Last night, as I was checking the itinerary, I wondered what the road conditions would be like. It turned out to be a pleasant surprise, as the first few kilometres were quite pleasant. In particular the ’climb’ to the highest point of the route, 101m. But just after that I had to turn off onto a road that quickly turned into a horror. On this kind of road you need a mountain bike, preferably with a good electric assist ! For me, it was a case of braking on the way down and pushing the bike on the way up.
The road improved and then sometimes became unstable again. For a good while it was gravel, and on the downhills you had to watch out for rocks and hollows, and I probably had a moment of inattention because a spoke gave way. It was a long time later when I was on a smooth surface, but that’s where it must have come from.
The result was that in two hours I’d only done 16 km.

Fortunately the wind, which was quite strong, was rather favourable as I had it from behind most of the time. Otherwise, I think I’d have had trouble making the 97 km that would have taken me to the ferry to Canakkale.

The dogs : I had them all along the way, but they weren’t really aggressive. I spoke to them, explaining that I spoke French, but when I didn’t want them to come near me I shouted and that was enough to make them go away. I saw one of the dogs wearing a wolf collar with blades all round it, but I wasn’t interested.

I was lucky with the weather : I could see the big black clouds on the other side but I very rarely had any drops. It will start raining when I take the ferry. It’s worth pointing out that the price of the ferry wasn’t enough to keep up with Turkey’s galloping inflation : 20 Turkish lira, or around 60 centimes, for a 15-minute crossing !

The blue sign means "there are cyclists in the tunnel".