To the Black Sea Coast

Day 15 480 km (5685 km total)

Now on the Black Sea coast at a small town called Unye. The sea is not particularly black, more a dark grey and the town is rather uninspiring compared to the last two nights, but the guest house is pleasant enough.

 

I awoke at 5am this morning to the sound of a dog barking outside - I guessed what it might be so got up to take a couple of shots.

One of the activities that the area is famous for is hot air balloon rides....

They were popping up seemingly from every street corner

A pleasant, if somewhat early start to the day. First task after breakfast was to see if my passport had arrived. The previous homestay in Sapanca had forgotten to return it to me when I left - or I had forgotten to ask for it, depending on your perspective ;-)

Good to know that courier services work well over here too and even though it was a Saturday, a quick call to the local depot confirmed it was there and an hour's round trip with the hotel owner put it back in my possession. Phew! - back in schedule & another lesson learned.

So a later start than planned and a long run meant I didnt have time to divert & see one of the underground cities, so that will have to wait for the repeat visit I am sure to make one day.

So I set off north towards the Black Sea.

The lanscape for the first hour or so as I travelled through Cappadocia was stunning (but the same as yesterday so no more pictures I'm afraid). Then it became high plateau (about 1000-1200m) punctuated with these hills that looked like the tops could be removed!

Do far in this trip I had been using Mr Garmin's Europe map for navigation and found it pretty accurate. However today it cleary decided I needed a little more adventure and diverted me off perfectly acceptable roads onto this (which still showed up as a main highway on the satnav)

It looked like it was going to just cut a corner on the main highway, so I carried on - but 25km later, I was still on it.

Quite fun though, if a little dusty and good practce for what is to come in Uzbekistan I suspect.

After a while longer, it sure enough re-joined the main highway, where I was greeted with some nice twisty bits.

 

Basically the next 2 hours were full of twisty mountain roads as the route crossed a number of mountain ranges that cover central & coastal Turkey. At one pount I could see snow on the surrounding peaks as I crossed a particular pass - a sign informed me that this pass was 1650m high.

Eventually the road dropped down to the coast and I entered Unye by the back door, which was unfortunately closed due to road construction. It took 45 minutes to do the last 1km to the hotel, so once again I was hot & sticky by the time I finally arrived. Pleasant view from my room though.

Unye on the Black Sea coast.

Keeping a watcful eye on the bike below my room.

 

I had arranged to meet Russ here, a fellow traveller, who will be riding with me through into Russia & beyond. We both needed a drink & so headed out to find one. After an hour of searching it seems that Unye town centre is 'dry' - this was the best we could manage!

And something to soak it up of course ...

 

The hotel porter did direct us to a 'bar' just outside the town centre. This was an interesting experience, a dark internal bar, with blacked out windows & closed doors, full of heavily smoking locals & of course 2 weary travellers, for a little while anyway.

Along the coast to Trabzon tomorrow, forecast is rain.