I was at the breakfast room on the top floor of the hotel even before 7 am, where I had a nice view of the surroundings, including the castle. The food was actually quite pleasant, the only issue is that bread/simit had not arrived, but there was a wide variety of bureks, cheese, vegetable and fruits, so I did not complain (all too much).

Alas, not a word of English

Caj - Turkish tea, this is always a compulsory part of Turkish culture. Next to the road were dozens of rest places, in front of them a smoking kettle - these marketing that inside the restaurant fresh tea was brewing.

Marketing of tea...

I climbed up to a summit, which was just below 1,000 meters of altitude, after which I has a good view of the surroundings.

My bike in the car

We drove off, first looking within the outskirts of the same town, where there would have been a mechanic, but he was not around, so we set off for the next town, called Merzifon. It was 20 kilometers away and when within town, we found a nicely equipped bike shop, but the mechanics, who were having lunch, turned us away (till today, I am not sure why) and were told to go to another shop. The mechanics there were also having lunch, so Zafar bid me good luck and drove off.

While I was waiting for the mechanics, I discovered a very nice home of a stray cat - it had made an old car wreck its home.

A cozy home for a stray cat...

Lunch ended after roughly forty minutes and the mechanics, who until then were rather mellow, became very active. They hauled my bike into the shop, worked on it for almost an hour and now I had a brake that was again fully functional. Now comes the Turkish part - they would not want to be paid, only that I sit with them, drink a tea and eat a mandarin. Well, in the country where I live, such kindness would be unimaginable...

As a thank you, I went on a mission on finding a baklava shop, which I found in the town center. Zafar had told me there were impressive Turkish baths in town and I did see them from the outside, but I wanted to buy the baklava. I bought about a kilogram of these sweets and brought it back to the shop - they were very thankful (so was I for their work). As I mentioned, the Turkish people are really nice - see Zafar and the mechanics...

Friendly mechanic

It was already 3 pm by the time I left town, so not a lot left of daylight. Here I reached a sort of a minor milestone, it being that my D100, the road I had been riding on for several days, veered off towards the south and now I was on a different road, D795, leading northeast, towards the coast. As I had mentioned earlier, I would meet the D100 a couple of days later, on the seconf part of my adventure.

The clouds, which were definitely around the entire day, but were grateful enough not to rain of me that day, were now threatening to change their mind. As it got darker, I checked my options - there was a hotel to my right (towards the south, but I was headed northeast) some 5 kilometers away and there was another one 19 kilometers away, 15km of which would be downhill. Both darkness and rain were imminent, the former was for sure, I was hoping the latter one would not remain a theoretical possibility.

I will never find out how the "other" option would have worked out, I went for the summit, it started raining just before I had reached the elevation of 900 meters.

It was already raining on the pass...

Now I had 15 kilometers of downhill riding, it was raining, pitch dark and very cold. Luckily, gravity helped quite a bit, I was eating up the distance quickly and was playing mind-games as I was rolling - 3 kilometers gone, that means 3/15, which is one-fifth, which is 20%, meaning 80% is left, then 5 kilometers gone, translation to 5/15, which is one-third, 33%, so 66% to go... and so on and so forth.

For the first time I was on this trip, I was practically shivering when I reached the hotel. I managed to haggle a bit with the receptionist, little did he know that I would have paid a smaller fortune for a room, the next hotel was only miles and miles away. Google called it "Live" Hotel, but I believe the correct name is "Liva" Hotel - who cares, I was happy to be in a relatively warm room. There was a stove in the lobby next to the reception, the receptionist wanted to treat me for a tea, but I told him all I wanted was to get out of my very wet clothes and take a hot shover. It was only in the shower that I stopped shivering, then fell into the bed - doing my best to dry my stuff (yet again).

The full distance that day was around 122 kilometers, but 20 of these were driven by car, so the net figure is 100 km. Apparently, the altitude gain was roughly 900 meters. Here is the map.