You know when you're in the middle of nowhere when the only people you see are shepherds. This has been true the last two days unless I've gone out my way to go to a shop in a village. This morning I was greeted with the most comical of scenes from the farming world. I can only assume that the shepherd had Tourette's or the sheep that day had a plan to ignore his every order because for the first half hour of my day I watched this poor old man run around the field trying to shimmy on the most ignorant sheep in the world. Shouts, whistles, grunts and even the odd raspberry blown could not organise these sheep and I would've loved to see how he ended up but believe or not I actually wanted to get going. I left the man with a chuckle and headed onto the open road.
During the first 20 miles I was feeling fresh. There was a bit of a head wind but I had a few beautiful landscapes I could see that spurred me on. I knew today I could get to Turkey which meant I had cycled across a whole continent in exactly 6 weeks from when I left home, so there would have to be something rather major to stop me from getting to my goal.
This could've come in the shape of the two stray dogs that stood by the side of the road. Stray, wild what's the difference? I don't know, because as I got closer they both tensed up and revealed their ridiculously sharp white teeth. My first thought was, wow! How are his teeth so white? My next thought was, this is no time for children's story's and I'm telling you, I put the "ride" into red riding hood. This was worse than Croatia, if my legs were starting to tire then they were suddenly feeling a lot stronger! I put the power down as one in particular got closer. They didn't change from stray to wild until i was in line with them so i had about 6 feet until one of them went for me. I was pretty scared I'm not going to lie. Luckily I have stamina and scary dogs don't and I hope this will stay the case forever more. I have now come to the conclusion that his teeth were extremely white thanks to gnawing on the bones of cyclists that were unfortunately less fit than myself.
I needed a rest after that so I stopped in Alexandropoulos (which I still can't pronounce properly as Greek words are so long that you don't know which syllable to emphasise) I had some cheese sandwiches by the sea and watched everybody in their Sundays best go to the nice seaside restaurants where they overlooked some scrubby foreigner with a bike chasing a loaf of bread bag around. I make a point of never leaving any rubbish wherever I go even if I sleep surrounded by other people's rubbish. I like to think this leaves a clean trail and so locals won't mistreat or deny future cycle tourers of the hospitality that I have received, due to a thought that they may make a mess of the area.
As I left Alexandropoulis the wind picked up considerably. I initially had it acting as a cross wind so at a constant lean and on an annoyingly poor road I cycled for about 10 miles. This changed my mood from positive to, I can't hear a thing and I'm starting to get stressed. Then my direction turned and not only did I have the wind full in the face but the majority of the road was uphill. This is where "starting to get stressed Harding" turned into "war cry, shouting at the forces of Mother Earth Harding" i did this until i realised that my spartan-esque shouting was actually using up vital energy. This was tough. I mean tougher than anything from the last 6 weeks, give me Italian Alps anyday. The combination of the noise from the wind, the noise from the lorries meant the music was a right off, the bumps in the road attacked the bum whilst the incline and the wind helped drain the legs. I can not described how hard it was just to make one rotation of the pedals. The wind wouldn't even let the weight of my leg turn the pedals once and at one point I was going 4mph, I've seen glaciers move quicker than what I was trying to do on the bike.
"I-will-get-to-tur-key" was said with each individual push of the pedals. If i wanted to physically feel like i had just cycled a whole continent then today alone would've been enough. I saw a few flat bed trucks with a load of guys sat in the back, I must be near a border I thought. You don't see guys sat in the back of a truck without being near a border and their thumbs up and shouts helped spur me on in a kind of "Tour de Asylum seeker" fashion.
I eventually arrived at the border, I was exhausted, in pain, drained but happy. I flew through customs and just had to go through passport control where there was a duty free. I stopped there and got absolutely fleeced. Not only did I pay 3 euros for 2 tiny packets of haribo (not even the big bags) and some chocolate biscuits (think I'm addicted) at the so called duty free but I had to pay 15 euros for a Turkish visa. I didn't realise I had to pay for a visa but that made my crossing of Europe and into "Asia" all the more official I guess.
My first impressions of Turkey were flame grilled. The very first thing I saw were lines of straw set on fire and making what looked like a race of flames across vast areas of farmland. Then after about 10 miles of farmland, the first thing I saw as I entered the town was a Burger King!
I honestly couldn't remember the last Burger King I saw before that, It must've been Germany, possibly Switzerland but i decided not to take another stop and try to push my tired legs to the next town. This is hindsight, was a bad decision. I didn't realise that what was waiting for me after Burger King would be the most frustrating road I have ever come across. This may've been a combination of tiredness, grouchiness and deafness but it was a road that started off unseeled and progressed into unrideable. The sores on my rear end didn't help but the road was just left unseeled so there was not even a flat route that I could pick out. It was like sitting on a washing machine during its super spin cycle but on that washing machine were upturned drawing pins. I was in agony, my legs were like cement and the wind was still pushing me to a halt whilst on a downhill slope! "Why am I still pedalling on a DOWN-HILL-SLOPE!" I would shout, followed by "Why am I still shouting-AT-THE-WIND"
I made the decision to collapse on the side of the highway further off the horrendous lane that I was given onto some very dry, very sharp grass. There was nothing else for me to choose from so I lay there for around 20 minutes and ate a big bag of ritz biscuits or equivalent of and made pictures in the clouds as the odd motorist beeped past me (I'm guessing to see if I would flinch or not) I managed to somehow see Michael Caine's character of Ebeneezer Scrooge from "The Muppets Christmas Carol," looking disappointed at me from the clouds and so I picked myself up and decided that I was going to cycle one more hilltop then find a field along the motorway.
The motorway turned out to be Turkey's record breaking attempt for the longest one half of a motorway under construction and so I had to cycle on a white line with 4 lanes of lorries and coaches crammed next to me into 2 lanes. The elation of cycling a whole continent hadn't really figured in today's proceedings, it was a tough, frustrating and painful day but... I did it.
I found a field on the opposite side of the road, pitched up and lay exhausted in my tent. My face and arms were fizzing with dried sweat from the sun and only then could I manage a wee smile at actually being in Turkey.
At the start of the day I wanted to feel like I had earned riding 2400miles across Europe. By the end of the day, I couldn't even feel my legs!
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