Another cold night last night and it didn't warm up very quickly this morning. That is one of the problems with camping in some woodland, the sun struggles to get to the tent.
After a short ride into the town of Ceyhan, we left the busy D400 road behind for the last time. It has been our companion through most of Turkey and for the large part it has been good to us. Today we opted to take a quieter route south and down along the coast, where we would once again pick up a main road.
After 20km we were back amongst the climbs, passing through the foothills of the Toros (Taurus) mountains.
The built up industrial areas that we had passed yesterday have given way to a much more pleasant, rural landscape. Throughout the morning we received lots of shouts of hello and smiles from the local people. The children are currently on holiday, so we spent much of the time with our arms in the air waving at them as we passed.
Although there were some clouds in the sky today, it was once again a hot one. We really couldn't have asked for any better weather over the last week. We must start to wear our hats though, as on inspection we are both getting a bit sunburnt.
Passing over the last of the hills the land started to flatten out and we could once again see the sea. We would love to say that the view remained pleasant, but the stretch along the coast is taken up by what looked like large oil refineries. Nevertheless we found somewhere to have lunch, a bus shelter away from the factories where we were surrounded by fields and orange groves.
From lunch onwards the route consisted of very long, straight pieces of road. For ages we could see the Toros mountains looming up in front of us, yet we appeared to not get any closer. When we finally rejoined the main road we began the journey south along the coast. The mountains were now a solid barrier to the East of us, that we have to cross to get to Syria.
As we reached Dörtyol we had a brief break in a garage, where we were offered çay. I enquired whether there was a guest-house or hotel nearby; we had covered quite a lot of distance already and were eager to find somewhere to stay. The answer wasn't promising as according to the staff, the nearest hotel was in Iskenderun which was still 30km away. It looked like we may have another 90km day ahead of us. Especially as the road was flanked each side by heavy industry, not an ideal situation if your only option may be to put a tent up.
Pressing on as fast as we could, we spotted a couple of signs advertising hotels. Perhaps we were going to be lucky after all. I am sure the hotel was further away than had been advertised, but when we got there it looked nice and it was open. The room has cost us more than we normally like to pay, but breakfast is included and the room is very nice. After a few days of free-camping it is difficult to appreciate just how good it feels to be clean. We will have dinner in the restaurant tonight and hopefully a nice, quiet, warm nights sleep will have us feeling refreshed for tomorrow.
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