Cycling and Kebabs!

So my holiday in Turkey taught me a lot about cycling and actually living in Turkey as a cyclist. (Me and Jimi will live in Turkey for 6 months from November.)

The first thing I noticed about cycling through the city of Antalya, when your cycling along the road is that people in cars don’t go slower, they don’t wait patiently for you to pass; they beep long and loud until I eventually had to pull in on the pavement and wait for them to pass!!

There are no cycle lanes and as a cyclist you have to decide wether to cycle on the pavement and avoid pedestrians, or dodge through beeping traffic.

So with Jimi still not able to ride a bike due to a silly car door; I decided to do a little bit of riding in Turkey. (Not the two day mountain ride we had planned.)
I thought I’d cycle to the beach, have a swim and then cycle home. So in between dodging the tram, ignoring the angry beeping car drivers and on occasion dodging pedestrian walking in the middle of the road I made it to the beach.

Another difference of Turkey which I cannot decide is a good thing or not; kebabs are eaten any time of day, not just at 11pm after frequenting the bar!

So after a ride to beach, sweating in the heat, hungrily I tucked into a Turkish kebab at 1pm in the afternoon! This can never be a normal food of choice for my lunch but in Turkey this is standard.

I am looking forward to my Turksih experience, not necessarily the beeping swerving cars but definately the kebabs at midday and the amazing scenery that Turkey has to offer.

Lycian Way- ‘Like’

We have been in Turkey for a week, so here’s a little story about what we got up to.

We come here a lot to visit my (Jim) Mum, she’s lived here with Terry in Antalya for 7 years. Mum writes a column in a English language national newspaper and is a Primary school teacher too. Terry is a travel writer and Archaeological Tour Guide.

A few years ago Terry was part of a team that way marked and wrote a book about the Lycian way, a 509 km way-marked footpath around the coast of Lycia in southern Turkey, from Fethiye to Antalya. We have been meaning to walk a stretch ever since and as I still can’t cycle since I killed a car door with my chest we couldn’t complete the cycle tour in Turkey we had planned.

So we took a bus from Antalya and after a couple of changes were in Olympos, an ancient city that once housed Romans, pirates and Greeks. There are also some rather more recent dwellings, treehouses, which are home to a new generation of travellers- the backpackers! It is now a well established destination on the ‘packers circuit of Turkey. We chose to stay at Bayrams on my sisters recommendation and guess what? She was right as usual, a lovely little place that had a fire in the evening that everyone gathered round and enjoyed dinner and cold beers together, it’s 35tl each including breakfast and dinner!

But back to the Lycian Way, we did the leg that starts in the Ruins of Olympos and heads west up a steep valley. It is clearly marked with red and white stripes. We hiked for a couple of hours until we reached some more ruins where we sat and downed our water. We were drenched in sweat, I can see why they don’t recommend you do it in summer, a cloudy spring morning is hot enough. The four bottles of Efes the night before had not helped our hydration levels.

We ‘liked’ the Lycian Way and if you like walking you will too. Especially if you, like us, enjoy hiking away from the crowds of the Alps and such places. We didn’t see anyone all day but we’re sure we heard something big in the woods. Although we had just watched the Liam Neeson film about wolves 2 nights before.

Oh I almost forgot, there is a beach to read (sleep) on and a sea to swim in!

From South Korea to the Dales (full version)

I never thought I’d be a member of a website called Warmshowers and I certainly never thought I’d be telling people! However, its kinky sounding name belies it’s more innocent function: it’s couch-surfing for cycle-tourists.

I joined for a ride to Holland last year and stayed with some lovely students in the Hague who set the hosting bar very high. Six months later I received an email entitled “Could I Stay Your Place?”. After reassuring my girlfriend to let two South Korean strangers into our home I was given the go-ahead to welcome them in.

They were quite a sight: tanned, sweaty, weathered and laden but most striking of all was their attitude – they were “full of beans” as we say up north. We spent a great weekend in Manchester cooking for each other, them: traditional Korean food and me: less than traditional “Spancunian”. We saw the sights (Old Trafford), soaked up the culture (down my local) and had a game of kickabout in the park.

They learnt that I had just become unemployed and therefore saw no reason why I shouldn’t go with them to Edinburgh. Unable to provide them with any valid excuses, I got my permission slip and bought myself a pannier rack. Thanks to the hard-work and diligence of Manchester’s bike thief community I had recently been relieved of 1.6 bikes. So with a mixture of trepidation and padded lycra I set off with Joo and Soo on my (less-than-suitable) single-speed bike.

We spent an amazing week cycling through the breathtaking countryside of the Yorkshire Dales and Northumberland National Park. We wild -camped, cooked big meals, played cards and stayed up talking every night, becoming firm friends along the way. We had a few hairy moments too: I’ll never forget settling down in my tent to go to sleep by a stream in Yorkshire and beginning to dream about gunfire. I then realised I wasn’t asleep. “Strange”, I thought, too tired to put the pieces together. “Jimi, sounds like gunfire”, says Joo’s tent. I agreed with him. “It is gunfire”, confirmed Soo’s tent, who’d just finished his military service. All of our tents agreed that we were too tired to move the camp so there we slept for eight hours to the soothing sounds of the British Army out on night time manoeuvres.

My recomendation to readers is that cycle touring is something anyone can do; it’s not a race and you just go at whatever pace feels right for you, it’s a holiday. I used opencyclemap.org to find cycle routes including the Route 68, known as the Pennine Cycleway. I learnt some important things that week; that traveling the world by bike is my dream and South Koreans have an unhealthy appetite for pork scratchings. I also know I’ve got some where to stay in Busan if I ever find myself cycling through South Korea, or at least somewhere for a warm shower.