35. Gulluck to Gumusluk

A lazy start to the day…for it was only a short hop to Gumusluk..at the end of the Bodrum peninsular.

Good job really….for the Turks are late risers…and usually breakfast is not available until 9.30!

So…as we were waiting, I spent some time trying to buy tickets for our ferry tomorrow. Great website in English…until you went to the booking page…where it is all in Turkish. So lots of visits to Google Translate as I learned what name, adult, vehicle, passport etc is in Turkish! It required a good deal of concentration…only for the card payment to fail. And you could not just try your card again…you had to start the whole process again! After the second failure…we gave up!

We had selected a very luxurious hotel here…balancing out our Soke experience from the night before…and they offered a “full English” breakfast…which we could not resist….and it was surprisingly good!!

And then…..on on with our mission to avoid the dual carriageway!!

Even a locked gate could not stop us!! 

It was a bit of an effort…

….but worth it for a lovely ride…

….and thankfully the gate at the other end of the track was a little easier to navigate through!

……until of course the options ran out and we rejoined the big road! The main feeder road into Bodrum….which got busier and busier…

We managed a bit of promenade cycling…

…until even that ran out!

And our hard shoulder safe haven was getting narrower and narrower…

Until Martin lost his nerve and bailed. Not surprising really…it really was not pleasant….with heaps of dirt trucks and construction traffic. He returned to find a taxi…and we arranged to meet 10kms further on where we were due to turn off. Not as bad as the road into Istanbul…and I get some sort of perverse satisfaction from meeting the challenge! Silly probably…but it is a bit like darting around big cities…which I love! But actually…it WAS awful! 

I pulled in just as Martin was pulling on his panniers! Great timing!

And so…500m further on…..and jobsworth security staff would not let us ride through a hotel complex to get onto our planned route! 

So…guess what…it was back onto the big road…but thankfully only for 1.6km..which Martin was ok about! 

And then we enjoyed some great tracks. Often steep and stoney…and rarely ridden!!

Before stopping for lunch back on the coast.

The road thereafter was not a dual carriageway…but seemed just as busy…!! So not a great day of riding..until we closed in on Gumusluk when the traffic thinned out.

This “village” was described as the prettiest on the peninsular! “The village which time forgot”….sounded just lovely!

But….it was doubtless written five or more years ago. For this is what faced us as we approached our idyll!!

Unbelievable!! As if every hillside with a view of the sea…is just getting destroyed…with ever more housing blanketing what – until so recently – was just lovely!! Not any more. A great example of the benefit of “good planning” which here is noticeable for its absence. Ugly. Awful. Tragic really….for they might soon lose the value of their golden egg of tourism. 

More…and more…..! Who is funding this mess? Apparently…we later learned…it is indeed mostly Turks who are buying them. So strange…for these little pimples of houses are too small for pools…so “seaside places”…with miles to walk to a beach. With just a view to the sea. One can only imagine the whole train of developments will experience a mammoth crash…sooner or later.

Not an area I will be keen to return to.

So to Gumusluk. Certainly not a place which time has forgotten at all. But it still has its charm. And I imagine it gets rammed in season.

But very quiet once the few day-trippers had left today!

And we had our wee durum restaurant almost to ourselves! “Of course we sell beer” as they wanted our custom…but they didn’t really…and promptly went down to the local shop to buy it!

…Spicy…or Painless!!

Another lovely guy…who enjoyed practising his newly learnt English!