network if no other information is available. Yesterday (March 11) it was cycling through the magnificent and steep gorge of the Yenica Irmağı river that contains also the main railway line between İstanbul and Ankara.
Safranbolu is for Turkey something like the Rothenburg ob der Tauber for Germany or Rauma for Finland, a world heritage site anyway and experiencing all the benefits and drawbacks of mass tourism. The Japanese are particularly prominent here (I haven't found out the reason why).
Moving eastwards against the Earth's rotation even causes a kind of 'bike lag' because we sun set time just keeps staying the same even though spring equinox is approaching and day length expands now more rapidly than at any other time of the year. So we should be getting out of our sleeping bags a little bit earlier every day, but that is pretty contrary to a cyclists nature (the more mileage, the more contrary...)

I'm currently having problems with uploading photos and GPS tracks; so please refer to the travel map on this site for up-to-date location.

As pointed out yesterday, you might get the impression from a small scale Atlas map of Turkey that the Black Sea coast is flat. It isn't and you can check height metres between Istanbul and Akçakoca from my track on http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=14645. Today though cycling was a little less hard through the Sakarya river delta in the Karasu/Kocaali area with a flat road for about 30 km. We truly haven't had many of those yet! Road conditions are overall quite satisfactory with only patches in disrepair. Tourist infrastructure along this part of the coast is also patchy but obviously developing with colonies of new holiday homes here and there hiding the view onto the sea.
In the more hilly areas large hazelnuts

Traditional rural architecture: Two-storey square shaped houses with barn and stable on the ground floor and hip roof. The timber framework construction filled with tiles reminds of certain areas in Northern Germany.

This is surely not the last image of a sedimentary rock outcrop on this blog.... Viewed from the old Genovese fortress in Akçakoca, called Diospolis by the ancient Greeks.

To avoid cycling through busy urban and suburban areas of Istanbul, we took the ferry to the northernmost port on the Asian side of the Bosporus - and were welcomed by damp and foggy forests that reminded us of two things: That we had left the mediterranean climate and vegetation zone and that it is - astronomically - still winter! After a very long day with riding for several hours even in dark we finally got to the town of Şile where - on the following morning - we could enjoy sunny first view of the Black Sea.

Today - Saturday and International Women's Day - we continued eastwards on a very hilly road with numerous ups and downs across (less often along) the many river valleys that drain into the Black Sea. Final destination after ca. 95 km of mileage the town of Kaynarç.

A moist re-entry into Asia. Summergreen deciduous trees still bare.

A rather typical encounter in Turkey: Habe 33 Jahre in Deutschland gearbeitet. Jetzt Rentner. (Notice that the guy with the helmet has scored only 25 years in Germany and not even a single one working.)

Sunset before 1800 hrs. The picture proves that we are moving eastwards.

On the way along the Sea of Marmara, behind the town of Şarköy I noticed a severe failure in the rim of my front wheel and it wasn't possible to fix it on the spot. So I had to be in contact with the manufacturer and then try to get a new rim. With Istanbul being so close already, I decided to get there on a bus and arrange repair services. For that reason I missed out two days of cycling through the sprawling suburban belt of Istanbul. By now, Thursday, everything is fixed (wide tyres on narrow rims apparently are not a good combination, even though manufacturers insist that there shouldn't be a problem) and I had plenty of time to do sightseeing in the city. Finding bicycle repair services here wasn't even all that difficult as bike shops tend to follow the oriental bazaar principle of all the other merchandise on offer, i.e. similar products are concentrated in one or two streets.
After other final arrangements (a.o. emptying and cleaning the car, stockpiling gas cartridges for our cookers) we're ready to go east!

In this street we found probably 90% of all bicycle services of Istanbul

Tourist buzzle in the Hagia Sophia

In 1915 British and French Allied forces landed on the Anzac Cove on the west side of the Gallipoiı peninsula in an attempt to knock out the Ottoman empire out of World War I. The present historical park contains the war cemeteries of the various nations that had seen the same horrors of a stalemate trench warfare that weas so typical in other parts of Europe. Our BC member John from even had a story to tell about his uncle-in-law landing with the British forces in the Anzac Cove in 1915.

So Gallipoli is sacred ground to the Turkish nation (like Suomussalmi for the Finns or Westerplatte for the Poles).

You may stop reading here, but I would like to share the follwing excerpt from a poem displayed at the Gallipoli war memorial:

Mehmet then asked an English soldier
who seemed toı be at the playing age
'how old are you little brother, what brought you here at such an early stage'
'I am fifteen forever', the English soldier said
'ın trhe village from where I come I used to play war with the children
arousing them with my drum
then I found myself in the front
was it real or a game before I could tell
my drum fell silent
as I was struck with a shell'

Bülent Ecevit 1988

But do the Turks carry about any other suppressed memory about WWI? Probably more about this when we get further East...

For the rest of the day we were literally carried by a very strong tailwind along the coastal road to the village of Bolayır. A wind turning into heavy rainfall during the night...

GPS and more photos: http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=14001