After last night's ongoing torture yet experience and a half, you can imagine that it was hard to work out where the night ended and the morning began. Everything just seemed to blend into one bleak, cold and windy chore. The good thing was that I had a light to head for, the man I woke up to who was shovelling cow dung into a frosted wheelbarrow probably didn't have as much determination as I had to get up and leave! Luckily there was nothing to put away as I didn't unpack anything other than the sleeping bag, that again had probably played a massive part in keeping me alive.
On leaving the village I had to pass Helldog's house to get back on the main road. I did so as quickly as my early morning creaky legs could handle and the horrible mutt must've been sleeping still, either that or it was too cold even for him to run out and intimidate a lonesome cyclist. The good thing about the day was that the bitter wind was a tailwind and I made good miles even though my body was pretty stationary throughout. I managed to find a half decent supermarket that still had 30% of its aisles taken up by chocolate and biscuits. There was 1 extra aisle for pasta and soups which I made the most of and I finally got a loaf of bread for lunch.
The cold weather really wouldn't of been an issue had I had full length gloves and possibly better socks. When your fingers are cold on a bike though, that's all you can think about and trying to get them warm with a strong wind blowing in all directions now is next to impossible. You try the one hand approach whilst doing a variation of things with the other hand like rubbing the thigh, under the bum, in the pocket or just wiggling the fingers. The first 7 hours of my day were spent trying in vain to get blood to my fingers along with wiping snot away from the thatched shelf on the roof of my upper lip.
Happy warm truck drivers would give me an encouraging beep as they drove past, I couldn't even lift my arm to acknowledge. The day could only turn worse if Nigel decided to give up but luckily it eventually went the other way and as soon as the clouds disappeared the sun beamed down and baked my body. It felt amazing and because I was pretty much head down and cycling hard all day I had covered nearly 80miles before 5pm.
The landscape turned from desolate, flat farmland to mountainous with varying colours as I got closer to Denizli. The warm sun allowed me to stop a few times and enjoy the scenery. I then had to stop again for an event that I was unsure of the result of as I hadn't experienced it in around 3.5 days. I thought for a moment my body had evolved into the ultimate cyclists body and realised that going to toilet was a sign of weakness and would slow any sportsman down so it had decided to stop doing it. No such evolution I'm afraid, the pills I used just worked a treat and I'm sure you'll be pleased to here that we are very much back in full working order. So much so that anyone casually walking past the tree that I stopped at would have a shock and if it comes on the news that there's been a record breaking sized Burmese python found in Turkey then you all know what it really is.
The sun in the late afternoon naturally made a huge difference to my mood and after getting on the last road needed to get to before my morning target of Pamukalle and cycling past the 3000 mile mark, I was very happy to find a place for the night. I rode past lots of unkept fields out in the sticks that were perfect for wild camping but the road had a barrier running along the side which I wasn't going to bother clambering Nigel over. Eventually I found a break in the barrier and a very suitable Pomegranate farm to camp in.
My position led me to question actually where I was. What do you call a field that grows pomegranates? An orchard? A grove? I still don't know but I would call it a patch. I would like to think I'm growing as a wild camper and I'm starting to notice the signs to whether I'm likely to be visited by a disgruntled farmer or not. Here were my signs that others can use if they fancy giving it a go:
The track, if its well worn that means the tractor uses it a lot or it is walked a lot and the chances of public interaction are high, for me, I had a lot of weeds and plants growing through the hardened track marks so I was good but not always a guarantee.
Surrounding fields, if they are well kept and farmed or short grass then cover will be hard to find and sound (even if its a distant barking dog) will affect your sleep. For me, one locked up orchard with a tiny shed but two sides were an overgrown and rotting sweet corn field and one was the highway so if I got far enough into the "patch" I was ok.
What's in the farm? If you choose to camp in a field full of beautiful ripe strawberries ready for picking then you're asking for a smacked bottom in the morning, my pomegranates were not ripe yet, trust me, they weren't quite ready, so I was happy my night was going to be quiet and free from interruptions.
I say they weren't quite ripe, they were a few weeks out which meant I still had a go and got a few shots of juice out of them but boy aren't they messy?! I thought about how I must've looked, covered in mud and dust stumbling around the patch due to uneven hard ground, wielding a knife with pomegranate juice dripping from Beirdre in a very similar way to Hell dog had drool. Nobody would've approached me anyway if it was their farm, they would've called the police!
A good meal of mushroom pasta, followed by biscuits and multivitamins for pudding and all of a sudden the freezing majority of the day is forgotten! Lets hope for a good night sleep to finish it all off.
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