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Planning our route - Troy

After troy we had planned to follow the coast road down to Hierapolis to see more archaeological sights.. Fortunately we decided to ditch that idea and instead focus our riding on heading somewhat directly to Ankara. In doing so we cut several hundred kilometres off our total journey distance. This was welcome news as the heat was forecast to increase along the coast… After a long break at a small cafe just outside of  Troy we had come up with a plan. That plan was to head towards Edremit and on to Kutahya. The plan was to now take 3 days to ride to Ankara where we would get our bikes serviced, receive some packages with some spare parts and organise some other bits and pieces before we embark on the next stage of our journey.

Finally cleaning the Bikes

The first part of our plan was to fill the bikes with fuel.. My bike was reporting on the trip computer that it had less than 2miles of range remaining. Heathers bike had a similar story with her fuel light showing as being on and had done so for about the last 40km… The only problem was there appeared to be no petrol stations along our route. Luckily just as we turned on to a more major road one appeared. We had some kids fill up our bikes while we relaxed for a while. Heather then realised that there was an area for washing cars.. We enquired how much it would cost to use… the response FREE… we jumped at the chance to wash our bikes for the first time since Austria… The thick coating of dust on the bikes made us look even more like hobo’s than usual… It was really just an excuse for us to play with the hose and cover ourselves in a nice dense spray of cool water… oops and clean the bikes.. For the first time we could actually see the plastics properly on both bikes.. The local kids at the service station also helped out in little bits and pieces which was nice. Very friendly.  Everyone loves the bikes the number of people waving at us as we pass has been amazing since Romania.

Shortly after our petrol, bike wash, wet t-shirt competition I was attacked by a wasp while riding the bike.. thankfully I didn’t crash the bike as it stung me several times on the neck. Each time it stung I could feel it go right up into my head.. I managed to pull over and kill the wasp.. Started riding again only to find the pain too unbearable and have to pull over again and put some cream on it… I think its time to start wearing my neck protector…. oh well maybe some other day when its not in the high 30’s… Heather only noticed that something was wrong when she heard a girly scream through the bike to bike communication system… The scenery as we followed along the road was fantastic. With beautiful winding roads and coastal views along large sections of the ride to Edremit.

After Edremit we headed inland heading towards Balikesir along the D230. It was a very nice ride… until we needed to find accommodation.. Unfortunately there was nothing for over 100km. Eventually we got to Balikesir and found a hotel… That was only after we rode along a dual carriage way multi-lane 10+cm deep gravel “highway” for about 20km only to find the road went absolutely nowhere so we had to do a u-turn and go back to Balikesir… We should have guessed when several turkish motorists drove past yelling stuff at us and doing u-turn gestures with their arms out the windows… who could have guessed what they actually meant??… At the end of this mammoth piece of engineering work the road literally stopped and turned into a shitty sand track. It would have cost a fortune to build the “road to nowhere”… we are still trying to guess why the hell the road exists. Maybe the surveyors screwed up and the road went in the wrong direction.. only to realise after they had spent all the money???

A Lake view from the D230 - Anatolia

After back tracking and getting to the hotel we had a relaxing meal and went to sleep early. The next day we wanted to get to Eskisehir which would be a longish day. This was something that worried us as the D230 had just disappeared into the “road to nowhere”…. After a quick investigation the following morning we found the sign post to Kutahya around a corner with no real road name signs. The road was terrible but the scenery was absolutely stunning. The road follows around the side of some mountains a river in the valley with small towns and farms dotted all along the side. The riding style quickly became dodge the oncoming trucks, while trying to avoid the sandy surface and potholes that could swallow your whole bike… It made for interesting yet very slow going. Despite the danger it was an experience I really enjoyed as it made the riding very intense. Every break was very welcome..

The view from our Mountain - Anatolia

After riding for a few hours we stopped for a Turkish bbq sis lunch.. wow it was awesome. And the bill was only 14TL (about £5)… By far the best Lunch I think we have had since we started this trip. It was just near Kutahya on the D230… Sorry forget the name of the place.. I’ll have to get the GPS references for anyone that is interested.  We then started to head on… At about 6pm we had been looking for a place to camp for some time.. Nothing was coming along.. After a while we saw a big hill start to emerge with some tree’s on it.. That looked like something that we needed to investigate. After exploring some random dirt trails we ended up finding a fantastic place to camp.. Being a beautiful evening we decided that we would camp under only the mosquito net.. Something that I have wanted to do for some time. It’s so much less stuffy in the heat and its awesome to look out at the stars. After an amazing nights sleep I managed to get this paparazzi photo of Heather still relaxing under the nets…

Wild Camping - Turkey

The view from our campsite Anatolia

This entry was posted on Monday, July 20th, 2009 at 6:03 am and is filed under Adventure Motorcycling, Aegean Sea, Anatolia, London to Sydney, motorcycle touring, Troy, Turkey, Wild Camping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.