From the Cotton Castle into Europe

Pamukkale (it means cotton castle in Turkish) was great fun to see as it was like watching geology speeded up. You can almost see the travertine deposits forming from the hot spring water. Leaving Pamukkale we crossed some mountains with their own bizarre geology, possibly white volcanic deposits. We were to see a hell of a lot more of it in a few days.




The view from Alanya castle, looking down on the busy tourist city.


A large part of this trip seems to have been on the coast, mainly to catch better weather. We can often see the clouds forming as the sea breeze rises over the coastal hills. Turkey has been no exception, and even the locals say that the weather has been dreadful this year. The Black sea coast in the north is notoriously rainy because of the prevailing winds, so we’ve been trundling east around the south coast. The upside though is that the Turkish Aegean and Mediterranean coast is beautiful with small fishing villages and hundreds of historic sites - and great biking roads.


Mending the nets, using hands and feet.


The theatre at Xanthos.


And a very friendly dog called Apa who took us for a long guided walk around Xanthos - without asking for anything apart from throwing the odd stick.


This is the 3rd Century BC marble ‘King’s tomb’ in the middle of Kas - with added carpet to sit on and read the papers.


These tombs in Myra are carved out of the cliff face. I crept into one and couldn't imagine how anyone could have cut out by hand the deep shelves that the coffins sat on.


We had a hard time keeping a straight face photographing this heavy dude complete with handbag on his mighty 250cc hog. ‘Would you like to sit on it?’ ‘Er, no thanks.’ Bless him.


Food is always a problem when travelling through strange countries - what to eat, where to get it, is it safe, what it’s called and how to get it dirt cheap. We’d stopped for a break at a fuel stop in the middle of nowhere and asked what food they had. There were no signs or menus, but they were cooking up dozens of Turkish pide (pizzas) for the local farmers that were about 4 feet long and delicious (the pizzas that is, not the farmers). £2 with a salad and glass of tea. Perfect (if you like tea).


Without realising it, we’d been riding on the old silk road, and along the way saw several of the old caravanserai - the ancient inns where the camel trains could rest. They seemed to be spaced a day’s walk apart.


We finally made it to Goreme in Capadoccia. It’s a fascinating geological and historical area, but Anita seemed more intent on photographing me in case I dropped the heavy bike on the wet cobbles. Thanks.

The 200 mile square area of Capadoccia was covered in volcanic ash to a huge depth tens of thousands of years ago by 2 large volcanoes, and wind and water have eroded the soft ‘tuff’ stone to form a lanscape that takes some believing when seen. Past civilisations have taken advantage of it and tunnelled houses and whole cities into the rock, and it’s said that when the early Christians were being persecuted, 30,000 of them could hide underground for months. It’s a strange place indeed that would take months to explore, and we were lucky enough to stay in a cave room for a few nights (but it was damned cold).














The road out of Capadoccia heading back west along the coast was pretty interesting too. We’d been warned that the road was ‘under construction’ but ignored the advice. It really was a mess, and the beautiful old narrow, twisty mountain road was being ripped up for a highway, meaning that we were riding on steep gravel, rocks and mud for a long, long way. Anita was much better than I would have been on the back and didn’t whimper much.


I have to mention the mosques. They form a large part of everyone’s lives in Turkey, even though it’s nominally a secular country. They’re a large part of our lives too, because if we don’t manage to find a B&B far enough away from them, we get woken up at 5am by the very loud and not always very melodious call to prayer. They’re easy to spot, and I think look a bit like mini power stations.


We'd been told about this but didn't quite believe it until we saw it (and tasted it). Late on a Friday afternoon in Altinoluk - a lovely quiet fishing town on the coast, a donut van pulled up in the square, a long queue formed, and they proceeded to hand out bags of free donuts for the next couple of hours. We stood wondering what was going on, and the people at the front insisted that we have a bag before anyone else. No-one complained, and they all seemed pleased that we could join in. Free donuts to start the weekend - what a great idea!

The Turkish authorities being benevolent like this made up slightly for them having relieved us of 90 quid (ouch) for speeding a few days earlier. Constantly seeing bad driving such as sailing through red lights, riding motorcycles over pedestrian crossings, driving the wrong way up dual carriageways, using a mobile while driving and not wearing crash helmets had led me to believe that a few kmh over the limit on a straight open road would be forgiveable. It seems not. Riding in Asia has been fun with no-one giving a damn about the road rules, and this was an expensive but timely reminder that a different riding stlye would be needed soon for European traffic and policing.


We thought we were daft, but these blokes really are bananas. Martin and Franck are two Frenchmen who’ve decided to ride round the Mediterranean on 50cc Mobylettes. As well as having only 1.8 horsepower, their timing couldn’t be worse as they’ll be travelling through countries like Syria, Lybia, Jordan, Egypt and Tunisia that are going through ‘interesting’ times. They’re complete fruit cakes and lovely guys. Good luck and safe travels.




We stopped in Selcuk again for Anita’s birthday, and had a view from our room looking down on the storks nesting on the remains of an aquaduct. This one had 3 chicks.






We’ll be out of Turkey and back into Europe in 2 days, and will be sad to say goodbye. We’ve been shown nothing but friendliness, kindness and warmth by people here. Metin invited us for breakfast with him and his wife and was keen for us to stay another day to go to a Turkish music evening.
Stopping in remote areas for chai, when we chat (or use sign language) with the locals, they often refuse to let us pay.
We stopped for fuel at the same time that a coach carrying about 40 15 year-olds had stopped. They were shy at first, but when we spoke to them in English we ended up being mobbed, and Anita managed to give away the last of the pencils, rubbers and sharpeners that we’d bought in Nepal. Anita’s there somewhere in the right of the picture.




Maybe the greatest lesson that we’ve learned in our travels is that people are basically good. It sounds odd and trite put like that, but is true. Someone that we were talking to recently put it better, saying that people are good, it’s just their governments that are bad.

So that's it for Turkey and Asia. We've crossed the Bosphorus to Edirne in the European part of Turkey and tomorrow we'll be with friends in Bulgaria before the long trek across Europe via points in Deutschland to visit friends and Anita's family, then home.