Today was a complete contrast to the previous run of rainy weather that had us feeling down. We pulled back the curtains from our hotel room window and saw blue skies and sunshine. Perfect! We packed up quickly and rushed out to enjoy the roads in a way we haven’t for a few days. It turned out to be an almost-perfect day of pedalling. A few small towns early on let us stock up on goodies and then we turned onto a scenic route heading south where the huge sky filled with fluffy white clouds was matched only by the rocky mountains hovering on the horizon. A little stream babbled beside the road. We admired leaves on the trees which had turned shades of orange, yellow and red and farm workers out taking in the autumn harvest waved to us from the fields. We went up and up, around twists in the road, continually climbing until finally we reached a pass that took us by surprise – despite being over 1,500m it wasn’t on our map!
The downhill was also a welcome and unexpected treat and very handy as just at the peak Friedel’s bike decided, without warning, to stop changing gears on the back ring. We used the descent to easily cover a few more kilometers and then settled on a hilltop camping spot where Andrew sits now, trying his hand at fixing gears and shifting mechanisms. It’s something neither of us know anything about so if we can’t figure out what’s gone wrong we may have to head straight to the big city of Antalya to seek out a bike mechanic instead of doing a longer route along the coast.