I was done with Istanbul, four days was enough. That meant it was time to leave Pierre and Cyril, their trip finished here (along with their bikes), and Christof was taking a ferry south to Bursa, then cycling towards war.

I wasn’t cycling alone though, a couple of nights before I’d met up with Fredrik, a Swedish guy who’d cycled down through Europe and the Balkans to Istanbul and wanted to go further, Alex Duaurin who I’d met in Mostar, and Isobel, an English lass who’d cycled the length of Europe and was now flying back to Western Europe to get a bit more riding in before University. She has more balls than I did at 21, hats off to her, that’s a serious achievement.

I met up with Fredrik and caught the ferry to the Asian side. We’d decided to go to a bike shop for a tune-up before we left, and Paul Ferguson had tipped me off that Bisiklet Gezgini was a cycle tourer’s Mecca. Fortunately, we bumped into Alexis, the owner, who biked us there, saving us hours of aimlessly cycling around lost.

This is Fredrik.

Bikes on boats.

It was time for inspection. Fredrik was up first, bike hoisted up whilst we sat drinking tea, him more nervously than me.

‘Ok, you’re running disc brakes, so there’s a problem…’

I decided to strip down The Tangerine Dream whilst Fredrik got the run down on his steed’s issues.

I was next up, and sat waiting whilst the surgeons operated. The consensus was that my chain and cassette was dead, which I was expecting after 5500km of riding, and that my rear rim (childish giggle) was alright after the drill bit I ran over towards Dover had pierced through the first wall. Who knows how long it’ll last, time will tell, I was surprised it’d made it this far. Afterwards Alexis took a long look at my bike and told me what he’d change and would have different. This kind of felt like my child had just had an operation, and the doctor was telling me my kid had wangy legs, or bog eyes.

The surgery.

Before we set off, Alex Duaurin turned up. We ate watermelon with the bike shop guys, before hitting the road, me and Fredrik heading north towards the Black Sea coast, and Alex heading east on the big road out, hopefully we should meet him in Samsun in about a week.

Cycling north out of Istanbul was quite nice, the Asian side seems to be much more relaxed, so while I’m not fully prepared to eat my words about the city, I do regret not crossing sides earlier.

We ended up about 20km short of Sile, on the northern coast, where we ended up camping for the night. It was the first time I’d felt I’d been in a quiet enough place to camp properly in Turkey, and we were treated to a cracking sunrise the next day.

The first, and last, decent camping experience in Turkey.

There’s nothing like cycling over a rocky dirt road to wake you up in the morning though, and if there’s one thing I learned from it, it’s trust the locals, who’d tried to warn us beforehand. We had 10km of it before we reached asphalt again and carried on to Sile, then Agva, then inland to Kagnarca before camping at a lake.

Then it happened…

My tent pole broke…

My home…

Knackered…

It held out that night, but the headtorch revealed it to have a crack running from the edge of the pole, right on the top join. I’m on borrowed time. Plus in my reactionary wisdom, I decided to try and bend it back into place… with my teeth. The result; two chipped teeth, only a little, but chipped none the less. I am an idiot.

The cafe guy nearby obviously picked this moment to come over for a chat, pointing at my tent saying ‘Bozuk’, then to Fredrick’s Thermarest on the ground followed by ‘No bozuk’. Bozuk means broken, if anyone was wondering.

We had a Turkish funnyman on our hands.

People who know me well can only imagine the avalanche of ‘fuck off’s in my head. Afterwards this bloke taught us the words for man, woman, sex, tits, arse, ladybits (that’s censored for you nana) and penis, which funnily enough is just penis, except with a continental twang. He made up for it though – he invited us over for a plate of meat and I managed to use a bit of my German lingo to explain to his mate what the fuck we were playing at cycling around.

The next morning had flatland running all the way to Sakarya, where I started emailing and tweeting anyone I could think of in search of replacement poles before we headed out to Duzce and up towards a hefty climb up the Bolu mountains and to Bolu itself, which turned out to be a nice city, much calmer than anywhere else I’d been in Turkey. The climb would’ve been really nice had it not been for the Turk’s propensity to stick a shithouse looking market or tea house everywhere, then sprinkle a bit of litter around to finish the job. I have to squeeze this in somewhere too — if I ever see red, all caps, Arial bold font, with a white outline again, it’s only too soon, design is lost in Turkey, no one gives a shit, subtlety doesn’t exist.

Coming up to the Bolu Mountains.

When we left Bolu, we got a little reminder of the shit that was hitting the fan down on the Southern border. Police had stopped traffic on the road, and as we cycled to the front there was an endless stream of supply trucks, presumably carrying guns ‘n’ ammo, as well as a couple of thinly veiled tanks, being escorted out. War never changes.

I remember having a chat in a beer garden with a few mates a couple of years back which concluded with –

‘Everyone shits themselves when they’re travelling’

This was obviously preceded with comical stories of people shaking shit out their shorts. At the time I felt a bit left out. I’d never done any proper travelling at the time. I’d never done any proper shits in my pants. In Merzifon, this changed.

The day before we were riding towards the coast, through Turkish mountains and lakes, and to be quite honest, it was beautiful. I’d read on other blogs that the key to cycle touring in Turkey is to get away from the coast. That couldn’t be more true. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really enjoy the day as I was trying my best not to ralph, shit myself, or pass out whilst riding. It completely ruined what was probably the nicest day of my time in Turkey, which gives me my top travelling tip –

Don’t buy the nice looking stews in big trays. They’ve probably been there for days.

It even rhymes.

Anyway, the next morning we were getting ready to leave some low budget hotel, just after brushing my teeth, and it happened.

Like an otter off the bank.

No squeezing. No pressure. Nothing.

It says a lot about my sense of humour that the first thought that went through my head was –

‘I can’t wait to tell everyone back home’

Anyway, that’s probably enough shit talk, until next time.

Back to the Turkish coast. Samsun. Awful place. Biggest city on the Black Sea coastline. Generally busy, cramped, not too clean and pretty lacklustre. By this time, I’d really started to miss not being able to go to a decent bar and have a pint, all the bars got outlawed a few years back, and the only ones open are specialist places that look even more depraved than the worst Working Men’s Club you could imagine, leaving you to buy a couple of cans of Efes, but you can’t drink those in public, you have to take them home, you dirty alcoholic bastard.

I’m not much of a cafe person, so Turkish çay doesn’t do the job for me. I’m not much of a coffee man either, and on a side note, you hear so much about Turkish coffee, but they hardly ever crack it out, it’s all Nescafé, the lazy bastards. Bosnia, Greece and Albania all won in the coffee stakes, Turkey didn’t even turn up to play.

The Black Sea Coast.

Further down the hazelnut lined Black Sea Coast (Turkey is massive, so why they dry out their hazelnuts next to a road is beyond me) we got to Ordu. This place was really nice, and felt completely out of place compared with the endless procession of shit towns.

They love a bit of military tat.

It wasn’t just me who managed to eat something bad in Turkey, Fredrik picked a dud meal too. Fredrik is not human. He says he’s from Sweden, and whilst he has the passport, he’s definitely not from this planet. The guy is faster uphill. He leaves me for dead. He was still faster uphill when he felt shit. So whilst he was struggling, we got our 100km done for the day and decided to grab a shit hotel. By the time I’d put my bike in and headed up he was laid on the bed.

‘Sam…’

‘Yeah’

‘You know when an old person gets closure and then they can die’

‘…umm, yeah?’

‘I feel like that’

‘Oh…’

I was going to was going to wake up in a room with a dead Swedish guy.

He apparently meant he’d cycled his distance, and now he could give in and feel truly shit. My initial reaction still makes me giggle.

Fredrik decided to stay at the hotel another day, and I wasn’t about to sit around listening to him shit lasers through a paper wall. I took off for Georgia.

That’s kind of how I felt about Turkey at this point, I was racing towards the end. Two days of flat coastline, with a few tunnels.

The road to Georgia.

A drab coastal town towards the end of Turkey, set on some lovely hills.

Funnily enough, on the last day, there were four or five waterfalls on a short cliffside. They would’ve been amazing, except for the fact that they were caked in litter, I’m talking landfill levels of crap. The interesting point in all this, is that they were actually making an effort to clean it all up, it must’ve took god knows how long, but someone of relative importance must’ve said –

‘Hang on. This would be nice if we hadn’t slung our shit everywhere’

Good on him.