Michael Tyler

Pergamon was supposedly where the Greeks discovered medicine.

Legend has it that a friendly snake learned the Greek wise man, Archias some techniques and taught him how to make cleansing anointment for his patients.

Archias got fairly good at this, and was looking at resurrecting the dead, the technique of this was also whispered by a snake. This annoyed Zeus, (the god), and he struck him with a lightning bolt. That was the end of a very promising career. Still, his legend continues here at Pergamon ruins.

It is a world heritage site

The Asclepion at Pergamon was one of the most important sites of medicine in the ancient Western world, it’s where the stave and snake motif derives from.

The healing rooms are quite impressive, obviously not what they used to be. There were no patients hanging around now, but you can see the revenants of grandeur in the scale of their construction.

I guess this place was like an early hospital.

It has other cool things also. It takes something over an hour to wonder around in total.

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I could put the names in the title, but they’re fairly meaningless.

The hotel in the first Aegean town, Altınoluk, had the most phenomenal breakfast.

Here’s a picture.

Apart from that the room and hotel were fairly new. I cycled into the beach front promenade resort type affair, (called Altınoluk), for dinner, which was bland and disappointing. Still, it didn’t cost too much.

Had a really late start the following day, (Sunday), as the next stop over was only 60km away. Not far at all.

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When I was looking at the roads on Google maps, they all looked so level. Nothing spectacular to see on ‘terrain’ view.

The reality was it was 4 hours climbing, 1 and a bit hours down hill at the end.

As some consolation, the wind was behind me on the climbs. By the time I had reached the coast, it had switched direction. Still. You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

I’m holed up in my hotel now which seems pretty new. It’s not a great big chain, but having been here a couple of hours, it seems pretty functional.

Beaches

There’s quite a lot of beaches here now, all of a sudden as we have hit the Aegean. With the beaches come beach front bars and eateries, many of which have failed and fallen derelict. Others just mothballed for the winter with workers busy bringing back to life.

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Probably the easiest day on my trip so far.

A meagre 30 miles or so.

My muscles will be thanking me for this time off.

Boutique hotel

Didn’t think much. If I’m honest. Breakfast was good. Room was noisy. TV has less working channels than all the other hotels I stayed in, (all 2), still. No English speaking channels when the others did. There were other things which were lacking the attention to detail which is the essence of the ’boutique’ experience.

They tried to charge me for an orange juice. That was with breakfast. Not really happening is it? First hotel ever where they’ve tried to charge me for the juice I’ve had with breakfast.

Got off quite swiftly.

The road to Eceabat

Is quite a short one….

Along the coast. The hills were rolling. The sea on the left, the mountains on the right…

Only a short trip…

Ferry

15 mins. Cost 20 tl. (50p) for me and my bike.

Cannakale

Feels like the first proper resort I’ve been to, even though it’s not a resort, it’s a port town.

There’s a lot going on. It’s got a promenade. It’s got a beach. It’s got a castle.

Ok. The beach I lied about, I did look. It seems to have a naval museum in it’s place. Rather than spend the afternoon on the beach, I visited the naval museum. It was quite interesting, I got to go onboard a submarine! That was pretty cool!

Walking around the naval museum took around 2 hours, all in all.

There was a castle from the Byzantine era also. This is what I originally wanted to see.

Turns out the only way to see it was by visiting the military museum!

Laundry

Sounds boring, but it’s a fact of life, especially when you’re in the sun, cycling.

After the first few days, you sweat less. Your body adjusts. I got wet yesterday in the hail. Damp stinky clothes? So, I dropped them off. Washed and dried cost me about £5. Slightly more, but it was mid day before I brought them in.

The hotel wanted to charge me double, (at least). Never get your laundry done at the hotel, chances are they’ll be using the local launderette. You’re saving them a trip, and yourself a lot of money.

Here’s some pictures from the day.

Tomorrow

Not a massive journey. Moving southward toward the Aegean coast!

Until next time.

Very testing. Wind in my face. Lots of hills. Significant hills which were long, steep and on winding roads.

After the first 12 minutes of so getting out of Kumbag, spent the entire morning stood on the pedals.

This really didn’t go away, or at least the wind didn’t. It was joined by a hailstorm later on!

The hills did improve in that the bends went away. When you’ve got bends like that, it’s impossible to sit down and just cycle normally.

In terms of the geography, flora and fauna, things were much more interesting.

Breakfast

Was late at the hotel, service started at 9.

It was a nice breakfast.

Kumbag is the first sea level area for quite a distance, which I guess is why it’s got the port.

The hotel, Novo Port Hotel, tried to fleece me a little on the dinner. When I arrived at 20.00, the idea of eating in and just being able to relax made me ask, ‘how much is dinner?’. To which she said €8, fish and chips. I thought, this is a good deal, but I didn’t really want the chips so much, so she said salad. So I said, ‘ok’.

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Yes, there is a place called Kumbag!

I thought I should visit… More seriously, it was the only place with a hotel that I wanted to stay at on the peninsula that was a reasonable distance from Istanbul.

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Tomorrow I will begin the cycling part of my journey. It was a lucky thing that I decided to visit some of the galleries and musea on the other side of the river.

Derailleur trouble

It turns out the front derailleur was not functioning too well and it took me around 30 minutes to sort it out. I ended up having to take it off the frame entirely and reset it’s position.

It must have taken a knock somewhere, either in the hotel or in transit, meaning that it wouldn’t reach the higher gears 17 – 24.

Better to discover it now. Get it out of the way.

Cycling around Karakoy

After that I cycled down to Karakoy which is on the other side of the river.

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