Day 50 Boyalik to Istanbul

In which Sid and Doris leave the sad airport hotel and cycle down the airport motorway until they can break onto country roads to Saray with its Istanbul ferry stop.

So, the title of the post gives away that we are now in Istanbul and at the Centre of Now. Thank you to all who have kept us going, encouraged and mocked us. Today we cycled 50 kilometres and made 443 meters of ascent, quite intense in parts though of course on average today we were descending to the Bosphorus. Say it again: cycled to the Bosphorus and Istanbul which took 3,344 kilometres and over 20,000 metres of ascent. (Compares with 2,500 kilometres flown on a Great Circle route, Stansted to Istanbul. It would have been easier, faster and probably only £25 plus extras from Ryanair but less memorable.)

People who write that there is no sensible way into Istanbul by bike may be correct; we have heard of a route in through Siliveri but Route Replan Version 7.3(a)(iv) had us come in from the north. The D020 from Boyalik past the airport to the Gokturk turnoff is a freeway with large clover leaf junctions. It is no place for bicycles. Sid and Doris elected to cycle this on the basis of map reading coloured by intense wishful thinking behind rose tinted contact lenses and some unreasoning belief in their own immortality, after some discussion about manic completer-finishers, some of it conducted at length while standing on the hard shoulder before a particularly complex and busy junction.  [No pics – Doris.  Just look it up on Google StreetMap thing and then add in some more construction lorries]

Sid and Doris are alive, possibly because of the icons as well as vairy cautious crossing of joining and leaving traffic lanes. (For Private Eye readers: see icons in Posts passim). We will light candles. For the Brits: it is like cycling to Portsmouth down the A3(M) across the M275 junction, but legal. And we know it is legal because at one point we drove past a Gendarmerie car facing up the hard shoulder whose crew refused to make eye contact.

It was not as scary as Sid’s trying to push start the Peugeot 504 backwards across an Italian motorway junction in 2012, but for Sid the D020 will do for scary until a scary thing comes along. Sid’s average resting heart rate is now around 43 bpm; this morning an Alsatian erupted out of the Armco when we had nowhere to run to and his Garmin probably recorded about 243bpm.

After around 30 k of freeway Bonkers cubed we pulled onto Country Roads down to Gokturk which is like an outpost of Dubai compared with yesterday’s geriatric villages. Coffee and cakes, wooo. And very soon afterwards the first of  our encounters with Istanbul’s original aqueduct. [Sorry I don’t seem to have mastered the Panorama setting on the iPhone and a taxi decided to have a starring if rather smeary role – Doris]

From here we had a brief climb through a very calm and old-looking forest. Brief but maybe 1 in 8 in places and given our gearing, the luggage, our legs and our heads, too hard for pedalling. We own up to a bit of ‘walking with bikes’ (not pushing) through the forest section. From there down to Sariyer was epitomised by an alley of plane trees and also featuring a sign saying something like “Cars and bicycles please play nicely together”. Coming into town Sid won 50p for seeing the Bosphorus first.

We turned left at the water in search of our ferry stop. Only in order to maintain our tradition, we just missed one but the ticket man was charming and there was another one soon. We have cycled to the Bosphorus and soon we’d be in Istanbul. High paw. Hug of the day, and time for us to investigate the “selfie” function on the iPhone. [Which we are not very good at yet – D.]

Finally, whatever the ColRegs might say on the subject, the ferry always has priority over all other vessels.  Don’t bother arguing that one, just throttle back your engine and change your course.

From our ferry stop we went first to ProBike who were very welcoming and we have much confidence the Neddies will be fit for more abuse by Sunday. Doris has new cycle shorts, for her new physique and not a moment too soon as the Lycra had long gone in the others.  [Cue song “Baggy trousers” – Doris]

The apartment is an Ikea haven. We have a balcony in an eccentric artisan quarter and are not far from cafes that might have non-risible food offerings. We will eat, sleep and make new plans. London to Istanbul, it is done.