Our night passed undisturbed, although I was certain that several dogs were outside the tent during the night. I could well have been dreaming though. Turkish shepherd's dogs are quite aggressive, so keeping away from them tends to play on your mind!
We started the day with a nice freewheel down to the town of Lâpseki where we immediately bought some bread and snacks from a store. Debs 'hated' porridge hadn't been sufficient for breakfast, even when spiced up with honey!
After our second (according to Debs, first edible) breakfast, we enjoyed about 10km of flat terrain. This worked out well because whilst riding along we passed the 2000 mile mark!
Alas the flat terrain wasn't to last as the next 30km of the journey followed the by now established pattern of steep hill, free-wheel, steep hill. This time though, to add a bit of variety it was on a truly terrible road surface. We had been warned about Turkish roads tyre shredding abilities and looking at this one we can see why. It looks like when they are resurfacing they just press large sharp chippings into the existing tarmac. Some of this sticks and some of it remains loose, leaving potholes, ridges and hazardous gravelly sections. All of this is probably fine in a car, but very hard work on a bicycle. Especially when you are rolling down a steep descent at 30mph!
As we turned towards the large town of Çanakkale I had a blow-out in my front tyre. The small split that occurred ages ago in Europe was once again the culprit. Clearly my patch up job with duct tape on the inside of the tyre hadn't done the trick. I was just very glad it hadn't happened on one of the descents, as it went from solid to flat in a few seconds! As soon as we find a big enough town I will have to consider investing in a new tyre.
Puncture fixed we continued into the town and found to our surprise, a cycle path. For some reason this was the last thing we expected to see in Turkey, as we have probably only seen about 10 other people on bikes since we have been here!
While getting some food from a supermarket, we asked the cashier for directions as we had spotted some camp-sites on our map. He was very helpful, even coming outside to point us in the right direction. Unfortunately, unless we misunderstood him, his directions took us to the airport! The security guard on the airport entrance happily pointed us back the way we came. So with a shake of his hand we headed back to the main road.
Back on the main road we continued straight and with the help of a friendly taxi driver picked up the right road towards Dardanos. It's worth pointing out, that we were on the right road but it's always worth checking.
Spotting a somewhat weathered sign for a motel and camp-site, we went to investigate and were practically dragged on to the site! Business is clearly a little slow at this time of year. The promised 24hr hot showers was a bit of lie (they were solar heated and it hadn't been that sunny), but it had a beautiful outlook onto the beach and they had a terrifying looking but very friendly dog. Sharing a çay with the site owner who didn't speak any English was a little on the strange side though. Still he seemed pleased that we had accepted the offer.
In a somewhat random encounter, whilst watching a beautiful sunset, we met Miss Turkey 1983! Ebru lives in Bodrum, but is going to Istanbul to try and get a visa to visit her (soon to be husband?) in Germany. In the meantime she is staying with her parents who live in the town. While talking about Bodrum she told us that she has a friend there, who rents out a room in her house to visitors. So there is a possibility that we may have a plan for Christmas. Bodrum is a bit off our route but we aren't in a great hurry and our previous plan of Fethiye is probably slightly too far to get to in time.
After parting company while we went to sort out dinner, she suddenly reappeared and invited us over to her parents' house for tea later that evening. The ulterior motive to this was that her parents thought she was mad to be rushing over to Germany for a man she had been together with for two weeks. So she thought that introducing them to two people who were cycling to South Africa would make her seem entirely sane. In that respect we think her plan worked, because her parents really did think we were mad!
Another eventful day has passed, Ebru we hope you get your visa (Inshallah) and we thank you and your parents for the hospitality. Life is good!
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