Our last section of cycling in Turkey (and on this trip generally) was one of my favourites. The weather was pretty good (spring had arrived). The ruins were insanely impressive. The scenery was spectacular. Not much to dislike really.
That said, I will first cover a few items of note:
1. Bees. Strange that I have not mentioned this yet in the course of all the cycle blogging, but when cycling for hours on end during the day, we like to play cycling games (similar to car games one played on road trips as a kid). Our favourite of these is “Bees”. Bees is a very complex game in which (i) you yell out “Bees!” when you spot beehives en route (hopefully before your cycling buddy, thereby gaining a point); (ii) if you see a graveyard and you have no bees at the time, but your buddy does, you yell out “Bury your Bees!”, thereby burying your buddy’s bees and bringing everyone back to zero; and (iii) if you see a graveyard and you currently have some bees, you yell out “Bee Safe!”, thereby saving your bees and, if your buddy has any bees at the time, getting rid of theirs. Points are tallied at the end of the day. In the meantime, various locals stare at you oddly as you careen in and out of the various small villages along the way madly yelling for your partner to “Bury your Bees!” or to add “Bees!” to your tally as the case may be. Admittedly, I basically won this game maybe twice in the space of 10 months, but I do feel that Thomas was probably a touch more committed to the activity than I was.
2. Etymology. Thomas, it turns out, should have studied etymology at university, rather than politics, as he gets (in my opinion) unduly excited by discovering the origins of any words we come across that bear the faintest resemblance to words we may know in other languages. I too find this interesting. However, I prefer not to hold a 45 minute conversation on the likely origins of “pide” bread or the various iterations and connections of “coffee” while cycling up an interminable hill (I like to save my thought process for swearing or gasping and, frankly, this is what google was made for). Not so for Thomas, he is able to consider these conundrums out loud for hours. This was also assisted in Turkey by the fact that he is convinced that Turkish is a made up language populated almost exclusively by words taken from other languages, so there was lots of scope for these sorts of considerations. Lucky me. Given the multiculturalism of the Ottoman empire, he may have something of a point, but I still retained a somewhat limited interest.
3. Food. Towards the end of our time in Turkey we both had to acknowledge that we would not be cycling for too much longer. As such, we started to consider the fact that our cycling appetites that required (and could facilitate) second breakfasts, constant consumption of dried fruit, chocolate whenever we felt like it, pasta dinners twice the size one would normally consume and a loaf of white bread with Nutella for breakfast would need to come to an end if we were not cycling all day every day. In keeping with this consideration, conversations like the following were not uncommon.
Tom: Today, I am going to cycle 30km and have a piece of bread, a mandarin and a boiled egg for breakfast.
Anthea: Okay, let’s do it.
~ Cycle 6km ~
Tom: Oooh, look! There’s doughnuts! Let’s eat some deep fried dough drenched in sugar syrup instead.
Anthea: (Rolls eyes) Umm, obviously.
In our defence: (i) the doughnuts were free (I don’t think any cyclist ever would say no to fresh free doughnuts after a night of wild camping); and (ii) we said no to seconds. We were watching our weight.
4. Turkish animals. There are dogs and cats everywhere in Turkey. And, unlike in lots of countries where the stray animals are sad looking mangy creatures, the strays in Turkey are generally pretty healthy looking and seem to be well looked after. After a while, one notices people buying food for the strays and feeding them. For dogs this often includes cuts of meat from the butcher, for cats there are generally bowls left out and often, for both, there are pieces of bedding/boxes etc for them to sleep in/on. Likewise, the farm animals generally appear in fairly good condition – no emaciated cows or horses or ill-treated donkeys like in many countries. Suffice to say, the Turks like animals.
5. Istanbul (not Constantinople) (and other cycling ditties). Not to be outdone by Tom winning at bees and enjoying long discourses in etymology, I also contributed to our cycling activities in Turkey by teaching him about the 1953 ditty by The Four Lads – “Istanbul (not Constantinople)”. To my horror, he had not heard this classic before and, as it is incredibly catchy, I enjoyed singing it to him constantly for our two months of cycling from Istanbul. Other favourite cycling songs that made repeated appearances throughout our journey included “Here Comes The Sun” by the Beatles (every time the sun finally reached us in the morning during our freezing winter cycling experiences) and “One More Cup of Coffee” – the White Stripes version (sung with true depth of feeling pretty much every morning while standing around and motivating ourselves to pack up and get our butts on our bikes).
That said, to the route. From Didim, we cycled around a lake and then checked out the following ruins on route to Isparta: Euromos, Labranda, Pammukale (Hierapolis) and Laodicea. These were all quite excellent. Euromos was set amid olive groves and the site was filled with spring poppies. Labranda was up a massive hill frequented mainly by large trucks going to and fro from the nearby quarry. Generally a pretty unpleasant cycle notwithstanding the scenic beauty (admittedly most of the truckers were fairly friendly, but one particular guy was rather obnoxious) that was saved only by (i) the absolutely lovely scenery; (ii) the ruins being rather worthwhile at the top; and (iii) my fortuitous discovery (half way up the hill) that I had stashed a Canga bar (pretty much a Turkish snickers and a very fine confection in my opinion) in my handlebar bag at some previous time.
The scenery through to Pammukale was worthwhile and included some incredible rock formations, olive groves and a lot of bees. This made for some very competitive playing of Bees – obviously. Unfortunately, the day that I had finally stacked 11 Bee points in my favour ended with us camping in a graveyard next to some beehives. With reflexes like a jungle cat when it comes to the cutthroat game of Bees, Tom pounced on this opportunity, speedily burying my Bees and claiming the adjacent hives in his next breath. A game of Bees to remember. What was also unfortunate (although, I am not actually sure it was more unfortunate than this somewhat epic loss at Bees), was the massive open plain and headwinds to enjoy for three days or so through to our intended destination. Suffice to say, we were pretty happy to arrive.
Pammukale was the main drawcard on this section of the route and was home to ancient Hierapolis, which sits on a plateau overlooking the modern town. To reach the plateau one has to climb up a section of amazing chalk terraces – which has become something of an instagram spot in recent years. Happily, when we were there, the tourists were pretty limited, but ultimately the chalk terraces had still been largely wrecked by over touristing and aggressive landscaping (read: a fair amount of poured concrete). Hierapolis was pretty incredible though and totally worth the effort to visit being an absolutely massive site covered in wild spring flowers. We were fans. The farming town itself, however, was absolutely not worthwhile and was probably the one place we visited in Turkey that felt very ruined by tour bus tourism with not much left of the initial settlement (normally in Turkey we found that even the really touristy places retained some atmosphere and had a pretty nice vibe – Pammukale was the exception). On the bright side, we had (insert general Asian fusion-style) noodles for lunch due to all the Chinese tourists that visit – not an entirely unexciting event when cycling for an extended period in the middle of rural Turkey.
From Pammukale we entered the penultimate stage of the journey – the trip up hills and across the plateaus to Isparta and the lakes district. This was a brilliant decision on our part and consisted of several days of wild camping and some truly epic scenery. I will let it generally speak for itself in the pictures below, but one place truly worth noting was the absolute magic of spending a day cycling around Lake Burdur. This area was completely epic and probably even better during the annual lavender and rose harvests later in the year (the key industries for which this area is known). From Isparta, we visited Egirdir, which is set on an ithmus onto another amazing lake and did some hiking in the area which was well worthwhile.
This brings me to the ultimate stage of the journey. Due to our 3 months permitted in Turkey rapidly coming to an end, we decided that we would fly out of Turkey from Antalya and booked tickets to head out in a couple of weeks. In order to get there, we could have taken the easy route. Instead, we headed into the mountains for a last hoorah and some really phenomenal scenery and (you guessed it) some more ruins. The mountains through to the Koprulu Canyon National Park were really something else. Covered in evergreens, snow-capped and punctuated by tiny towns either clinging to the hillsides or set in idyllic river valleys, we occasionally felt like we were in Nepal, rather than Turkey. We swore our way up the hills and exclaimed at the amazing beauty and the intense cold. Happily, we had generally pretty good weather and got to truly enjoy this last section of the trip.
We ended the stage with a couple of days on the flat through to Antalya and visited Aspendos and Perge, which were both sensational – not least because we got to see both in stunning spring sunshine and covered in blankets of flowers.
And, finally, we arrived in Antalya, which we both thought was a pretty nice city. We did not actually do any tourism here as we were completely taken out by needing to get ready to fly – no small task when flying with all your cycle touring gear and also needing to shop for clothing etc for the non-cycle touring next stage in our trip. In any event, we had reached the end of a journey. Our bikes would be dropped off back in Dubai to join the rest of our possessions in storage and we would head onwards sans Bertie and the Bat Cycle. Note final meal of the trip was, of course, simit!
7,673km and 10 months later, we had made it from Amsterdam to Antalya with various stops, side trips and misadventures along the way (we are certainly not quick – but, after 10 months on the road, I think we can now say that we are cycle tourists). We cycled through winelands (notably in France, Italy, Croatia, Montenegro and Bulgaria), across Swiss mountain passes, around lakes, through the Lombard plain and island hopped down the Croatian coast. We climbed mountains in Slovenia, sailed around islands in Croatia, cycled through mountain villages in Montenegro and crossed the Balkans in the heart of winter (testing the true limits of our camping gear). We spent a month living in Istanbul, got stuck in mud bogs, got chased by dogs and visited the most sensational selection of ancient ruins throughout Turkey as we saw in the spring. We camped on mountain tops, by the beach, next to ruins, next to wine shops, in olive groves, in graveyards, in the freezing cold, in the stinking heat, in official campsites and in the wild. Astoundingly, all of this was in the middle of a pandemic and without ever needing to take a COVID test until we flew out of Turkey from Antalya. While not at all what we planned for 2020, our trip from Amsterdam to Antalya was pretty epic.
February 2021
What a trip! Loved your ending!