The Long Road Home

Trabzon was actually much nicer than I think I made it sound. I took a DAY OFF there and got new brake blocks. Cobbles, cafes, handsome old houses painted pink yellow green blue all the colours you could want, which in bright sunshine and with red tiled roofs to unify everything works perfectly. Gulls crying and the sea at the bottom of the road. Aya Sofya greek orthodox church with pine trees around it.

I rode along the coast for a few days with sound of waves and smell of salt and seaweed on hot rocks on shore.

The nicest place was the little fishing port of Tirebolu, with a little castle on a promontory, and steep quiet streets where people were vaguely playing football on the cobbles, calling from balconies, leaning out. There were little clothes shops with a few skirts hanging and grocers shops with bread in cupboards. The shopkeepers sit ouside in the road on stools and stare at the street.

There was a tiny guesthouse in an old row of buildings next to the mosque, with 6 rooms. Noone was there when I arrived. Some children fetched a man who knew someone who had a key. The building had rooms with ceilings of diffeent heights. There was a sort of shower room under the attic, but even I was too tall to stand up in it. You had to climb into the attic to turn on the gas. I showered sitting on the floor under a tap at about knee height.

Ordu and Unye were both nice seaside towns with parks on the shore where you could get tost. I was hoping for toast with butter and maybe strawberry jam or something, but tost turned out to be enormous toasted cheese sandwiches.

It was my birthday and I had one of these tosts, and then later when I was boiling up some water sitting on some rocks by the sea, I was invited by two brothers to have tea at their garage. So I had birthday tea with them on stools outside the little Secmenler Otomotiv showroom with the Secmenler brothers, and ten various cousins and uncles who walked by and joined in, and
acted out the presenttion of a cake and candles.

The coast road was in parts really narrow and I was driven off the carriage way onto the gravel verge quite a lot when big container lorries were trying to squeeze past me. It was quite scary and dangerous, so I decided to head inland to find quieter roads.

I turned south at Carsamba towards Amasya, about 100km inland. First of all it was OK, willow trees and nice sunny fields of sweetcorn and a long calm reservoir. But then my plan went a bit wrong because the nice scenic little road to Amasya marked on the map didn’t really exist. Several cars had stopped earlier to talk with me. Everyone said there was no road through to Amasya.

But now I was on this plan, I didn’t have much choice but to carry on.

I camped south of Ayvacik, a small village. It was really hard to find a place because at just the time I wanted to stop and camp - sunset 2 hrs etc - I found myself on a mountain climb where the terrain was so steep at either side you’d have needed one of those terrigying-looking hanging tents that I’ve seen mountaineers use on tv. Not at all suitable for my little green terra nova. Finally I managed to find a spot in a flattish corner of a sloping hazelnut grove. At dusk the old lady who owned the grove and her son came up and showed me how to disconnect up a hose at the top of the grove and get water. And gave me a fistful of hazelnuts which I wasn’t sure what to do with.

In the morning I got up, and started out. It was really hard-going, as the steep road was covered in loose gravel, all scrabbly and slippery. As I struggled along, a 4×4truck came by. The truck belonged to a nice guy who was a surveyor making maps of the area, and was delivering concrete posts to use as triangulation points. I realised my only chance of getting thru to Amasya was to hitch, and it was very lucky a truck came along. We put the bike in the back with the concrete posts, and then battled along tracks through deep mountainous forests. We took a detour to wildly remote villages deep in oak woodland to deliver trangulation posts, accessible only by a newly cut dirt track. There were old shepherds wearing waistcoats and with grey bindings round their lower legs like spats to protect them from brambles. We drank ayran salty yoghurt with a family at their yayla highland pasture hut=
.. It was lovely, but I really must NOT try any more roads that on my map are coloured white and edged with green, as they are too difficult. I should know by now.

He dropped me off in Tasova, the first place on the other side f the mountains. We ate large plates of koefte meatballs and salad.

I stayed at a minuscule guesthouse just a doorway off the street and a few rooms above a grocers shop. There were four men in vests sitting in a sort of reception room-cum-office, watching horseracing. They invited me for tea and then dinner and fussed like mad making sure I had a towel (someone went to find one) and providing newspaper to assist wiith drying my washed clothes - not quite sure how I was supposed to use it.

So I then rode from Tasova through dry yellow hills, with sweet-smelling pines to Amasya.

Amasya was gorgeous, a little brown and white town of wood and stone ottoman houses along a river. I stayed at a lovely hotel smeeling of wood polish and lemon. It was hot nearly 40 degrees again, so I went very slowly up yhe steps behind the town to look at the 4th c bc tombs of the pontic kings who used to have their capital here. I went to see the 14th c mosques and hamam turkish baths, and had cherry juice listening to music students play those mandolin-type guitars and sing in a 14c hopsital where apparently music was used for the first time to cure mad people. The students were playing beautifully and I felt I was probably at least a bit cured.

I still have not seen any foreign tourists in Turkey. This is very different from what I expected. I thought there would be foreign tourists everywhere. Two immaculately equipped Japanese people appeared this morning and said hello but then disappeared again to find a nicer place. I would love to meet some tourists and am aiming for Safranbolu which I think is on the Beaten Track. It’ll take me about five days from here, I think.

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