Early in the morning, I bid farewell to my apartment in Batumi, washed and braved the cold weather to ride to Ella´s apartment, her place being about 10 kilometers outside the city, not far from the shore.

For those of you who either do not remember what they had read on the Introduction or have simply forgotten it, we were now bound to travel to southern Turkey, cut through the country all the way from the Black Sea to the Mediterran Sea, to the place where the ferries travel from to Norther Cyprus. As my bike was too large to fit into Ella´s car, we decided we would leave my bike in her apartment, that is why I was heading there.

I got to (what I thought was) the indicated address a few minutes after 7:30. I had some trouble finding the apartment, as Ella had given her address with a typo in it, but with the help of a Ukrainian gentleman taking his son to work, I managed to locate her. I hauled my bike to the 4th floor (lift was not available) and we set off on our 1,200 kilometer-long journey. Ella´s car is a compact SUV, Mercedes GLA 250, a pretty energetic car. We stopped for coffee, which is Ella´s favorite "meal" (she does not each much), before leaving Batumi.

Soon we were at the border - the one which I had crossed three days previously, where - if you remember - only the drivers are allowed to stay in the car and I, as passenger, had to go through that ordeal of walking through these alleys with dripping water, stray dogs and lots of people hauling large packages. First, however, we had to buy motor insurance for Turkey, which cost about €30 for a month.

We parted, me entering this hideous "skywalk", Ella going through the car control. This time, the Georgian passport control took a loooong time, the first policeman took my passport, inspected it with, even with a magnifying glass for about 10 minutes, then took it to a second, then a third, then a fourth colleague, each looking at it for quite a while. Without saying a word, some 15 minutes later, he stamped my passport and handed it back...what could have been his problem...? I will never find out.

The Turkish check was a lot quicker - and now I had to reunite with Ella, she arrived some 20 minutes after I was through. It took us about an hour or so, but this hour we "won" back, when we had to adjust our clocks backwards, this was the third adjustment on this trip. Turkey also does not participate in daylight savings, so it is now two hours ahead of Central Europe. Now we were driving on the same roads I had been biking on, in the nice sunshine, it looked rather different. The endless lines of trucks showed up again, this time beneath snow-capped peaks.

Trucks waiting for the border xing

We rode all the way to Rize on my friend, road D010, where Ella told me she would have to visit a mall. We left the main road, turned, veered into the morning traffic, parked in the basement of the mall (where we were screened to see whether we were carrying any explosives by security personal), entered the mall (and were screened to see whether we were carrying any guns by security personal) - I was a bit unsure why we were making this stop, it turned out Ella loves Starbucks and this was one of the very few Starbucks places in the area.

We continued all the way to Trabzon on the coast (the town with the castle), terrain familiar to me (D010), there we saw a Starbucks right next to the road, but there we did not stop. There we left the coast, turned southeast, following the recommendation of Google Maps rather religiously. Most of the roads were major highways, two-by-two lane roads, but there were some really high passes to cross, up to 2,000 meters in height, here we were riding on minor roads. Traffic was not an issue, expect for some insignificant traffic jams in towns, but we were making progress. Overall, I was quite amazed with the scenery and thought it would not have been such a bad idea riding my bike through to the Mediterranean after all - but then I can still do this in the future, now I know where these wonderful areas are. I was a bit surprised, as Ella would not let me drive, it was her driving the entire time - for 1,200 kilometers there, 1,200 kilometers back, I was just a passenger. I actually thought the very reason she requested me to come to Batumi was to share the driving, but this was not the case. (By the way, now I understood why Ella so vehemently turned down my offer to start driving the previous evening, where I offered I would drive through the night.)

I have a pretty good experience in forecasting. When we got to a town called Siran, we had 350 kilometers behind us, for this, we needed - including stops at the border and the at Starbucks, some 7 and a half hours, so it was around 2:30 pm (Turkish time). We still had 850 kilometers ahead, while these was no border, it would have meant that even without a minute of stopping, we still had roughly 10 hours ahead of us - provided everything went smoothly. Ella thought we would be able to catch the ferry leaving at 11 pm, I told her that I very strongly doubt that, especially that one cannot ride all the time. there are pitstops required for driver, the passenger and the car itself. Taking into consideration that one has to arrive several hours prior to the sailing (to buy the ticket, for passport control, customs clearance, etc.) it was completely out of question that we would be on the island the following morning. Initially, Ella had booked the apartment on Cyprus from October 30th.

Ella is pretty resilient, a bit like the Duracell bunny, she rode and rode, I was almost falling asleep - sitting next to the driver is not something I usually do. Anyhow, we got to a town called Nigde around 9:30 pm - Ella had driven some 900 kilometers that day, it took 14 and a half hours - so our average including all stops, border, Starbuck coffee, pitstops, etc. was just above 60 km/hour. That average is not earth-shattering, but 900 kilometers in just one day on Western Europe´s perfect highways is a good outcome, not to speak of the some of the tiny mountain roads full of pit-holes in freezing Turkey.

We found a fair hotel in Nigde for around €28 for each of our rooms and retired for the evening.

Well, even though it was not biking, I did find a map to paste in, here it is.