Cycling in Turkey. November 2021

In November, we made a short, ten-day trip to Turkey. This is not our first visit to this amazing country. For the cycling trip, we chose the Izmir region, or more precisely, the Cesme peninsula. It is here that a section of the international route Eurovelo 8 passes. We took it as the main track.

We started and finished from the city of Izmir, and in fact the route turned out to be a circular one. The Cesme Peninsula is quite an interesting and unusual area. Windy weather prevails here, which has brought significant changes to the local landscape. There are a lot of windmills in this area, they were installed here even in ancient times (mills). And due to the constant riot of air masses, there is no lush vegetation. The slopes of the mountains, which reach an elevation of 1212 meters, are covered with low bushes.

This area is not the most popular with tourists, because there are many wild beaches and authentic villages.

For the journey we equipped our bikes with a full set of KasyBags from X-Pac. Almost everything is the same as it was on a recent trip to Greece. This time they took a little more warm clothes, but they decided not to take food at all. Everyone bought on the move. Cooked on a gas burner. In Turkey, a chic and inexpensive fast food that saved us more than once at lunchtime.

The weather was great for the most part. Not cold, but not hot either, just what you need. The only thing that is very windy. One day we were watered well with rain and our bags did an excellent job of waterproofing. They are not 100% watertight, but they survived the rain throughout the day without problems. All things remained dry.

On the route there are ancient and medieval sights, wild, sandy beaches. But the highlight was the village of Alacati. It is gorgeous, and you want to walk on it for hours. We stayed there overnight in a small hotel.

We were satisfied with the route, and the whole trip. A detailed report on the running days is available on our blog.