Day 49
Sleeping location: Dundar Termal Villas, Afyonkarahisar, Turkey
Distance (km today/total): 102 / 4822
Estimated climb (m today/total): 500 / 40700
Apparent main products of the region: geese and potatoes*
Day in three words: Across the plains
*It was too hard doing number-based stats of the day so I’m moving to a more general stat approach. Sorry Andy and James.
As the hilton breakfast was uninspiring and not included in the price we went out to get some at a cafe we’d spent he night before. We were foolishly coerced into buying the biggest one, which was like a normal Turkish breakfast (cheese, olives, eggs, various preserves, tomatoes and cucumbers, bread and tea) but also for some reason inexplicably included a huge bowl of chips and a huge bowl of what appeared to be fondue. It was all tasty but the total amount of food was insane and we didn't even get close to finishing it. This fuelled us up nicely for an easy run across very flat land, with a good surface and a nice tailwind a lot of the time. This is what I imagined the Anatolian plain to be like - a lot of flat land 1000m above sea level. Most of it was farmed and the geology and soil changed as the day went on. Closer to Afyon is a more volcanic region and we started to see strange rock formations everywhere, plus a ridiculous amount of potatoes.
Our lunch/tea stop was in a small town called Doger. We happened to be there for lunchtime Friday prayers and after the call the whole town disappeared into the mosque. It was weirdly quiet on the streets for 15 minutes and all the shops shut. After prayers finished it was like a switch flicked back, and all of a sudden the streets were bustling with people again (plus a herd of geese who seemed to be lost). A lot of these inland towns seem to be very religious, all the women still wear headscarves which is not the case at all in cities or on Turkish TV. We picked up some bread and cheese from the reopened shop and I invented a new delicacy - the soft white cheese and cherry jam sandwich. It was a taste sensation and I’m trademarking it now. We had dairy overload after the fondue incident and ended up giving some of the cheese to a cat who was lurking by our table. He seemingly didn’t know how to eat cheese and just licked it for ages until it was all gone.
We had to go off the main road to cut across to our hotel, and in one village we were followed by a young guy on a scooter for ages as he tried to tell us something. His name was Ahmed and it turned out he was trying to say that the road ahead wasn’t paved. Of course we were ok with this thanks to our supreme bike handling skills, but it was good of him to keep trying to warn us. Before we went he asked for a picture of the two of us doing the rock and roll devil horns gesture...I am not sure what this means in Turkey and I hope we won’t be featured on the news in a few days as the foreigners trying to spread Satanism across the country.
We got to our villa pretty early and discovered that it had an enormous DIY jacuzzi, using water from the hot springs under this area. We made full use of this for an hour or so, before heading to a nearby hotel for dinner as there was nowhere in our complex. They had a buffet option and for a tenner each we got to go to town on the massive selection of tasty things. The dessert section in particular was a sight to behold, and if I hadn’t exercised a bit of restraint I could have done myself some serious medical damage. As it was I still had to go and lie down in the jacuzzi for half an hour to let everything settle.
Distance (km today/total): 102 / 4822
Estimated climb (m today/total): 500 / 40700
Apparent main products of the region: geese and potatoes*
Day in three words: Across the plains
*It was too hard doing number-based stats of the day so I’m moving to a more general stat approach. Sorry Andy and James.
As the hilton breakfast was uninspiring and not included in the price we went out to get some at a cafe we’d spent he night before. We were foolishly coerced into buying the biggest one, which was like a normal Turkish breakfast (cheese, olives, eggs, various preserves, tomatoes and cucumbers, bread and tea) but also for some reason inexplicably included a huge bowl of chips and a huge bowl of what appeared to be fondue. It was all tasty but the total amount of food was insane and we didn't even get close to finishing it. This fuelled us up nicely for an easy run across very flat land, with a good surface and a nice tailwind a lot of the time. This is what I imagined the Anatolian plain to be like - a lot of flat land 1000m above sea level. Most of it was farmed and the geology and soil changed as the day went on. Closer to Afyon is a more volcanic region and we started to see strange rock formations everywhere, plus a ridiculous amount of potatoes.
Our lunch/tea stop was in a small town called Doger. We happened to be there for lunchtime Friday prayers and after the call the whole town disappeared into the mosque. It was weirdly quiet on the streets for 15 minutes and all the shops shut. After prayers finished it was like a switch flicked back, and all of a sudden the streets were bustling with people again (plus a herd of geese who seemed to be lost). A lot of these inland towns seem to be very religious, all the women still wear headscarves which is not the case at all in cities or on Turkish TV. We picked up some bread and cheese from the reopened shop and I invented a new delicacy - the soft white cheese and cherry jam sandwich. It was a taste sensation and I’m trademarking it now. We had dairy overload after the fondue incident and ended up giving some of the cheese to a cat who was lurking by our table. He seemingly didn’t know how to eat cheese and just licked it for ages until it was all gone.
We had to go off the main road to cut across to our hotel, and in one village we were followed by a young guy on a scooter for ages as he tried to tell us something. His name was Ahmed and it turned out he was trying to say that the road ahead wasn’t paved. Of course we were ok with this thanks to our supreme bike handling skills, but it was good of him to keep trying to warn us. Before we went he asked for a picture of the two of us doing the rock and roll devil horns gesture...I am not sure what this means in Turkey and I hope we won’t be featured on the news in a few days as the foreigners trying to spread Satanism across the country.
We got to our villa pretty early and discovered that it had an enormous DIY jacuzzi, using water from the hot springs under this area. We made full use of this for an hour or so, before heading to a nearby hotel for dinner as there was nowhere in our complex. They had a buffet option and for a tenner each we got to go to town on the massive selection of tasty things. The dessert section in particular was a sight to behold, and if I hadn’t exercised a bit of restraint I could have done myself some serious medical damage. As it was I still had to go and lie down in the jacuzzi for half an hour to let everything settle.
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