Turkey

Reaching Turkey, riding out of Europe.

Two days have passed in a blur of riding and new experiences.

We changed plans during the trip, originally destined for Istanbul, but instead spent the time travelling to Meteora. No regrets there.

So rather than crossing the main Turkish border at Ipsala, we headed north towards the (hopefully) quieter crossing at Edirne in the north.

Respite after the farm tracks. 

The Hellas Mountains stood between us and our destination and I’d chosen a route that looked like chaotic spaghetti. It was great riding with picture-perfect views ,however, the road ended at various points, leaving us picking a path along farm access tracks. They certainly were not unpaved roads.

I must admit to feeling a little uneasy at times, the signposts riddled with bullet holes did little to quell my nerves.

A fuel station you definitely need to plan around.

We reached the border mid-afternoon after a sweat-inducing, sweltering ride. Pleasingly, the border was empty, with no queues, and we were processed efficiently on the Greek side before riding through no man's land toward the Turkish crossing.

The Turkish guard laughed and repeated to his colleague that we intended only to stay in Edirne before leaving Turkey the following day. I got the feeling it was the equivalent of a foreign tourist visiting the UK and only seeing Doncaster — not exactly the best of British.

Edirne was a real melting pot, the most northwesterly of Turkish cities, nestled in a corner of the country just a stone’s throw from Europe. You could feel the influence of both Eastern and Western cultures.

Cassettes for sale! Reminds me of recording the Top 10

definitely not our hotel.

The men drank tea in shops, some women wore headscarves, and the multiple mosques called devotees to prayer. Yet you could also go to a craft beer bar and slurp a cold one on the pavement at happy hour.

Our hotel was the Tasha Hotel, hewn from solid rock with walls almost a metre thick. The courteous and attentive staff allowed us to park our bikes in the courtyard, which meant wheeling them through reception!

We ate at a Turkish kebab shop (obviously) and while we shared no common language, the elderly proprietor served us a three course meal. He also directed Sarah to, and paid for her to use, a public convenience situated under a mostly derelict building. She did not speak highly of the experience; I think she may have been in shock.

Later, we walked the streets and explored the mosques and the bazaar. The bazaar was excellent — almost anything could be purchased: designer labels for 200TL (about £3.70), or even cassette tapes of old crooners for 100TL. (Who even has a cassette player? The old cars, perhaps?)

The mosques, and indeed many buildings, were a feast for the eyes. This little city, sandwiched between Greece and Bulgaria, was a wonderful experience.

The following morning, after a huge breakfast at the hotel (complete with chips), we rode towards Bulgaristan (Bulgaria?).

At the border, there were huge queues on the Bulgarian side, clearly the Turks being less picky about who was leaving than the Bulgarians were about who was entering. Being on bikes, the etiquette appeared to be that you could queue jump, and so we did, with a polite Rolls-Royce driver inviting us to go ahead.

After the borfer we were still in the same mountain range, so the scenery was largely unchanged, forested and mountainous. What wasn’t the same as Turkey was the large military presence. (The same could be said of Greece too — lots of military vehicles and soldiers in convoy.)

Our original destination was Plovdiv, one of the oldest inhabited cities in Europe, but the closer we got, the less appealing it became. The day was hot and humid, the roads packed with cars doing dangerous overtakes, and large diesel trucks polluting the air.

We turned north and spent another 20 miles sat behind trucks, looking for a place to camp. One place we found was closed and looked like so many other campsites, a walled square of imprisoned land. I really dislike that. It’s the opposite of everything the freedom of carrying your home with you should offer.

I’d earmarked Wild Glamping, north of Plovdiv, back in England and we wandered in that direction. Boy, was it difficult to find, even with Google Maps. We were clearly lost, and a local man came to help, he left the bar and actually led us in his car to the track the camp is situated on. What a star.

The camp is booking only and obviously an upmarket affair catering to glampers. You're supposed to stay in the large canvas tents, but the proprietor, a young woman sweating from working the land, allowed us to stay in our own tent and use the excellent facilities.

The spot was everything Id desired, a long hillside view as captivating as Netflix, with birdsong as the theme track. We drank the ouzo I’d carried from Greece and cooked on the grass as the sun set