Day 34: Keşan-Kumbağ (122 km, 1639 m ↑)
Keşan was, despite the size of the town, slightly boring. There were a lot of döner restaurants and tea salons, but hardly any sit-down restaurants and no bars whatsoever. So having three nights here was certainly more than sufficient. On Monday, we met another cyclist, Nicole from Canada, in our hotel. She was a vegetarian which made finding a restaurant even more difficult, but we finally found one and enjoyed dinner together. Udo is only part-time vegetarian for practical reasons on this trip.
Monday night, we had an earthquake. It was the first time in my life I felt one. All others I previously experienced, mainly in Iceland, were during the night, and I never woke up. This one had a 6.0 magnitude, which was big enough so that I could clearly feel my bed shaking even though the epicentre was 230 kilometres away.
Our second last day of biking would be the queen stage of this trip. Not only did we have 1600 metres to climb, we also had a distance of 120 kilometres to cover. Therefore, we got up early and left our hotel at half past seven in the morning. The air was misty and we were cycling through the fog for a long time. But when we approached the top of our first ascent, we came above the fog and the sun started shining.
After the downhill ride, we were supposed to take a road towards the Marmara Sea, but we figured out that this was a gravel road. So we decided to take a different route which implied a second climb. On the downhill from that top towards Şarköy, we had a spectacular view of the Marmara Sea with a lot of ship traffic on it. From here, we followed a coastal road until, towards the very end, we had to cross one more mountain with a lot of ups and downs. To add to the challenge, we also had to live with strong winds and rain during this climb.
Naturally, we were pretty exhausted when we arrived in Kumbağ. We found a kiosk where we could buy some beer and a restaurant that had quite delicious tavuk şiş (chicken skewers). We are staying in a hotel where we are seemingly the only guests. The owner is an old, very strict lady. She was not happy when Udo entered the reception with his bicycle, nor when he entered the hotel room with shoes. So I had to make the statement that the wind blows differently here, compared to our friendly concierge in Keşan.
Our hotel is not the only one which is empty. The whole town seems to be made for tourists, but there are no tourists here. Hence almost all the restaurants are closed. We do manage to find a good Turkish lentil soup for lunch and something for dinner. But I’m looking forward to coming back to a city soon after three nights here.
