Big motorcycle ride out: 16-21 August: Turkey (Part 3 Med coast)

I’ve been counting, it took all my fingers and two little toes. 12.

It’s been 12 days since I left Aksehir and thought, wow this road’s a bit tasty, hope it doesn’t end too soon. 1,500 kilometres later the sheer beauty of Turkey, from its rocky middle to cliff strewn Med coast still takes your breath away such that it’s hard to write about any particular day’s riding without just paraphrasing the previous days. The scenery changes, spectacularly so from rose canyons to azure blue sea, deep orange cliffs, dark volcanic lumpy landscapes and tree covered paradise like islands. I keep woohoo-ing out loud in my helmet, whooping and a hollering like a Texan that’s just struck oil.

Looking down to where the mountain road started

The road just goes on and on

Not a bad view from lunchtime rest spot

It’s completely beyond me to describe in words. Look, for example, here’s the view from my £20 hotel (and that’s me blowing the budget cos I don’t have the energy to shop round).

Blogging with a view

For the first time in ages I passed a campground and could have given my tent a whirl, but it was 39 degrees at 10 am and didn’t get down below mid 30s most of last night.

Anyway, here’s the thing. This isn’t a secret cove, a place only you and I know about. There’s hundreds of kilometres of it in either direction. Oh, and the roads to get there will twist over 3,000m plus mountain passes, curl around inlays as it hugs the coast usually on tarmac newer and smoother than the M1.

If you’re a biker, you could do much worse than fly to Antalya and just ride a week or two left (beaches and twisty coast roads) or right mountain passes, beaches and stunning scenery). You. Can’t. Lose.

The best bits starts from Karaman, a nondescript little town, but the run to Mut, Ermenek through to Anamur. No change from 10-11 hours riding, you don’t want to stop either other than for petrol and a drink occasionally to cool down. The Turkish pastime of re-laying roads is in full force, but its fun to get on some easy gravel with good enduro tyres on.

From there I’d ended up in Alana, see previous post, not the nicest stopover I’ve had, though I think on reflection, I think I struggle more in big resorts as everyone’s there on family holidays or as couples, which really hammers home the fact you’re alone, and its so busy no-one really notices. Ah well. On from there a road hugs the coast through Antalya, a huge regional capital city onto a small town called Finike the Istanbul guys had mentioned. After the brashness of Alanya, a modest little fishing come seaside beachy town was a welcome change of pace, and the little restaurant overlooking the harbour served up a mean shrimp casserole, hands down the tastiest meal of this trip so far.

Running on down the motorway to Marmaris, I was aiming to stay a few days after the exhausting riding and temperatures of the last week.

As it turned out that was necessary. Leaving a small town after a lunch break, turning left at a junction my bike just died. Hmm, must have been in 2^nd gear I though, just stalled. Tried to start the engine up again but no life at all. Well this was a problem, the town was too small to have a mechanic, it was 2pm in the afternoon and baking hot. Luckily after taking all the luggage off, a tinker with the fuses showed it was a dodgy fuse preventing the ignition, so a quick swap with some of the spares I’d bought last minute. After grabbing a drink from a nearby cafe, time to load everything up again and get cracking to make up for lost time.

Riding down the motorway later, a tank bag was flapping in the wind more than usual. Spotting a place near a roadworks access that was safe to stop off at, I tied it up, jumped back on the bike, put my right foot down to steady it, discovered joyfully that my rightfoot was hovering above a big drainage channel, and toppled over into that, leaving the bike at about a 30 degrees ‘upside down’ angle. At the side of a motorway. In the mid-day heat. Luckily a couple of guys in a van stopped to help get it upright, made sure I was OK then vanished as quickly as they came.

Just riding to the centre of Marmaris you’re surrounded by hotels, all with rooms and it’s just a half hours job to walk round and get some prices. Choosing the Melodi hotel for its low, low price, was a mistake I should have seen coming, just imagine Fawlty Towers.

Owned by an elderly Turkish couple yet run by a collection of crass, bored and/or inept English-Turkish couples, it must be one of the worst run hotels in town. One guy who might have had something to do with running it, had an English girlfriend who summed it up. No discernable female features, they all just merged into one, compounded with a scratchy Scouse accent and a face like thunder. It must have been fun at first you guess, he gets an English woman, she gets a fairly strapping lad, but the reality’s struck home. All opinions on the role of women in Turkish society aside, a life stuck around a small hotel ain’t a glamorous one. Her other half, with all the other bar guys, spends all day aggressively chatting up and copping a grope of the female guests. She sits in a dark corner watching X-factor on Youtube because it won’t stream live over the internet. From whirlwind romance to forlorn loveless misery in 3 months. Guess it’s a sign of changing times, 9 1/2 weeks is now a completely unrealistic period for a passionate love affair while 'Gone in 60 Seconds' turns out to be a film about car theft.

The guests around the place more than made up for it though, up late every night, having a laugh at where we’d collectively ended up, but carrying on to make the best of it. Seriously late nights with Chris (Leicester), Rachel and Laura from Yarm and a steady flow of others from Sunderland, and Darlo. Some proper banter, effin’ and jeffin’ and ‘divvnie nah’ accents. It’s been good to pick morale up with some real cheeky lads and lasses, one group back in from having broken into an all inclusive place up the road, legging it before being chucked out with the police in tow, to arrive back at our place where the managers went crazy because they’d lost out on bar receipts all day.

For all the cheesy tackiness of Marmaris, the more you give in and enjoy it for a couple of days, the better spirit you’ll leave in. Listening to test cricket next to the pool for hours at a time, an Irish Breakfast, catching a Leeds game live on Sky Sports and just a good, simple laugh with passing friends. It’s the small things that keep you on track.