What a difference a day makes! The wind that had plagued us for the last few days has died down and there is a hint of blue sky, it is still very cold though.
Our poor landlady has been suffering from a bad cold since we arrived and I think it finally got to her this morning at breakfast. Either that or she had some kind of breakdown, because there was a lot of clattering and muttering to herself. We felt quite guilty about her running round after us, but then we are paying customers. Possibly the only paying customers for a while!
Togged up as much as we could be, we set off for hopefully warmer climes. As an indication of just how cold it has been, we passed a completely frozen pond and had to be careful that we didn't slip on patches of ice that covered the road.
It wasn't long before we started to descend and the temperature started to get back to what we had been used to. There was still no chance of the shorts coming out though!
Eventually we rejoined the main road, which surprisingly remained flat for the rest of the day. At the first town, we stocked up on food and got our fuel bottle filled up at a nearby petrol station. I can't imagine going into a garage back home and asking for 600ml of petrol, but here they didn't even bat an eyelid.
Cycling along the main coast road we were making good progress until Debs got one of two punctures. In fairness to her it was really only one puncture, but I didn't manage to get the glass out of the tyre, so it immediately punctured again. Still we will count it as two, just to make sure I don't get too far ahead on the puncture count!
The area we were cycling through must be buzzing with tourists in the summer, but now everything seemed closed. With no options to free camp and seemingly no open camp-sites we headed for the town of Akçay to look for a hotel.
Akçay is a very popular resort town with Turkish holiday makers, even in December it seemed very busy. When we eventually found a guest-house the owner told us that the population is about 15,000 but come the summer it swells to 300,000. Fortunately for us it wasn't summer or we would never have got a room!
Counteracting the cost of staying in a hotel we cooked dinner on the balcony outside our room and then settled in for an early night. Thank goodness the hotelier had given us some extra blankets and an electric fire because it is cold tonight.
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