Coastal cycling and long distance cyclists everywhere

We made a beeline for the coast from Istanbul, and we had some glorious days of cycling around the peninsula of Karaburun. Out came the shorts and Teva sandals. No worries, we don’t wear socks in our sandals, we haven’t reached that point in life yet. We started this little detour on a Sunday, and since the whole of Turkey has a curfew from Saturday night to Monday morning (tourists are exempt from this), the roads were empty. We took it easy, stopped often to enjoy the view of crystal clear blue water and lonely hidden lagoons. One of those we claimed for ourselves for a night and we even went for a swim! Such an improvement over the snow of last week.

Although, the weather is a bit wishy-washy… Leaving the peninsula we had to deal with strong crosswinds while climbing, in the middle of what appeared to be rush hour. The next morning, we started off with heavy rain, leaving us soaked. I guess we wished for a shower a bit too much, and our prayers were answered. That day we made good progress on the 35-39 road and we reached the town of Selçuk around 6, again in the rain, so we checked into a hotel for a hot shower. When we put our bikes in the storage room, we noticed two more trekking bikes. According to the owner they belonged to a couple of Dutchies (of course). Hereby I would like to retire the stereotype of Dutchies traveling with a caravan (NL: sleurhut, DE: Wohnwagen)!

The next day we visited the ancient Greek Town of Ephesus, one of the most important hellinistic archeological sites in Turkey. Normally the place would be packed with tourists from all around the world, but now we were almost alone. Completely alone? No, two French long distance cyclists were also there. It seems that everybody cycling has the same rough idea: get to Turkey, enjoy the country and hope that the borders to the East open up. We will have a beer all together in Antalya, as everybody seems to have that town as a goal.

Now we are on our way to Bodrum, where we will take a ferry to Datça, and we continue our journey along the Mediterranean coast! Update 04-04-2021: nope. The ferry for the 5th was booked out and the next one is on Wednesday the 7th. Bodrum is not exactly our cup of tea, so we had food and basically left immediately afterwards. We will now follow the coast from Bodrum.