Well, Debs slept alright, but I had a dreadful night. The constant drone of lorries going past mixed with the fact that my leg was giving me a lot of pain ended any chance of a decent nights sleep. Perhaps next time Debs offers me some ear plugs I should take them!
Far from the lovely sunny day we were hoping for, we woke to a very chilly and overcast start. By the time we had eaten breakfast and loaded our bikes the sun had come out, but there were some ominous looking black clouds overhead. Not ideal weather when you have a few climbs ahead of you.
For about 5km the road slowly climbed as it winded its way up the hillside. Rounding a bend we saw a truck selling bananas and stopped to buy some. At the offer of çay we duly excepted and had our first break sitting on the side of the road, eating bananas and drinking tea. As the stall was next door to a natural spring we filled up our water bottles and then continued on our way.
Before too long the road headed steeply down nearly to sea level and then started to climb again. This is always the slightly depressing thing about following the coast road, every time you head down to a town, you know that the road is going to climb back up the other side. This time the road climbed more steeply than before, which Debs in her current state of health found very difficult.
For the first time in a while there were no shops along the road. Lunch time was fast approaching and we had very little food with us. As we rounded another corner, we spotted a sign for a restaurant and went to investigate. Unfortunately they didn't actually have any food, so we had no choice but to carry on. Fortunately not for long though, as we were soon outside another restaurant that did have food, plus the owner spoke English. While we were waiting for our food, the rain started so I went to make sure the bikes were ok. As I was coming back in, the owner told me how other cyclists had stopped here when it had been raining and had ended up spending the night. With Debs struggling and the day wearing on, this didn't seem like a bad idea. Asking if we could stay, he said that we were quite welcome if we wanted to. Even though we hadn't gone very far today the hills had taken there toll and this seemed like too good an opportunity to miss. The food arrived and was delicious, even if it was accompanied by a strange vegetable drink supposedly made with carrots. Carrots or not it was bit like drinking pickling vinegar!
We had pretty much decided to stay, the family were really nice and their warm restaurant looked preferable to our cold tent. Unfortunately everything changed when we got the food bill. Lunch may have been lovely but 52TL (approx £20) was way too much, even an offer of letting us stay free of charge didn't seem much of a deal bearing in mind we would need to buy dinner!
Having wasted a large part of the afternoon we got back on our bikes and continued down the road. Once again the 'look here's a couple of tourists, let's rip them off' had reared its head. I know it is only a minority but it really gets me down; if it continues to happen I will leave Turkey with a bad taste in my mouth.
Realising that even with the assistance of a steep descent we were not going to make it to the next town, we set about finding a free camp site. As we got back down to sea level we saw a sign for a restaurant with camping and went to have a look.
It would probably mean eating in another restaurant but we had both had enough of the day. The camp-site was free and the owner didn't really seem that bothered whether we used the restaurant at all. Nevertheless rain put a stop to my enthusiasm for cooking, so we went over to the restaurant, where we had a nice reasonably priced meal. It looks like the day has ended on a better note than it started. If we get a good nights sleep, I am sure tomorrow will be a good day.
No comments:
Post a Comment