Frost, Tea and Celebrity

Ten days have elapsed since we made our way hes­it­at­ingly out of Istan­bul after nearly a month off the bikes. We were expect­ing hard­ship; cyc­ling and camp­ing in the cold, wet, and moun­tain­ous climes of north­ern Turkey.

Ini­tially, this is what we were given. The hills were unre­lent­ing and tough work — we were out of prac­tice. The rain fell reg­u­larly, and we got wet and cold. But as the sprawl­ing city fell away behind us, we found more and more friendly tea-shop own­ers who ushered us into warm, cosy tea rooms, sat us down by the wood-burners, threw a couple of logs on and fed us count­less cups of çay (tea) until we were warm, dry and ready to face the wintry ele­ments again, in their increas­ingly rugged and dra­matic setting.

The beauty of the coun­tryside made the weather more bear­able, and after one par­tic­u­larly frosty night it improved greatly, and we have now enjoyed sev­eral days of clear blue skies, with the late autumn sun bathing the epic land­scapes in a misty, enchant­ing light. This, and the fam­ously hos­pit­able and genu­inely friendly atti­tude of Turk­ish people toward us as for­eign trav­el­lers, has been our sav­ing grace. More than that, it has occa­sion­ally taken us com­pletely off-guard.

Yes­ter­day was a fine example. We had slept the night in the office of an indoor foot­ball centre, and headed into the small town of Devrek. After check­ing our emails, Andy stopped to buy some fruit at a street stall. As I waited with the bikes, I was tapped on the shoulder. I turned and saw a short, age­ing man draw­ing forth a tattered note­book and cam­era. A man from a nearby shop explained in Eng­lish that he was a well-known local reporter who wanted to talk to us about what we were doing.

Before we knew what was hap­pen­ing, we were sat out­side a tea shop, being fed tea and simit (cir­cu­lar, sesame-seed-covered breads, rather like skinny bagels), talk­ing to our newly-found inter­preter who trans­lated our story to the journ­al­ist, an anim­ated and excit­able chap. Evid­ently he was some­thing of a local legend — we found ourselves quickly sur­roun­ded by throngs of local people out walk­ing in the town on the sunny and chill Sunday after­noon, who wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

After a leis­urely inter­view and a few pho­to­graphs, the reporter pro­duced a video cam­era and pro­ceeded to set up a num­ber of shots of us rid­ing round the town’s small centre. We were a major attrac­tion by this point, with a fair-sized crowd sur­round­ing us and fol­low­ing us. Camera-phones were con­stantly poin­ted in our dir­ec­tion. I was try­ing to strike a bal­ance between par­ti­cip­at­ing in the inter­view, film­ing the pro­ceed­ings, and being incon­spicu­ous — a chal­len­ging task!

We were beckoned to fol­low the reporter and our trans­lator, and we found ourselves being shown into a small work­shop down a side-street. We had been told that we were going to a ‘stick shop’, which left a lot to the ima­gin­a­tion. When we arrived, we found that the work­shop did actu­ally pro­duce walk­ing sticks. But these were no ordin­ary walk­ing sticks, such as you might find by the front door of a bun­ga­low or being used to hook a small child by the neck. No, these were some of the most elab­or­ate walk­ing sticks known to mankind.

A small team of crafts­men turned out these works of art as a full-time job. Evid­ently they were part of the small town’s her­it­age, and the shop a small tour­ist attrac­tion. We were told that one of them was once presen­ted to Prince Charles as a gift. I found myself won­der­ing if his High­ness had ever vis­ited Devrek, and whether he had been treated as well as we were being treated. Each stick rep­res­en­ted two to three weeks of labour, over a period of more than a year of season­ing, shap­ing, carving, paint­ing and fin­ish­ing. Many of them were adorned with equally elab­or­ate sil­ver handles, and almost all of them bore the image of a snake entwined about the designs and flour­ishes on the shaft of the stick — the snake being a sym­bol of the town itself.

A couple of cups of cof­fee later, we said good­bye and enquired if there was any­where nearby we could sleep, as it was get­ting late. As quick as a flash, the reporter was on the phone again. After another whirl­wind of events which were quite out­side our con­trol, we found ourselves fol­low­ing a police van to the local hotel, where we were informed that we had a twin room for the night, free of charge, and an even­ing meal in the res­taur­ant thrown in for good meas­ure. We couldn’t believe it — we were being treated as guests of hon­our! All we had stopped for was a banana…

Time now to con­tinue — we are aim­ing to get back to the coast and con­tinue East­wards towards Geor­gia — hope­fully in time for Christmas!

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