Four Weeks Cycling Across Turkey

We spent four weeks cycling in Turkey and we feel that we barely scratched the surface of what the country has on offer. It’s quite tricky to condense it all into one article, especially with the amount of anecdotes we’ve collected in this time, including being invited for tea and dinner with locals, a screaming man close to our wild camping spot, and an unexpected encounter with a brown bear. Scroll down for a full report of our time in Turkey, just below the preview of our route.

The Good Things

1. The biggest stand out from our time in Turkey was the people. We were met with constant kindness and generosity in the form of people buying us tea, stopping to give us fruit, water and bread, and inviting us to eat meals and spend time with their families. 
2. We loved the Turkish tea culture, and also Turkish breakfast. We’re definitely going to replicate this as best we can when we get home. 
3. The land is very green and forested. 
4. The weather for June/July was perfect - we had 95% blue bird days, one day we had 10 minutes of rain, and the last few days it was cloudy.
5. The wild camping was good in the mountains (though watch out for bears). It was trickier but still possible and tolerated in agricultural and in more built up regions.
6. The unsuspecting hero of Turkey really was the service stations. Modern, clean and high tech toilets, air conditioning, and a place to stock up on water and snacks! 
7. Friendly dogs! 

The Not So Good Things:

1. There’s lots of rubbish, everywhere. By the roads, in the woods and in the sea.
2. The coast road gets very busy from Samsun. There’s a hard shoulder to ride in most of the time, but when there are road junctions this disappears and it can feel a bit sketchy.
3. The sea was good in a few places, but not in most others (trash, tar).
4. The Campsites of Europe are long behind us now. A ‘campsite’ in Turkey is typically a spot on the beach near a restaurant, with a cold beach shower and a squatting toilet.
5. Accommodation was infrequent and expensive relative to everything else.

Our route:

From Greece to Istanbul

We arrived into Turkey in mid afternoon, the border crossing was extremely quick, quiet and modern. We then rode through lots of agricultural fields - mainly rice paddies - until sunset, at which point we started to worry that we wouldn’t find a good wild camping spot. This would be our first time wild camping on the trip (the first of many whilst in Turkey), and we set up at the bottom of a dirt track, tried to avoid the mosquitos, and we set off very early the next day, for fear of being in a farmers way! 

The tea culture is very strong in Turkey, as a lot of people don’t drink alcohol, instead of pubs or bars, you have lots of cafes. From 7am to midnight you can find cafes full of people (mainly men) drinking Turkish tea, socialising and playing games. Turkish tea is served in a small glass jar, it’s black tea and it’s usually taken with a sugar cube or two. 

It would just be a few days of riding until we stopped off at the Luleburgaz Cycling Academy. The cycling academy was set up in 2017, and it allows cyclists to stay in the dormitory for free - it was a prefect way to recharge for a day after making it through Europe. The manager, Inancs, was so welcoming, and we loved chatting to French couple, Tiphaine and Felix who were also staying! 

Our next stop would be in Istanbul, and Zach had plotted us a detour to take us into the city without cycling on the main roads. This involved a good amount of gravel the day before we arrived (20km of gravel), but it was quiet roads, with very few cars! 

As we rode on the gravel tracks getting closer to the city, we planned to wild camp however, the spots we had identified on the map didn’t feel like a good place to stay the night as it was very urban, so we instead decided to push on another 15km to a £26 hotel for the night which was just on the edge of Istanbul. 

This meant that the next morning, we had a lovely ride into Istanbul, along the promenade, down some small roads, and then onto the new cycle path along the railway. You can see the route we took here if you are planning a trip. 

Istanbul to Samsun: Through the Mountains

We hopped on a short ferry across the Bosphorus to get out of Istanbul. This officially marked the start of Asia! From here, we then rode on a very busy road North for a while before turning off into the mountains. The land here was lush, green and heavily forested… it was also quite hilly!

We dipped down to the coast briefly, where we got our first sites of the Black Sea. We decided to have a break and to dip in the sea, however when we got to the waters edge, we saw that there was quite a lot of rubbish in the water… and worse… it turned out that we had both stood in some tar on the sand. The tar was very sticky and was difficult to get off; this experience made us quite wary of the Black Sea. 

It was on this Black Sea stretch that we unexpectedly cycled past a campsite! There were a few tents, and lots of camper vans and a few caravans. There wasn’t anyone on duty, and as we wandered around the site looking for somebody in charge, we were taken under the wing of a friendly Turkish family. They invited us to eat dinner with them - bread, salad, and lots of tiny fish they had caught earlier in the day. Not much English was spoken, so we conversed almost entirely through google translate - and I also got to test out the few words of Turkish I had learnt so far. The language barrier didn’t stop the family from asking difficult questions like “what is your religion”, “what do you think of Trump” and “what do you think about Isreal”, all diplomatically answered.

The next day we headed back up into the mountains, with our next day off in sight. We would be riding for a longer stretch, six days - and having our day off at a ‘resort’ in the mountains. When Zach found the accommodation, he didn’t mention there would be a 300m climb to reach it! The lodge we had reminded us of those at Kielder forest, and although the climb nearly finished me off, it was just about worth it for the view… and the breakfast.

We had no idea before we got to Turkey, but the breakfasts here really are something special. Our accommodation included a two course breakfast each morning and our own Turkish tea kettle! 

We also didn’t expect the service stations on the main road to have state of the art bathrooms! These were present throughout our route in Turkey, and were brilliant for stops throughout the day.

It was at one of these service stations that we began chatting to two lovely Turkish men about our trip. They ended up inviting us back to have tea with them, and so we set off, escorted by their two motorbikes, onto the next town! 

They set up their Turkish tea kettle, and we sat and chatted with them and their family. We were treated to a feast of wonderful food, and really enjoyed the next few hours with the family. They sent us on our way with fruit and bread and lots of memories to remember our time in Turkey. The family also suggested a few safe places we could camp that night, near to buildings - which they said would be safe from the bears. 🐻 We smiled at this, taking it to be one of those cautionary tales we often heard, like “it’s too steep to ride bikes” or “the hotel room won’t fit bikes in”, so we didn’t worry too much about it.

When we neared the top of the climb, a car stopped and gave us some bread and a big bag of cherries! Not long after, we took a forestry track down to a flat patch of wood, where we cooked dinner and set up camp. At dusk, whilst I was brushing my teeth - I was taken by surprise to see a large brown bear dash in front of me, just 15m away! I think it may have been spooked by the sound of my electric toothbrush, as it ran across the track and up the small hill! 

I spent the rest of the evening with adrenaline fuelled panic, trying to find some signal to research if brown bear were dangerous. We were not bothered for the rest of the evening, although every single branch that moved in the wind seemed to spook us.

Samsun to Georgia: Along the Black Sea

We shortly rejoined the main road along the Black Sea just before Samsun. We took a rest day in Samsun, and enjoyed swimming in the sea and spending time on the beach. 

We would be following this road for the rest of our time in Turkey, and it would take us all the way to Batumi in Georgia. 

Along the way there were enough ‘campsites’ that we didn’t need to wild camp. Although these were usually restaurants with space to camp on the beach, basic toilet facilities and cold showers.

We did enjoy having two spontaneous days off, one at a lovely beach, and the other in the city of Trabzon. We managed to find a decathlon and also a sports shop to buy a new sports bra in whilst in Trabzon! 

We stayed with our second warm showers host of the trip in Rize, a lovely man called Mustafa owns a cafe, and he allows cycle tourers to stay overnight. We ate our last Cig Kofte Düram of the trip, and then headed back to play games of OK with the Turkish men at the cafe. Here we also met Kai and Thomas, both cycle tourers, and we organised to ride together the following day.