​Late leaving again!  Climbing up out of Orhangazi I met a man and his wife who invited me to have coffee.   He has built his house –but he and his wife don’t speak very much English.  It was a lovely hiatus.  Then later the same day I met two Turkish English speaking cyclists with some very flash gear on their bicycles.  
They assured me I was about to go downhill – but I knew from my map I had another couple miles of uphill to traverse.
 
Shortly after leaving them, I came upon a hungry dog with four very new puppies.    I suspect it’s the wrong time of year for these youngsters – as it was for the kittens in Kekova – but I gave the mum my lunch anyway, as she was obviously more in need of protein than me.  I’d have put sudocrem on the open sore I could see on one of her nipples if I thought she’d have let me get near it – but she’d growled at me when I’d petted one of the pups so I suspected not.  I gave her a scratch behind the ears instead. 
It was up for a while more – with better and better views – until the glorious downhill again – towards the coast and the sea of Marmara. 
 
I lose my way slightly about midway between Yalova and Çiftlikkoy.   I see children coming home from school.  Ask two guys the way and they give me great instructions and send me down the road I thought looked like it was disappearing (as it got narrower and muddier).  I stop for a couple of cheesy buns and a lovely chat with the owner and crazy cat-guy of the pastry shop.
Then had an expensive pizza supper –but plenty enough to put half in a doggy bag for later.     
 
The ferry was fun and then it was on up into Gebze.  I had a bit of a minor fall as I was coming out of the harbour – there were posts to the right of the road – and I cycled in between them – not realising there was very thin wire connecting the posts which I couldn’t see in the dimpsy – despite torch and headlight and streetlights.  I got tangled up in the line, broke it and (obviously) fell over, which was a bit of a shock.  No harm done and onwards.   (I had a few drops of the Bach rescue remedy that Sophie from Paris had given me for just such an occasion). 
 
 Noone told me there was a hill – which is just as well, because then you just get on with climbing it.    I found the hotel after a bit of running around, at about 9pm.  The guy on reception was fascinated by me, I believe.  I think he was quite innocent – he had a picture of his two girls on his phone, which endeared me to him somewhat.  Kept bringing me çay and more çay -   however I was a little bit surprised when he brought tea to my room –walking in after knocking (not even waiting for the ‘enter’).  It was 0020hrs and I was in bed!  Fortunately I was actually awake and looking at emails.  I locked the door after that, and took the phone off the hook and slept soundly. 
 

​Find it very difficult to motivate myself to get moving in the morning.    Got diary completely up to date, transferred some to the computer and FB then finally my stomach made me get up and go find some brunch.   Rode into town and bought some burek.  Sat by a park outside a mosque, eating the savoury pastry and people watching – when, before I know it, it’s midday!  Stop once more before I’m out of town to have çay and say hello to two women who invite me to sit at their table.    We converse as well as we can, but the language barrier is hard to overcome.  I’m always surprised by how much we do seem to comprehend.  I’m still in no hurry.  I’m aware that as long as I get 25miles under my belt I will reach Istanbul by the 21st, which is a full week earlier than I had given myself. 
 
The road I am on is small, and potholed and passes through villages and agricultural undertakings.   This land is fertile and I see huge cabbages, chilli peppers, beans growing and fields where sunflowers have been harvested. 
I pass through two villages where everyone seems to be celebrating weddings.  In the first the drummers are just leaving.  The women are eating icecream altogether (with the children running around) and the men are sitting separately with their glasses of çay.   Two guys walk past absolutely plastered in mud.  I’m not sure that THAT was about – but they looked happy. In the next village, the drummers are still drumming and the men are dancing – with people still turning up to the celebration. 
 
A man sat outside a shop waves at me to stop and have some çay.  Any excuse is good, but I wish I spoke more Turkish!   I ask him his name but it takes me a few minutes to realise he’s given me the name of the village!  (Çardik).   
 
Nowhere on my route today is big enough to have a hotel, or even a pensiyon, so I am going to be totally brazen and test the Muslim hospitality.    The biggest name on my map is Toprakocak – so this is where I decide to stop for the night.  All I want (need) is somewhere sheltered to put my sleeping bag. 
 
When I reach the village, I stop in one of one of those places where the men gather for çay and games (the place with the flag and a picture of Ataturk hanging outside) to ask where there is a place to stay.     I cause a minor furore.  NOone speaks English but I have my ‘point it’ book.  I try and explain that it’s too far to cycle to a big town (and the wrong direction).  I get out my knitting and sit and wait to see what will happen. 
 
Children gather around – quite a large group – to practise their “What is your name?” and their knowledge of English numbers “onetwothreefourfivesix...”  The teacher and his wife stop by and give me a bunch of grapes.  
A 21year old girl does really well at questioning me and they are fascinated by my photographs – but she and the children are eventually dispersed and sent home by the men.  
 
I am aware that I am being discussed and am given copious amounts of çay and even food (though I have some in my bag).  I offer money in return but it is refused.  Finally a man called Benim Ismim Yucef is given the responsibility of sorting me out and uses his phone to translate (no wifi around here).   He asks me what my request for the night is.  I explain I just want somewhere sheltered to put my sleeping bag.   He asks me if the mosque (across the road) will be OK.  I reply absolutely, yes indeed.  “OK”, he says – using the phone – “make yourself relaxed until 9pm” – it’s now 7pm.   Plenty of time to drink çay, blog and knit.   My favourite question via the phone: “Is your hungry belly full?”.  I think they’ll  be pleased to be rid of me, but are all very curious. 
 
At only half past 8 I am summonsed to follow the three men – including Benim – across the road and into the mosque.  It is fairly plain by some mosque standards, with painted Arabic inscriptions on the wall rather than tiles – but the interior has a deep pile red patterned carpet over all the floors.  I remove my shoes at the door and am shown there is a shelf to put them on, inside the door. 
Benim waves in the general direction of the main room – I can sleep anywhere and be safe.  Another man shows me the light switches.  I ask where there are washing facilities and am shown a separate room outside with stools and taps.  The WC is back across the road, below the tea rooms. 
It’s very comfortable, even though my inflatable mat has a tiny leak, and I sleep well. 

​I spend a pleasant morning in the sunny pastry shop below the hotel, supping black instant coffee, eating baklava and (amongst other things) watching a video of Michelle Obama talking about Donald Trump’s sexual predatory behaviour and comparing it in my mind to some Turkish men.   I am following John Grant’s instruction to eat more baklava.   I can do that easily – I have a sweet tooth (the few of them that are left). 
 
I finish the first chart of the cowl I am knitting and the woman in the shop comes over to have a look.   It’s an Åsa Tricosa pattern and I’m loving it.  The woman also loves it , and makes that gesture for ‘beautiful’ I’ve seen so many Turks do – gathering the fingers and thumbs together and turning them towards the body with a bent wrist (like making a shadow bird) bob the hand up and down slightly.    Time to get going.
 
I am just starting to climb up a 10% hill (the biggest hill of today) when two lads stop and offer me a lift – for petrol money.  I’m happy to get a lift up the hill and they drop me off about 15miles up the road before turning off.  Now I’m not so far from Inegöl which means rerouting again but seems a good place to find a hotel.   
And so it works out.   I don’t move out of the hotel room, not even to find supper, but blog – and look at videos of home.  What a beautiful place I do live in.

I stayed in my room catching up on this blog (it’s slow, verrrrry slow – like me, on the road).  Then, in the afternoon, I wandered over to the Tile museum behind the Cami.   A gaggle of 17yr old girls made me feel like a celebrity by mobbing me, and asking me lots of questions.  They were practising their English and it was great fun. 
 
Inside the Tile museum, the patterns on the plates and tiles reminded me of William Morris designs – though I suspect I know which came first.  I sat and tried to draw one of them – more complicated than they seem, but mostly based on a grid.  There were also some rather beautiful little embroideries which (I’m sure) some woman would have lovingly slaved over.
 
I took a meandering route back to the hotel.  Love sweetie shops – can’t get enough baklava!  I like the atmosphere in this town.
 
I am fascinated by the hijab and its relative, the abaya or chador.    Modern young things tend to use the hijab like it’s a hairdo.  I have watched videos of young women demonstrating quite complicated folds and pinnings.  If you have a long coat and cover it with a sparkly trim, it’s going to stand out, isn’t it?  Some of the headscarves are beautiful – heavy silk in gorgeous colours - folded just so, to reveal the stripe or show off the pattern.   But why bother?  I guess it's because it's a symbol for modesty.  Now, a long black abaya –that will hide you, trip you up, slow you down, most certainly.  

​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!).  

​Gave a Turkish dog some bread this today, in return for her photograph. She was wary to begin with.  I felt bad about getting her hopes up for more. 
 
I’m sitting in (yet another) café drinking strong black coffee and I’ve been given my first Turkish delight.   Tiny sweet, chewy cubes of peppermint, rose, vanilla accompany the bitterness of the coffee.    Am contemplating how much more there is to go to Istanbul.  Just a little bit more up then it’s mostly downhill to tonight’s hotel:  I’m looking forward to that.   Feeling quite tired and just want to sit and gaze off into middle distance, listen to the hum of traffic coming and going, feel the cool breeze.  Best get going.
 
It wasn’t the best downhill ride I’ve experienced because there was a mean NE wind blowing in my face all afternoon – slowing me down.    Inspired by Cheryl, I started trying to compose haiku as I pedal along, down up, down up.
 
It started to threaten rain as I neared my quarry – dark clouds looming,  but held off thankfully.  I said yesterday that the climate was like an English summer: too true! 
 
I’m completely exhausted and an early night is in order, methinks.  It seems all I’ve been doing for the last week is cycle along an endless D-650 through miles of drought stricken brown land with mountains in the distance.   Then I book into yet another soul-less hotel to eat, sleep after trying to blog with useless and slow wifi.  Strangely enough, I’m loving the experience. 

There are only 2 roads going north out of Sandikli – and I manage to take the wrong one, of course – it goes to a village called Kiz and ends.   I don’t have to backtrack all the way, thankfully.  I was only 1½ miles out of the way before I realised and soon got back onto the familiar D-650.   I had just started climbing a hill (the sign says 6% but I’m exhausted from the last few days’ efforts I think) when Mehmet stops and offers me a lift to the outskirts of Afyon.  I accept with alacrity and it’s just time to do some knitting.  His English is basic, but I think he polished ball room size floors with one of those huge polishers.  The hotels around the area where he drops me off are all full or look expensive and imposing.  I ride a half dozen miles or so closer to the centre of town and find a room at the Grand Ari for the Grand price of £35 or 150TL.  To compensate I find a hotel for tomorrow night and book it at just 15TL. 
 
I’ve been reading obsessively since leaving Gill and Jeremy’s with a couple of books: finished James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces”.  Discover from t’internet that his ‘memoir’ is mostly fiction.  He makes much of the ‘truth’ in his book and makes mock of and puts down liars in no uncertain terms, which is ironic and disappointing too.    Though, as pointed out by the poet John Dolan, many of the main characters in the book are very clichéd and if I’d stopped long enough to think, in the headlong rush the book is written in, I could have guessed.    Perhaps I enjoyed reading it because clichés are popular, are 'easy', right? 
 
As I get closer to Istanbul, there are noticeably more European refreshment stops: McDonalds, Starbucks, big motorway service stations.  However there are still the tulip glasses of never ending çay and the call to prayer echoing around the countryside periodically to remind me this is Turkey.
 

​Started out at 11am – which seems to have become the habit when escaping hotels in the morning, what with trying to get the wifi to work and upload a few photos. 
 
The road was mostly undulating today.  I am getting to know the D-650 intimately following its wide, smooth tarmacked, wide shouldered progress leap frogging across Turkey from largish town to largish town.     I went gently up for a half mile then faster down for another.  Old friends chicory and that fuzzy leaved yellow flowerd plant were back in the verges again. 
The surrounding land had become seriously agricultural, with stalls spaced fairly regularly along the verges, selling sacks of potatoes and onions. 
 
The weather was decidedly English: just like our summers.   Warm, but not unbearable, intermittent sunshine as the sun played hide and seek in the clouds.   A brisk breeze is still trying to knock me off my bicycle on occasion.   The nights are chilly enough to need a light duvet as opposed to the sheet that has been more than adequate up till now.    268 miles to go – not quite half way, but nearly. 
 
I haven’t seen any road kill for a while – does this mean there are fewer mammals around?  (NB I live to regret writing this over the next few days).
I occasionally smell the unmistakable smell of decomposing bodies, but mostly a floral perfume mixed with diesel fumes.