I dug out the tool kit from the bottom of my pannier and took the tyre apart. I managed the repair fast and without a hitch. In the meantime I developed an audience of about 5 adults and 10 children all around me, who were watching what I was doing with great interest.

After 10 we were on our way and started our 40th and last day in Turkey.

In the next town we prepared some „buffalo wings”, aka precooked, spicy chicken bits in the park.Our last Turkish town was Hopa. Zita and I have already discussed before we got to the town that we must drink one more Turkish tea before we leave the country.

We found the appropriate place for this by the table of a family restaurant, where we drank with enjoyment the sweet drink from the little tulip glasses for the last time.

You must come to Turkey, by bike, hitch hiking or any other way… They have excellent roads, everybody is very nice and friendly, so much so, that with our Hungarian heads on, it is unthinkable! Turkey is a really good place!

We celebrated our 3000th km and after that we had only a few kilometres to the Georgian border.

On this section the countryside looked just like it does in fashionable Western European holiday resorts. Except there were no crowds, hardly any traffic and the road was twice the width.

We would like to thank every Turkish helper, host, accommodation provider all those myriad of things that we received. We will never forget Turkish hospitality and will  carry its praise into the big wide world!;)

We managed to start early out of Trabzon.

We have arrived in Rise around midday. Rise is the city of tea, as this area produces all the tea for Turkey. Considering the number of Turks we have seen so far drinking tea at all times in all places, they must produce a large amount of it in these parts.

About 10km after Rise finally we found a bathing beach. Zita was promised a swim, so we stopped and went down to the beach.

It was evening by the time we left the beach.

The sun set after a tunnel, we stopped the bikes and ran across the road to see the whole of the golden stripe on the sea, that the setting sun painted on it.

About half an hour after sunset we found our overnight place. Underneath a mosque we found a room they dry tea in. This was underneath the terrace in front of the mosque.  We saw some people above us on the terrace, so we ran up and asked permission to camp there.

Permission given, they sat us down at their table and put a couple of plates in front of us. We got some lovely csorba and a very hot and spicy vegetable stew. The latter could only be eaten with a lot of water, bread and yoghurt, it was so hot. All this time life went on around us, the imam’s children were playing inside thet mosque on the carpet, we sat round the table and told them our story.

By this time I could use quite a lot of useful Turkish, saying where we come from, how long it took, how many kilometres and that this is our honeymoon round the globe.

Much to our suprise they agreed to repair our camera. While we were waiting for the camera being repair, we had the idea to try and find a shoemaker in the town, who could mend the toe-cap of my running shoes. We did find an old shoemaker, who patched up my shoes in this little workshop with the help of his oldfashioned sewing machine.

We rushed back into the Panasonic shop, where to our great delight we found our camera in good working order.

All in all we’we had a happy day today. Although we lost 100km, that was the distance we planned to cover today, but we saved 100.000,-Ft at the same time as we didn’t let my running shoes which had cost fortune  (get ruined = go bust) and we also munayed to get our very expensive camera repaired guite cheaply so we won’t have to buy either at least for the time being.

I was very happy that we could have a walk  in a big forest, among the mountains.The air was much better and everything was very green, beautiful crown, wild forest: it was fantastic.

We didn’t see too much as wasn’t any view, virtually we were walking in a big cloud.

We got a really unique experience in this abbey: this is built in a cliff and the distemper was very beautiful.Practically the half bible was paint on the abbey’s side.

In Trabzon we had visited a catholic church.

At the parish we met Nico who invited us for a tea and cake in the church’s garden where we met also his wife Elena and his godson called Constantin.

At night we left Mehmet’s house, they were very nice with us. For diner we had fish (fish out by Mehmet) and chips, was very delicious; we changed our addresses, made some picture and departed.

On the first day we managed to cover 77km. At the end of the day we were looking for somewhere to camp. We put the tent up in the garden of a family, and then went to have a nice dip in the sea.

We were planning to have an omlette for dinner, but the family had beaten us to it.  As it was Ramadan, they could only eat after sunset, but then they usually had a big feast.

This time we were offered food from this feast, we got csorba and dolma.

It rained all night and it carried on in the morning, so we had to start the next section in the rain.

In the afternoon I found something fairly large and metallic embedded in my front tyre.

We rode through the longest tunnel in Turkey ( 3820m).

Once we arrived in the town of Ordu we did some shopping, then we started the search for shelter for the night, as we didn’t want to stay outside in all this rain.

We chose a half built house, which seemed ideal. Next door there were some people living. We received not only water, but an entire evening meal from them. 

15 year old  Irem made us a beautiful little postcard.

For breakfast Irem made us a sausage omlette.

It rained all day this day too, but we made good progress – 70km – along the shore of the Black Sea.

Our evening was again spent showered with endless Turkish hospitality. As we were rained on all day, we would have liked to spend the night under cover, and we spotted a house being built for this purpose.  This one was in a village.

We were showing them the need for a roof, and sleeping, and bycicle, and in no time we were packing the bikes into a boat building workshop and were invited to sleep on the living room floor. I am sure that if we let them we would have received a bed and bedding too, but that would have definitely made us feel like we were imposing on them.

Us cold, European folks were not used to this enormous hospitality that we had day after day in Turkey… :)

And in the morning there was no chance of getting away without breakfast, they didn’t let us, we were treated to a big breakfast, followed by some packed up food, so we were exremely well provided for.

We had already the tickets to Samsun, but wanted to double check if we can also have the bicycles on the bus this is why we went to the bus station a bit earlier.

We just forgot to ask Mehmet where the bus station is. It was very far, behind lots of hills, but finally we just got there, 15 minutes before the depart so we were in a hurry to have the tickets from the cashier’s office and stripping the bicycles.

We arrived to Samsun at 23.30. We didn’t try to get to the city, find a campsite.

We got to the river side road on the tight and crowded streets. We were cycling in the wide turn-out road.

We left the big Samsun city, after 15-20 km the traffic hushed a bit, the life was easier on the brink of the road, we could take off also the masks.