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| One of many lovely sunsets on the Turkish coast - I can see why folks retire here |
The ferry service between Egypt and Turkey
is quite new. On arrival, as for
departure, paperwork and customs formalities are slow. We dock late, at midnight, and it's several
hours more before the truckers are allowed to leave. So slow is it, the Greek crew suspect they're
being delayed deliberately by their Turkish neighbours. Or maybe the ship's captain gets cheaper port
fees this way?
The truckers are a cheery lot and crowd
around the vehicle deck ramp to receive their papers. Filled with food and strong coffee they're
keen to get trucking again, and can't sit still. They have the stature and rolling gait of Ray
Winstone, forearms like Popeye... and the moustache of Harry Enfield's Stavros character.
Mere passengers and private vehicle owners
get to leave the boat last. A coach load
of Bosnians on the way back from their Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca (in Saudi
Arabia) are required to spend the night on their bus. I have it slightly better, with an empty
passenger terminal waiting room to myself - at least it has a flat bench to
sleep on. However, none of us can leave
the port yet.
Between 7am and 11am we continue to wait,
patiently. Port security are promising
us that police approval-to-leave is imminent.
My friends warned me about such delays, and I have food supplies handy, so
I'm content to catch up on my blogging and photos. For now.
Eventually, I feel enough is enough. I want to be on the road in order to reach my
destination during daylight. It takes
someone (me) to agitate a little before anything happens - and I think even the
reluctant security staff recognise we've been very patient so far. At 11.30am a more senior official looks at my
papers, agrees everything is in order, and allows me to leave the holding area
in order to get the necessary stamp from Customs. Now, why couldn't he have done that three
hours ago? The friendly Bosnians have
cottoned-on to this too, and we go together, pleased that something is
happening at last.
It takes another 90 minutes, but I get the
stamp. Mission accomplished.
Leaving the port behind me I'm cutting
north around the coastal highway towards the city of Adana. It feels great to be moving again. Without detailed GPS maps or any paper maps,
navigation is a little tricky.
A detailed map is pressed into my grip, and
I copy down their enthusiastic recommendations for good biking routes and
places to visit in the rest of Turkey.
Better yet, one of them guides me to a local hotel and haggles a very
good rate on my behalf: it's out of my
expected budget, but after two rough nights in transit and some camping to come,
I'm happy to lap up the luxury tonight.
Well, actually, the clean white sheets and
soft pillows feel strange.
The coast of turkey is lovely, heading west
the next morning. It's bright and warm. Huge granite mountains press up against the
Mediterranean, and a well kept road wriggles round the edge through fir
forests. This area is far from the crowd
of mad European sun-seekers, and only local Turkish families sit out on the
narrow pebble beaches or bathe in the shallows.
I've decided to camp in a fir-lined
clearing near the waters edge. At 6am I
brave a morning swim to wake myself up. Not
to hot, not too cold - even Goldilocks would like this.
Today I must ride to the next big town,
Antalya, as carefully as possible. I've
discovered a problem with the front suspension on my bike - it's leaking oil
fast and the rebound damping has virtually disappeared. This makes the front wheel bounce around too
much, something I'm really not keen on when trying to ride around tight curves
or navigate through city traffic. The sharp
and wiggly red line on my map doesn't look quite so enticing now...
Nevertheless, the scenery is great and I
pull in to see a few ancient Roman ruins - those at Xanthos are particularly
fine - a familar, contrasting change to the Egyptian sites.
BMW has a fine network of motorcycle
dealers in most major countries, and in Turkey this is also true. Unfortunately, BMW can be pretty
disappointing when it come to obtaining spare parts: these regional outlets rarely carry such specialist
stock and rely on delivery from Germany.
Which typically takes 15-20 days.
I decide to press on, and form a plan to
get to Greece. The first major Greek
city I should come to - Thesaloniki - has a branch office of Wilbers, the company
that manufactures my suspension. I can
call ahead and get the work booked in there.
It's a bit of a stretch to travel, but riding slowly through Turkey is
no bad thing: it'll save me a fortune in likely speeding tickets.
Lunchtime.
I'm sitting in a beachside cafe in Fethiye enjoying a baked potato with
chilli - staple English fare that the
Brits here love: this is a home away from home so far as the basic menu
goes. It's been a while since I tucked
into something like this.
My email 'pings' and I read an odd message
from someone in the Turkish motorcycle community. To solve my situation, he recommends I stop
at his seaside town where there's a suspension specialist and a BMW mechanic: he thinks they'll certainly be able to give me
a better solution than my limping all the way across to Greece. And the location of this town? Why, Fethiye of course!
A power-packed guy called Gokhan Durmus
comes to meet me, and within the hour my bike is booked in for work with the
mechanic. Gokhan will look at the suspension,
so all I have to do is find somewhere cheap to stay on the beachfront and then
take a swim... which is easy: it's low
season here.
The Nil Bar & Restaurant Motel, run by
Angel and Serdal, proves just the place on Calis Beach. They get the RITTOG seal of approval.
------------------------------------
Two steps forwards, one step back.
The suspension unit needs more than a new
oil seal in order to work. It needs a
small component too, which is special to Wilbers and so must be ordered from
Germany. That's the trouble with trying
to find solutions on the run... it's rarely as easy as you first think.
The guys at Wilbers will only deliver to
their own, meaning I need to somehow get myself to Greece after all. I ask Gokhan and his friends to put my bike
back together as best they can, and I'll leave tomorrow. So close, and yet, so far...
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| Yep, they like the glass house in this part of Turkey |
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