A day of two halves today.
Firstly a glorious 50km ride through to Tekirdag…..
….along the coast…
….and then a battery-sappingly steep climb up into hills
Glorious scenery….and an almost deserted road….
…..before plummeting down to Tekirdag where we had a good long break at a seaside cafe.
We had been tempted to have a beer…but there was none available! (..probably a good thing…!)
My bum is a bit sorer today…and has been over the past couple of days. Something I have put down to…..my long johns!! One tiny seam in the wrong place…or a ‘new’ place…and then rub it…approximately 20,000 tomes per day (..that is 20,000 pedal turns, give or take!)…& even the tiniest bump can start to cause a bit of irritation! To be fair…it was warmer today…so maybe…just maybe…today will be the last long john day…!! Here’s hoping!!
And after Tekirdag…..there was no choice but to rejoin the motorway!! No worries really….with that wide shoulder…for slow tractors…and us!! And we sped across the map really quite quickly…
Only 90km to Istanbul!! (…a bit further on our route…but we have opted to make it two short days….so we can deal with the traffic…and arrival etc….. without rushing)
….to arrive at our overnight stop in Marmara Ereglisi.
And we pulled up at our ‘booked’ hotel……but they had no record of any such booking…and quoted us a price 20% cheaper than I had prior agreed to pay!! Haha! Strangely……Booking.Com does not work here. Another of Turkey’s weird internet controls. (eg…you can watch youtube….but you cannot see nor make any comment, Iain advises). So I had registered with the Turkish equivalent! Evidently it does not work so well!! It seems that the way to go is just to turn up! And I probably could have negotiated a cheaper price (another all-but-empty hotel!)…but I was not unhappy with the win…so it seemed a bit churlish to haggle!
Quite a nice place really. Beach….
…..fishing port……
….and here we were in shorts……not shivering at 7pm….!! Feels like the start of spring….however many weeks too late!
Phew!!
Good to hear that finally it looks like you are getting some nice cycling weather. Yes, the election result is interesting. Hopefully the second round will see off the incumbent for good!