Day 50 – Sarkoy to Tekirdag – 63km 991m

Cold Turkey

Last night we sat on the roof terrace of the guesthouse, watching the ships pass through the Sea of Marmara between the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. As the full moon rose the sweet wrapper bats began their erratic flight and the lights of the towns on the Asian side of Turkey glimmered.

This morning we awoke to rain lashing sideways at the window. Our bedroom floor has become a large continuous puddle, the tiling now treacherous. We had to take a towel down to dry our bike saddles. We had kept the bikes *inside* the guesthouse. Yes, it was raining inside.

But we had to do the miles today so the only thing was to jump up and get on with it. The hour we took getting ready helped, as the rain died down from biblical to just plain bad.

Head down, cycle on. 14km in we stopped for Turkish tea and breakfast. We’ve quickly become accustomed to the tea shops. You get your dinky little cups and sit with the old men. Never seen a woman in one, nor a man under the age of about 60. At least for the older men they provide a sense of community and continued social interaction.

After breakfast we went through an area where the road clung perilously between the raging sea and the cliffs of Mordor, black and foreboding. The road was scattered with the cliffs’ scree-fall which had come loose in the storm. One driver stopped us, warning us of the dangers. It was kind, but the evidence was already all over the road. Rocks sized from tennis balls up to beach balls, the odd few even bigger, scattered the road everywhere. A couple of small rockfalls had us checking our left shoulders and ready to brake or make a break.

We emerged unscathed and hit the big climb, up about 700m through hairpins.

Eventually we hit the top, immediately turning from hot to freezing as the wind lashed the heat from our bodies.

Quickly back on the road and descend, then. At Barbaros, a town dominated by the container port, we stopped for a supermarket lunch, whilst being watched by the usual array of doe eyes dogs and cats.

And finally we pulled up into Tekirdag and it accommodation for the night. We’ll make full use of the hairdryer in the bathroom to dry out.