Wednesday 12th October Atlintas – Kütahye 30.21miles.

​I check the hotel reservation I made last night and discover I’ve been misled!  The one I thought was in a suburb of Kütahye is actually in a place 20km the wrong direction.  The site want to charge me €25 to cancel so I fire off emails to the hotel and the website and cross my fingers.   (I’ve just read that Dario defo died yesterday – I remember going to see “Can’t pay, Won’t pay” when I was a student nurse and that seems apt).
 
I set off and regret what I said about ‘no road kill’ yesterday. Today’s tally equals one squashed hedgehog, one dead dog and one very dead badger.  Conclusion?  Drivers of cars and lorries are letha.l – especially when they are using their mobile phones whilst driving, or drinking alchohol whilst driving or both.  Put that together with all the exploded tyres I see at the verge (resembling dead black crows with their bits of metal sticking up like feet and flapping rags and feathers of rubber and I begin to suspect I’m doomed, riding along the verge  of this motorway.
 
This past week has consisted of getting down and dirty with the D-650, a wide dual carriageway with big shoulders, stretching like a ribbon across broad plains of yellow and ploughed brown with occasional truffula trees.  There’s a haze of mountains in the distance. 
 
I saw an eagle.  That was exciting!  But it was at the wrong end of the telescope. He looked big though, and sat on a rock surveying his terrain.  There must be some small mammals around, to keep him filled.  (Actually - it was yesterday - see photos!).