DAY THIRTY-NINE: EUROPE MEETS ASIA

Day Thirty-Eight (Kırklareli to Çerkezköy) Daily Distance: 97.48 kms

Day Thirty-Nine (Çerkezköy to Istanbul) Daily Distance: 117.86 kms

Total Distance: 3624.29 kms

Summary (Poynton to Istanbul): 3,624.29 kms [2265.18 miles] in 39 days, comprising 34 cycling days and 5 rest days. On average, we rode 105.48 km [65.92 mi] per day over 5 hours and 18 minutes, at an average speed of 19.91 km/hr [12.44 mi/hr]. My maximum speed was 68.5 km/hr [42.8 mi].

Day Thirty-Eight was flat tyre day. Jim had three in half an hour. I had my second of the trip late in the day, and blame a combination of my previously mentioned very-worn tyre, and a huge reverse pothole in the road – you’d understand that a lot better having seen Eastern European roads.

It was also the day that my future career was defined for certain: the Pied Piper of the 21^st Century, because that’s seriously how you feel as kids come running to the side of the road in every Turkish town as you ride through. And in case you’re wondering too, my name is ‘Parri’. Or Cameron. It depends.

We had lunch in a very traditional ‘lokanta’ where there was no menu and we just got what the owner thought we might like. We did. After that we headed into our final stop over before the big grand Eurasian city finale, Çerkezköy.

Çerkezköy was most memorable for the Corner Bar. Searching for a beer, we were directed to this dark, two-story pub where the staff were friendly and the ladies too friendly, if you know what I mean. We downed our beers quickly and got out as fast as we could.

The following day began with the excitement of Jim having to change (another) flat tyre, followed reasonably quickly by two revelations about the day ahead: (1) the road into Istanbul is NOWHERE NEAR as flat as the map may indicate, given that it rolled up and down to heights that equalled our sense of excitement as each pedal drew us nearer to our final destination; (2) Çerkezköy is more like a far outer suburb of Istanbul than a separate city, given we were riding through highly developed – and busy – land all day.

The less said about our arrival into Istanbul, the better. Let’s just say that they obviously haven’t seen many bikes sharing roads with them over the years. The city is SO colossal that we actually seemed to enter it 60 or so kilometres before our arrival in the centre. For a big chunk of that distance, we were riding on a 12-lane highway with trucks and cars within touching distance on either side: harrowing.

Jim, Alan and I took the traditional method of approaching such a situation: it was heads down, concentrating all the way – and more importantly, praying for a desirable outcome. Dan on the other hand seemed to develop a new tactic for dealing with this by glaring at and even kicking cars that cut him off. (He wants it noted that in every case they well and truly deserved it, and the driver of the one car he actually made contact with looked back at him with a very guilty look. Consider it noted.)

At 6:18pm that evening, approximately 200m after Alan was the lucky recipient of the last flat tyre on the trip, we arrived into magnificent Sultanahmet Square, in between the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia. It was comically really, with Alan wisely deciding not to change the flat so close to the end, but rather just pumping it up enough to literally limp across the finish line. We documented the moment with some photos:

and celebrated our achievement as dozens of tourists stared us down, seemingly aware of what we’d just achieved, and we then headed to our final hotel to ditch the bikes for good!

The following day Alan and Dan had to prepare themselves for flights home, since they only had the one day in Istanbul, so Jim and I thought we’d take the opportunity to do the same. We wandered to the Grand Bazaar where after asking a few locals and being directed from shop to shop we ended up finding a man who, from underneath a nondescript stairwell, sold us big bags to send our bikes home in. Amazing!

We pulled the bikes apart, carefully wrapped them in cardboard, fit them into the bags and tied rope around to create makeshift handles. The others had to see the Blue Mosque (situated just 50m from our brilliantly positioned hotel) the Basilica Cistern and Hagia Sophia, and then we had our final meal in a very smart Turkish restaurant before saying our goodbyes.

In the following two days, Jim and I enjoyed the rest that Istanbul has to offer – from the Spice Markets, to lunch under Galata Bridge, to a visit to my friend Mr Delicious and his Turkish delight / baklava store and, finally, a mind-blowingly awesome cruise up the Bosphorus to the Black Sea – imagine the Grand Canal of Venice, but wider, longer, more modern, and overall just more impressive.

We had also wanted to ride to Asia but one of my only disappointments of this trip was that this was not possible since it is not legal (there are only two bridges crossing the Bosphorus and both act as motorways). To be honest, we did consider giving it a crack anyway, but a quick session with Google lead me to the blog of a man who tried the same some time ago and ended up being stopped by a policeman halfway across the Bosphorus Bridge. The policeman waved down the next lorry to drive he and his bike across. It was some consolation that our boat trip did enable us to have a brief visit to Asia since we disembarked on the Eastern side of the river, so I suppose now we can really say that we crossed the entire continent!

So this is it: the fat lady has not only sung but she is back in the changing room getting out of her lycra. The final blog has been written and the bikes have made it back to the UK (Javier has already been cleaned and out and put back together, albeit with slightly wonky handlebars?!).

The continent has been conquered, but most important of all, my amazingly generous family and friends have smashed my fundraising goal for this trip: the final tally stands at £3,672 raised for Parkinson’s Disease! THANKS!

I’d also like to send a big thanks to Jim, Alan and Dan for introducing me to touring, for the companionship and for all the laughs and stories along the way, plus to Edith for the lucky heather and Irene for organising me in so many ways.

Louis L'Amour once famously said, “There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. Yet that will be the beginning“. Never before has a quote been so appropriate for me. So until New Zealand 2013, from this happy cyclist it’s “over and out”.