Have been pretty slack at keeping this up-to-date. Apologies. A lot to write about, so will divide it into different parts and try to keep it as brief as possible!
So, starting off from Lake Egirdir: we set off deciding to take a quieter road around the left-hand side of the lake. Turned out to be the correct decision; hardly a car on the road; brilliant views; excellent cycling. The undulating road didn't bother us at all. After a quick stop off to buy some cherries from the side of the road (you always end up with way too much- they seem adamant to give you at least a kilo!) and to make sure we were going the right way, we had our first experience of the scenery that we would be riding through for the next few days: the barren expanse that is central Anatolia, populated by the odd worker in a field. We luckily had the forethought to buy bread and honey that morning, so we tucked into this, shaded by the one tree we could find. The people in the nearby petrol station took immediate interest in us and we unbelievably friendly, exclaiming 'Canakkale!' when they heard where we had set out from.
The afternoon comprised of a gruelling 10km climb, and then a descent through a village until we connected with the road to Cay. Completely knackered, the last part of the day dragged on a bit. We eventually reached Cay after our longest ride of 78 miles, and found a place to stay in what appeared to be university accommodation, but we are not fully sure! And of course, we drank cay (tea) in Cay- felt we had to!
The next day saw us cycling through more featureless country on the road to Emirdag, where we stopped for a delicious lunch of casserole, rice and beans. Got stopped several times and offered food on the way out of town by very kind locals. Lewis got a puncture just a couple of kilometers after lunch, which we sorted out. The going was very easy: nearly all downhill. We made good progress and reached Sivrihisar. Then a weird coincidence occured. The only hostel in town had another touring bike at the front of the staircase: could this be the German we had seen in Istanbul? When we found out that he was about 60, we were convinced that it was, but it, anticlimatically, ended up being a Dutch man of the same age.
We woke up to find a grey sky overhead and a chilly wind blowing. Didn't effect us too much, as the cycling on the main road to Ankara was downhill until we turned off for Gordion. Just as we did so, the rain poured down, our glasses blurred by rain drops as we passed poor agricultural villages by. The site itself is located in a place called in Yassihoyuk, which is run-down and lacking the prosperity and golden touch of the city under rulers such as Midas. Alexander came here and was rejoined by the newlywed men in his army (who he had allowed to return home to Macedonia after Halicarnassus) and reinforcements. In front of these men, Alexander tackled the famed Gordion knot of cornel wood and is reported either to have got out his sword and cut it (believably impulsive of him), or to have pulled the peg from the yoke and to thus untie it this way (as Aristobulus, one of his apologists, claims). Either way, whether you feel it was cheating or not, by undoing the knot he was prophesied to become ruler of Asia, which he did when he overcame the Persian empire.
The museum had a small collection of Phrygian artefacts and we walked into one of the tumuli (tombs), which housed the wooden tomb of one of the Kings from the 8th Century BC. An impressive burial mound. Then, we headed on our way to Polatli, which was the nearest town to Ankara from which to catch a bus there; we had decided it would be suicide to try and cycle in...
Ankara was frustrating in so many ways. It can be summed up by the stress of getting our bikes on the tube from the otogar (bus station), spending our entire rest day looking for a map and finding one five hours later (my previous one only went as far as Ankara!) and the hassle of getting a bus out to the town of Kirikkale. So glad to get out from the crowds and to be able to start our journey properly again; the bus rides were necessary but frustrating and not the way we wanted to be travelling!
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