AUTHOR’S NOTE
THE EVENTS IN THIS SECTION ALL TOOK PLACE IN 1986
THINGS ARE DIFFERENT NOW
ALL THE COUNTRIES VISITED (EXCEPT TURKEY) ARE IN THE EU NOW (2024) – NO VISAS ARE REQUIRED
THE BULK OF THE TEXT IS AS I WROTE IT THEN – SLIGHT ADJUSTMENTS HAVE BEEN MADE IN THE AID OF CLARITY NOW

Wednesday, July 23rd, 1986

Distance travelled 737 kilometres

Dawn at Kepez Camping brought the ever helpful Yusuf to where my door would have been if I had had one, to find out if I wanted breakfast. I said yes and he disappeared to make it. I stumbled out of my bag to find that I was literally only a few feet from the Sea of Marmara which, in the dawn light, was a beautiful and almost unbelievable translucent green colour.

Pitched right beside me was the tent of a German biker who was riding a grossly overloaded Yamaha 650. I admit to being a minimalist, but he had everything – and more. He told me that he was on his way to Beirut, via Izmir. Just to think that people had described MY plans as “sheer lunacy” …..

Breakfast consisted of bread, cheese, olives and …. jam !

Yusuf appeared with another guy who offered me a currency exchange “deal” at a very favourable rate, certainly far better than the rate of the previous day – and that had been in the National Press. I took it and this appeared to make all three of us very happy. I now had a wad of Turkish money, Yusuf’s friend had some of my much coveted US dollars and Yusuf had, I suppose “gained face” – he was, in fact, so delighted that he refused to charge me for either my stay or my breakfast.

Almost reluctantly, I set off southwards to where the ruins of Troy were supposed to be. Before long, I was overtaken by my German neighbour of the previous evening who, despite the mass of luggage he was hauling, was travelling at about ninety miles an hour …. I briefly considered zooming off after him but, almost in the same moment, I spotted a sign pointing to Truva, which I knew to be Troy.

I must confess to being a little bit of an archeological and historical nut. So, it was with some excitement that, having passed a building proclaiming itself to be “The House of Heinrich Schliemann” (who first rediscovered the site in the 1870s), I parked the BMW under a shady tree and walked into Troy.

Considering the importance of the site in historical terms and all of the excavations that had gone on there for over a century, there was not actually much to see.

The Turks had honoured, if that is the correct term, the site with a large wooden horse. It was not how I would have imagined it, it had no wheels and I had a feeling that not many Hoplites could have lurked inside there. The steps would have been a bit of a “give-away” too !

The only real thing to see was a great number of neatly excavated walls and a few surviving artifacts.

Considering its eternal fame, the city appeared to have been quite small, but it would have had a very commanding view over the wide plain that lay between it and the sea. I must confess that, sitting on what was left of the wall, it was very easy to imagine the Greek army, with all of its legendary heroes, drawn up on the plain down below. I, for one, would certainly not have wanted to struggle up that hill, in that heat, wearing a heavy helmet, a big bronze breastplate and carrying a big shield, a sword and a spear !

Author’s Note.
Since I visited, further explorations with modern technology such as GPR (ground-penetrating radar), have revealed that a far larger city than Schliemann imagined that still lays buried below the hill. One day, I suppose, the remains of the full glory that was Troy will be revealed.

Reluctantly, I dragged myself and my thoughts back into twentieth century reality and set off south for Izmir. The road was, for once, quite a good one. It bore all the hallmarks of having been recently “improved”, but there were still some fairly dreadful patches in places. That part of Turkey was very picturesque. The previously mentioned cultivation of sun flowers was everywhere and there were some breathtaking vistas over the yellow fields to the blue Aegean in the distance.

Izmir itself, when I reached it, was quite drab and had little, if nothing, to recommend it. There did not seem to be anything to do so, when I saw a sign for Istanbul, I followed it and soon left the town behind again.

As I left the sea behind me, the countryside changed and the road now led through a far more hilly region. The two-lane road led up some very long inclines indeed, but the surface was very good in comparison with what I had been riding on all day and there were some very long straight stretches. It was, in some places, possible to see for miles ahead.

It was on one of the long, uphill climbs that disaster almost struck ……

Most of the traffic, both in and out of the town, was huge (by UK standards) trucks. These frequently had a trailer, of similar size and sometimes they had two. Even on a motorcycle with a 1,000 cc engine, overtaking one of these behemoths needed to be carefully considered. I was riding up a long incline with a right hand bend at the top of the slope when two trucks, in convoy came around the bend and started down the slope towards me. Suddenly, the following truck pulled out and began to overtake. This completely blocked the road – and there was no hard shoulder. Far from slowing down when he saw me (and I know he did, because he began hooting his horn), the overtaking truck simply put his foot down. There was absolutely nowhere for me to go but off of the road, so I gripped the bars tightly, closed my eyes (I think) and attempted to “Evel Knievel” it over the shallow drainage ditch. Sadly, the back wheel hit the lip of the ditch with such force that, strong grip or not, I was literally thrown off of the back of the saddle and was forced to sit in the dust as my beloved bike gently rolled away for another twenty or so yards before losing momentum and toppling slowly over onto its left hand side. Adrenalin must have kicked in because I was on my feet in a flash and managed to somehow get the BMW vertical again before the petrol started to run out. Quite amazingly, the damage was almost nil. I had broken a (what later proved to be a very expensive) mirror and the left hand pannier was a bit cracked, but that appeared to be it.

I looked around and saw that the two trucks, far from stopping, were already quite a way off and grinding up the next long slope in the distance. I briefly considered riding after them and remonstrating, but guessed there would have been little point.

Instead I concentrated my efforts on getting the BMW back onto the road. This proved considerably more difficult than getting it off of it had been. The drainage ditch, although by no means deep, was comprised of loose shale and it took starting the engine and some careful work with the clutch to get me back up onto the tarmac. It was only when I was finally back on the road that I noticed just how much my hands were shaking.

There was not much I could do, except press on, but I obviously was more than a little bit nervous when I saw trucks approaching. I came to, and by passed, Bursa, quite a large city and pressed on towards Yalova. According to my information, from Yalova it would be possible to get a ferry directly to the south-eastern suburbs of Istanbul.

When I got to Yalova, I located the docks and had a small stroke of luck. I arrived at the ramp just as the ferry was loading and was waved on board before I had bought a ticket. The trip across the calm, blue, Sea of Marmara lasted a couple of hours. When we arrived in the port of Üsküdar, just across the Bosphorus from Istanbul proper, I was simply waved off again. Nice freebie !

Üsküdar is an outer suburb of the greater city and, with all due respect to its inhabitants, it was run-down and extremely dilapidated and shabby. The streets were narrow and the level of traffic was simply appalling. Eventually, to my relief, I spotted a small sign bearing the magic word “ISTANBUL” and soon found myself on an urban motorway. Motorway hardly describes it, actually, as in some places it was twelve lanes wide. Despite all the lanes, the traffic was a sea of vehicles weaving in and out at high speed, all trying to gain that extra microsecond.

It was one of those occasions when you simply have to trust to luck and hope for the best. I had no real idea where I was heading, but that was largely irrelevant as all I could do was hope it was the right way. Slowing to look at signs would have been suicidal. Then the whole motorway rose and I found myself riding over the singularly impressive piece of civil engineering that is the Bosphorus Bridge.

As the road sloped down again, I rode back into Europe. It was now getting dark again and it was with some relief that I saw, far enough ahead to allow me to make the turn without becoming a hood-ornament, a sign indicating a turning to “TOPKAPI”. I knew the “real” Istanbul, or at least the one of my imagination from movies, was now close by.

I do not think I had ever encountered worse traffic in my whole life than that which I found when I left the motorway. Despite the now much narrower roads, every vehicle was being driven with what seemed to be total, manic aggression. The weaving of the cars and the incessant blaring of horns was both disconcerting and frightening and there were many vehicles parked haphazardly along the sides of the roads that had NOT managed to avoid a collision. Their respective drivers were usually shouting and gesticulating whilst the dazed passengers, usually seemingly too many to have been in the crashed vehicles, wandered about on the path.

Finally, I suspect more by luck than by any form of judgement, I found myself on a road that followed the skyline that has, so rightly, made Istanbul so very famous.

As I paused to examine the fabulous Blue Mosque in the fast receding light, I spotted a few illuminated neon “Hotel” signs in the road opposite.

Getting there, across the traffic was not easy, but I made it in the end. After two, quite curt, refusals (in all honesty I was probably VERY dusty !) I got a room in the third one I tried. This was the Hotel Munchen (Kemal Paşa, Gençtürk Cd. No: 55, 34134 Fatih/İstanbul). I have looked and it is not there now.