A lot of Turkey is over a kilometer above sea level. This makes for clear, cool riding days but bloody cold nights.ROUTE: Bursa to Turkey-Georgia Border

COUNTRIES VISITED: Turkey, Turkey and Turkey.

DISTANCE DRIVEN: 4,817miles - 7,700kms

WEEKS COMPLETED: 6/74

WEATHER: Freezing (at night) to 34 degrees

OBJECTS BROKEN: Centre stand, exhaust brackets, rear tyre, the speed limit (42mph or 70kph for bikes - yeh right!!!), thermarest mattress delaminated

MINOR MIRACLES: Finding a bike shop to order a new tyre

FOOD TREATS: Honeycomb, meat and butter filled pide, fish cooked over a fire
So now it is Simon's turn to describe our journey. I'll give some impressions of the place first and then some of the daily highlights.

The first impression is that Turkey is HUGE and varied!! Our whole trip will take us 130 degrees east, and we have done about 15 degrees in Turkey. The countryside is really varied too, not just the beaches and scrubby hills of the south coast. We've seen hills, pastures and wonderful white water like the European alps, barren plains like those in Russia, strange rock formations like in Yellowstone and Bryce Parks in the USA. We've also discovered that a lot of Turkey is over a kilometer above sea level. This makes for clear, cool riding days but bloody cold nights. The first time we rough camped in Turkey (at 1300 metres - the height of an alpine ski slope!) we didn't bother to put the fly-sheet on the tent (my mistake 'it won't rain so why bother').

It was freezing that night and our breath condensed on everything - wet, wet, wet! In the morning there was frost on the bike seat - lesson learned.

Then there are the people - we met a few touts in Istanbul and Pammukale, but other than that they have been hugely hospitable. I have paid for just one cup of tea in a month - and anyone who knows me will know how much I drink. If you stand talking to someone for more than 1 minute, they sneekily send out for tea and a glass get pressed on you - wonderful! Sometimes the shops have a little intercom to the tea-shop (I kid you not) - what a country. And the people work so hard. The shop people generally do 12 to 15 hour days and the farming folk are out hacking at the floor with adzes and carrying 60kilo bails of tea on their backs!!

Riding is a mixed bag here. The roads are pretty good but there are some really poor patches. You can be rolling round the lanes and then hit what is really a quarry road for 10 metres to maybe 10kms. Pretty tiring 2 up. We have found hat about 400kms (250 miles) is a maximum for a 8 hour day's ride - sounds pretty slow, but hey we're on holiday and the roads aren't straight!! The traffic in most big towns is usually pretty hellish but few people drive from town to town (partly because the petrol is as expensive as in the UK), so the traffic outside town is light.

WIND - what a windy place we're in. All that sun and hills with little tree cover makes for very windy country - all thermal stuff. Day break is calm, early afternoon sees 20 to 30 knot winds and things calm down again after dusk. Georgie has learnt to tuck in behind one shoulder or the other to minimise the buffeting of cross winds - now I need someone big to sit behind!!

The language barrier is coming down, mainly because Georgie is forging ahead with Turkish. Normally she does verbal crowd control\entertainment while I do techie stuff and 'man to man' eye contact and nodding - which is very important in a male dominated society. But when Georgie is not around I get on with the communication task just fine - sign language and messages scribbled on the back if my hand are the main media, combined with smiles and friendly words in any language.

Being dirty most of the time is becoming more comfortable for Georgie - but things will get worse as we move away from places with decent water supplies. Luckily Georgie doesn't mind showering in cold water, whereas I use it as an excuse to "lengthen the period between routine maintenance".

So that's the general bit. Now here's the detailed travelogue. Georgie left off in Bursa and so I'll go from there:

We left Bursa at a previously unheard of 8.30, crawled out to the edge of town with lotsa of traffic and then realised that we were alone on the road as soon as we left town. A hour or so's ride and time for breakfast in a soup kitchen - a good bet for a cheap nosh early on as those cafes have portion sizes and prices fixed by the state. And Turkey has armed policemen to go around and check portion sizes too - makes the UK consumer protection look a bit weak. First problem of the day; as I put the bike onto the centrestand, I held it at the highest point twinge of sciatica) and the right hand stand-leg buckled. Bugger - now we'd have 17 months of travelling with only a side-stand - inconvenient most of the time but disastrous if we were to get a puncture. Soup first - think of a fix later....

Many more miles and finally we arrive at Pammukkale - famed for its Travertine Pools (big white calcite encrustations on the side of a hill) and some ruins. The place was full of touts jumping out - trying to get us to stay at their hotels. Reminded me of the Tour de France when fans of particular riders jump out and shout at the riders as they climb the alpine sections. Luckily our bike weighs half a ton and looks like it weighs half ton, so the touts jump out of the way pretty quick too.

Camped over night - the only thing to report being the number of Turks it takes to light a gas boiler - must be a joke in there somewhere. Anyway I keep them hard at it until the thing worked - "I've paid my lire and will get my shower".

Next day took a ride to Aphrodisias - an ancient Greek and Roman town with lots of temples, tombs and fantastic stadium. We were both "a bit ruined out" having seen lots of bits of tatty marble before and our imaginations were a bit ragged. But Aphrodisias was worth it.

Next day we did the Travertine pools as Pammukkale. A bit of a let-down as they were swarming with tourists clad in swimming costumes. Compared to the calcite pools in Yellowstone Park, they came a poor second - I'd rather look at a weird rock pool with an elk basking in it rather than one with a fat tourist!

Not a good start to the day and then a few hours later it seemed to get worse as we got pulled for speeding. We were doing a long stretch across a high plateau, with the odd hill here and there to add some interest - and hey we got up to a heady 110kph (about 65mph). At a police checkpoint we were read a script - "you were going very fast - radar 104kph". We were pretty sure that we'd been doing about that speed, but 4kph over the national limit (100kph) is a bit slender, and where's your radar mate? Then the big shock - the speed limit for bikes in Turkey is 70kph - 42mph. You cannot be serious!! All of a sudden I can break the speed limit in first gear!

So we argued the toss, demanded to see the radar car and video footage - he had us bang to rights. So we paid the fine (about 30 dollars) and demanded to be told where the police station is so that we could check the law books.

Ten minutes later we're being shown into the police station by a nice young man(who knows we're coming). Into his office - I see his automatic pistol - I see his television showing a day-time cookery program. Wow, in Turkey the traffic cops don't just eat doughnuts, they learn how to cook them too.

Then we're ushered into the boss's office. Lots of commendations on the wall, same cookery program on his television. He urges us to sit down. Would we like some Coca Cola? Yes, the young policeman turns waiter. Cologne for our hands? Cigarette - we can choose from a plate with 4 brands, and then he looks afronted when we profess not to smoke. Chocolate? Out comes a big selection box of chocs. Bizarre, but we decide that this is the way he wants to play it. I notice that he has a revolver with an ornate carved handle and I ask him to turn to show Georgie. Out comes the gun, out come the bullets and he presents it to Georgie. "Turkish?" she enquires? "NO - American 45" he replies.

Eventually we get to points of law and he shows us the books that say that the speed limit is 70kph, and explains to me the concept of a 10% tolerance. Then he sees us on our way.

Well at least we had our money's worth out of them.

Then onto Olympos on the south coast, through highland areas similar to Glen Coe but with sunshine (difficult to imagine but have a go) and down through wooded valleys like those around the river Conwy in Wales - the Fairy Glen with sunshine - whatever next?

And all of a sudden we're having a proper holiday. A few days off camping by the beach, splashing in the surf, fishing, sunbathing and eating cafe food. Proper relaxation, which I allowed myself to take as I knew we'd be having a much harder time in the near future.

Again we felt ruined out so we didin't bother paying the 5 quid each for the Olympos ruins. Last year the Turks have realised that their tourist sites were under valued so they boosted the prices by about 1000%. So now even their tattiest sites make The Tower of London look like a cheap day out. Fair enough as they're trying to rebuild a country after the recent earthquake, but a bit steep when you take in 2 or 3 sites in a day.

A better bet we hit the COMPLETELY FREE chimeara. Weird and delightful - the location of the mythical eternal flame. There is a steady stream of methane out of the ground near the top of a hill. This ignites and surrounds you with 50cm high flames. Really good fun and the cause of many childish pranks and photos.

Then a complete about-face, and we start to head northeast - we feel that we're making gains on the goal of Vladivostok. We found hypermarket with 2 styles of tyre pressure guage - hurrah - one more broken thing replaced. The goal was Cappadoccia, described as a sort of Fred Flintstone wonderland in most books, but more than a day away.

Camel Coachhouse

So around 6pm we stocked up with water from a roadside spring and looked for somewhere to camp. And suddenly at the side of the road was our first ruined caravanserai - a "coach-house for camels" that was used in the days of the "silk road". We were VERY tempted to camp inside it (although it was a bit spooky), but the deciding factor was the proximity to the road. So we rode down some farm tracks for few hundred metres and set up camp. That night the menu was gilt-headed sea bream for Georgie and veal for me, cooked over an open fire, all served with rice and olive oil. Top nosh!

Home from home

Next morning a slow cold start and a trot through to Goreme in Cappadoccia, across some really barren uplands. As we arrived the day took the first of a number of weird twists. We arrived in town on the main street and outside a cafe was a German BMW R1150GS and UK Honda Dominator. So we stopped to talk to our first fellow "overlanders" (oh I feel all grown-up all of a sudden). And blow me if I don't know the German lad by email!! It's GS Georgie and his mate Dave Broughton. They're on their way to Iran. We're all staggered by the coincidence and agree to meet up later for a beer.

Dave and George

Campsite found, tent up, off to the internet cafe. There we find a mail from Catherine and Luc, 2 Belgians on BMW R80GSs. They are friends of our other biker friends from Belgium (Trui and Iris), and they're on their way to Russia too. And they are in a campsite less than a mile away. Well I was expecting Elvis and Lord Lucan to come down the street next! While Georgie did some mailing I rode up to frighten Luc and Cat on the bike. They had only sent the mail a couple of hours earlier - another dinner with lively chat. We may meet up with Luc and Cat later in our trip as they leave Mongolia (maybe with Herbert, another mad Belgian on a beemer) as we enter it.

Cat and Luc

Cappadoccia is really Flintstones country. Volcanic tufa (like pumice) carved out by erosion into spries of rock, and by men into underground cities. We spent a fun couple of days crawling round underground passages (and got so dirty that the Turkish tourists wanted to pose with us for photos) and catching up on mails.

Goreme

The next few days are at a slightly slower pace as Georgie got a bit of a stomach upset. All drinking water through the water filter in the future. The roads are a bit better and we enjoy hours of swooping bends up and down mountain passes - Georgie finally experiences real twisty biking. Two more overlanders appear (aussie Phil and German Filli?) and we share experiences. It sounds like they both got baked alive in Iran and Phil got a little heated with the number of people in India.

Another night camping rough, this time not so well hidden and we get a visit from the farmer who owned the land and his mates. He was very friendly and responded well to the odd Turkish word that Georgie fed me from within the tent. Then all of a sudden he got very agitated and started banging the ground with
a stick and shouting "elan, elan, elan". What the hell is wrong with him? Does he want money? Does he want us off his land? Out with the Turkish-English dictionary and we discover that he is warning us about snakes!! Is that all!? Thank heavens or Allah - take your pick.

Another long day's ride took us to near Trabzon, but not near enough to take in the 2 sites we wanted to visit, so we decided to get a campsite us a small valley. The first site we visited spent ages pondering how much to charge us for camping and showers and the final amount came out at about 8 quid. Taking the piss as we'd been getting hotel rooms for about 12. So we tried a trout farm next door and they wanted no money at all for camping - most odd!

Next day we turned tourist again, visiting Sumela Monastery (built into a cliff) and the summer house used occasionally by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (THE hero of all Turks). And then we had the option of staying in Trabzon or knocking off a few kms towards the Georgian border. Well, Trabzon seemed more than a little grotty congested traffic, dockyards and brothels, so the choice was easy. We headed for a pretty, alpine town called Ayder.

That was fun - we negotiated with the owners to use their lounge / kitchen to cook our own dinner. Luckily Georgie realised that the salami stew that we were planning would not be welcome in a Muslim house (oops!) so we featsed on tuna stew. The fun part was watching the curious reactions of the girls who ran the hotel. We had not really encountered any Turkish women to that time - the outside world was a male domain! They were fascinated by me doing the washing up after dinner, and seemed horrified by my use of a tea towel rather than rinsing the plates. They showed how to eat sunflower seeds without ending up with a mouthful of seed shell.

Off the next day with our loins girded for an assault on the Georgian border. A quick stop at a bakery turns into a free tea stop, and as I relax I notice a mark on the rear tyre. This rapidly turns out to be a tear in the rubber between the treads, about 2cms long, down to the canvass. And guess what, the tear has 8 friends and another 10 or so hiding under blisters in the rubber. SHIT! We are in trouble!!

Splits on the tyre

The tyre (an Avon Distanzia) was a free replacement after the previous tyres were recalled with similar problems in the sidewalls. I was relying on getting clean across Asia to Japan on that tyre and there was more than 50% of tread left to go.

But at least we were in a 'civilised' country. If we had been in Georgia we really would have been buggered. The problem was that few people this far east in Turkey ride big bikes, so bike tyres are like gold dust. We head back west to the first decent town. Everywhere sells tyres but they are for cars or trucks. Eventually we stop at a shop which really want to help us and we are invited in.

The guy phones round loads of places but with no success. It seems the only place where will be able to get them is Istanbul. For those unfamiliar with the geography of Turkey, Istanbul is at the other end of the country some 1100km away.

As we ride towards Trabzon, the most major city in miles, we discuss the options. We first think we have to take the ferry - only a 2 day sailing and apparently ones sails tomorrow. Then Georgie suggests that I take the coach (only 18 hours) and leave her in Trabzon. Whatever we do we are buggered for 5 days.

And then a major miracle happens, I spot a bike shop, and it has even got a BMW outside. Pulling over as quickly as possible we park up and I rush inside. Five minutes later I reappear, beaming from ear to ear. 'I think they can get us some to arrive in 2 days time!!!' So we ordered 3 tyres (a front and rear Metzler Enduro4, and a rear Enduro3 as a spare).

Carrying a spare on a fully laden bike two up is more than a little awkward, but I had been toying with the idea and now it seemed like good idea.

Thanks to Allah again as literally a few hours later and it would have caused us no end of grief and cost.

And hey presto, we were back in our favourite Black Sea resort, with 3 days to kill. Lots of mailing, journal writing and eating various types of fast food. I even initiated Georgie at a Russian Cafe that serves up meatballs and cabbage soup to the "Natashas" (Russian prostitutes).

Finally the tyres arrive and I go and get them fitted. Luckily Dursun the shop owner makes me really welcome - free tea and lunch. After we spend 10 minutes playing trampauline on the first tyre without managing to break the bead seal, we decide to get a local professional outfit to do the job.

Finally when all was completed Dursun tells me that he will come to the hotel at 8pm to go ride bikes - all very mysterious! Georgie decided that she'd give it a miss, in case he decided to "see how fast these Brits can ride" and I meet him as arranged. He's on a 1974 BMW R60/6, with a plastic bag full of "Eriks" (small crunchy green plums) hanging off the handle-bar. Well this could be a cozy tryst - just the 2 of us and a bag of plums. 10 minutes later all is revealed as we pull into the Trabzon Bike Riders Club - yes a bike club. A right old mix of machines from Suzuki 125 to a GPZ via XSs. Some of the guys even owned classic Horons (dutch I think?).

A few of the bikers spoke English and all were amazed by the trip. After loads more tea swapped email addresses and hugged goodbye. I will post details of the Trabzon Club and Dursun's business on the Horizons Unlimited site.

Next day, a final struggle with the repacked luggage. The spare tyre was attached and didn't look too out of place on the outside of one pannier (if you can believe that), and that daunting border crossing into Georgia awaited us. That will be in the next mail - when we discover the meaning of corruption and Georgie meets Soviet Legacy for the first time.