The Geriatrics are off again....This time for 6 months!

Thanks for the update, sounds pretty good so far apart from the busy campsites :D
Ride safe :thumb2

Stewart
 
Nice to hear it's all going okay:).

How did you get on with the ferry to Greece? One of my mates slept on deck in Greece a few years ago. He had a sleeping bag, but had his arm out of it. About 500 mosquito bites between his hand and his elbow:eek:

Saw our Dubai contact today - he says you are more than welcome to call in if you get that way.

Take care both of you :Duchess
 
+2.. :thumb

Oh, what happy times.. Keep Going!
 
Sounds Great

Great to hear all is going well.Have a great time both of ye.

I bet the Yamaha doesn't need recalls and head bearings:augie

:aidan
 
Great to hear all is going well.Have a great time both of ye.

I bet the Yamaha doesn't need recalls and head bearings:augie

:aidan

Just jumped off the bikes in a narrow main street in Xanthia, Greece, when we saw an internet cafe :thumb

No recalls or head bearings on the Yamaha yet Decky :thumb

The day after I collected my bike from the dealer, getting ready for the ferry to Greece, heard the disc binding. Right hand fork leg not aligned with the axle, disc catching on the caliper. Soon sorted, but workmanship like this from a main BMW dealer ..... crap :eek:

Survived the ferry, was given good advice by a Turkish biker while in Italy, so took our sleeping mats on board. Found a quiet passage to crash out in (quite passage .... ha!) but no real sleep although Sue snorred for England :sleep

We'll probably return any way other than that bloody ferry though :eek:

We hope to be in Turkey Saturday 15th and visit friends we made when there while returning on the first Long Way Home trip.

Yesterday we were waiting to turn left across oncoming traffic and the guy coming towards us flashed his lights so Sue set off to turn. Dunno who was the most surprised Sue or the guy, cos he was still coming and had no intention of allowing her across his path. A close call but a learning curve one notch higher. My teachings .... a flash of the headlights, or an indicator flashing means only one thing ... the bulb woks :thumb

Catchya later folks

:beerjug:
 
Yesterday we were waiting to turn left across oncoming traffic and the guy coming towards us flashed his lights so Sue set off to turn. Dunno who was the most surprised Sue or the guy, cos he was still coming and had no intention of allowing her across his path. A close call but a learning curve one notch higher. My teachings .... a flash of the headlights, or an indicator flashing means only one thing ... the bulb woks :thumb

:beerjug:

Oooh be careful, in many countries a flash of the lights means don't you try to get ahead of me I am coming through and will not or can't slow down. Was caught out in Thailand with this but lived. A minor difference from the UK!
 
It was two very weary, stiff and grouchy motorcyclists who left the ferry at 6 a.m. in Igoumenitsa, pedestrians, cars, lorries and motorcycles all charging down the ramp at the same time. A pact is made – we never sleep on the floor again surrounded by inebriated Ozzies.
Apparent immediately is the difference in temperament between the Greeks and Italians. Smiling faces, shepherds waving to us high up in the hills, friendly staff in the shops and cafes. We travel across Greece, back to camping with temperatures in the low thirties.

Motorcycling is addictive and we have to remind ourselves to stop and look at the historical sites – and when we do they are boarded up and out of bounds! One theatre that was being excavated, in our minds, it was spoilt by being reconstructed on top of what ruins were left. Time Team ‘and this is what it might have looked like’!
We did do one touristy thing though, we swam in the Aegean. Just the once, sand is only good for mixing with cement in our combined opinions.

We make no apology for belting through Greece, our mission was to go to a small village in Gallipoli we had visited four years ago on our return from Mongolia.
A chance meeting then on the ferry from Cannakale to Eceabat with Hikmet Dogan the motorcyclist with Rossi tendencies on his GSX 750. He could speak no English, we no Turkish, he invited us to stay with his ‘second pappy’ it was wonderful
.
When Hikmet heard our bikes entering the small village of Beysol, his howl of joy could be heard across the peninsular. He flew out of his garden where he had been sitting with his family and friends, dragging Mick from his bike and kissing and hugging him. There were tears all round, laughter and pantomime gestures. He still couldn’t speak English and we still had no Turkish!

Our bikes were commandeered by Hikmet and taken into the garage, there was no doubt where we would be staying that night.
It was a very special two days for us, to be befriended by this family, taken to see his ‘second pappy’ in his garden/museum again, the botanic shower was still hanging from the grape vines.

Hikmet took us around both the Turkish and Anzac grave sites, some that we would never have found and his love and respect for the Anzac soldiers shone through.
It was a magical interlude for us, who knows if we will ever get the chance to return?

Sue

Photo of the ferry terminal at Igoumenitsa
Photo of Bekirs 'Botanc Garden'
 

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Dunno if a Mod wants to move this thread across to 'GS Travellers' ... we're going to be at this game for six to eight months :eek:

Maybe take off the '8 weeks' from the title?

Anyway ... thanks Sue. Here's my sixpenneth :beerjug:


Again, I guess, Sue has covered most things most admirably.


The highlight for me so far was meeting up with Hikmet again and meeting his family. There was a family gathering at Bekirs place, the Botanic Garden, which brought back so many fond memories.

Hikmet has now exchanged his GSX750R Suzuki for a Hyabusa but he still has the rear registration plate tucked up underneath the rear mudguard…. impossible for any camera to record, for he commutes weekly between Beysol and Istanbul at over twice the speed limit.

Fond farewells and we move on, riding ever eastwards. But before we cross the Dardanelles we do a slow figure of eight round the Gallipoli peninsular and take in more of the memories and landmarks of the Gallipoli campaign. We ride in to the ferry port and we’re waved on to a boat. We don’t ask, we presume it’s going across to Cannakale, but it doesn’t really matter as we laugh together. The sea is rough, and as soon as we’re off the boat we head east, we’re back in Asia and loving it. Sue soon turns off the main dual carriageway and cuts across country. This is what she’s good at. We’re on a small road through mountains and forests, in places the road is washed away or under repair but the road is ours. For forty miles or so we twist and turn, rise, crest and dive, this is our world and we’re on our motorbikes.

Now in a small town well off the beaten track, at Sogut, where the first Ottoman empire was started. The hotel is dry but a small shop across the street is doing well selling small black plastic bags with something in them. I go in and buy a small black plastic bag and it happens to have two bottles of Efes Pilsen bier inside. Hotel Ayyldez doesn’t mind as we retire to our room and use the hotels WiFi.

Just over two weeks in to the trip and the pounding beating of the heart in the chest cavity has gone, the “What if’s” have gone. It’s one day at a time now, the brain is in chilled out mode. This trip is going to be six to eight months on the road, tomorrow will take care of itself one way or another for sure, and yesterday can’t be taken off us. It’s a state of mind this game… and it’s great.

Mick

:beerjug:

Photo ... campsite in Italy, updates have to be done:)
Photo ... Small prtion of Bekir's home museum :eek:
Photo ... Sue with Hikmet and family :)
 

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Glad to hear the trip's still going well. Sounds as if you've just about reached the right level of "chill":thumb2

P
 
Thanks for keeping an eye on us folks :thumb

Blimey, I never knew I had so many brothers! We’re just two days in to Iran and it feels like home…. except for the dust and the heat. We are greeted everywhere we go, cars come alongside and the drivers try to shake hands with you, even when there’s another bugger coming towards us. Whenever we stop people come to us with fruit, wanting to shake hands. The Kurds especially so, they will shake hands with Sue and they are quick to point out that they are Kurds, not Iranians. Religion, beliefs and customs are no barrier here; we all have our hearts in the same place. As Joe (The Celt) says… Travel is fatal to bigotry and hatred.

We had left Gallipoli with warm hearts as we worked our way steadily eastwards. Sue’s little 250TTR will cruise all day at 45 to 55 miles an hour and this is just fine for me on the F800GS. I’m showing 78mpg and will do well over 200 miles to the tank full. We have time to have eye contact with the people, wave and pull in. But I’d like to know who planned this trip through Eastern Turkey and Iran during Ramadan for there are no café’s or restaurants open. We feel a little uneasy buying water and biscuits and refreshing ourselves in view of the people, so we find a little shade in the countryside and have our picnic of biscuits and fresh fruit. The temperature ranges from 25 to 36 degrees.

We pull in to the first hotel we see in Adiyaman, it looks expensive. It is, 170 Turkish Lira a night (about £65) Sue turns it down out of hand. I smile; I have a feeling we’ll be back. We spend the next hour and a half looking for another hotel and decide to ride out of town and in to the night. We see Hotel Antioches for the second time and Sue turns in, and smiling at the staff she eats her humble pie most gracefully.

To cross the lake between Kahta and Bitlis we need to take the ferry. Traffic has to be ‘backed on’ in order to be able to drive off forward at the other side. A quite simple operation one would think, but not so when it comes to two well laden motorcycles. We’re in the line and the deckhand directs the beaten up old Renault behind me to reverse up the ramp, but the driver has the clutch control of a Lemming and slides forward down the ramp in to my offside pannier not once but twice and nearly has me in the water. I told him what I thought of his driving in quaint old fashioned Anglo Saxon, I do believe he understood me. All the cars and a couple of lorries were now on board before we were able to ride on and turn the bikes round in the garden shed size space remaining. We had been talking to a Turkish Doctor, who at our suggestion asked the ferryman why he didn’t allow the bikes on first so that they could turn round on the empty deck, tuck well in to the side, be out of the way and be ready for disembarkation. The roughly translated reply was that this wasn’t the first time he had loaded motorcycles on board. The Doctor did add though that the guy didn’t seem to be very bright.

Turkey is undergoing a major road reconstruction programme; it was doing so back in 2005 when we were last here. Basically all the major, and lots of minor roads, are being widened. Turkey’s infrastructure is being rebuilt. Not as we would know it in the UK though. Here in Turkey the roads are being widened as the traffic continues to use them. Mile after mile of loose limestone chippings, deeply rutted in places, huge mountains of limestone to be negotiated, as bulldozers go back and forth oblivious of the traffic trying to dodge them. We see a bus, a lorry and a car all racing towards us vying for the dust free clear visibility of ‘pole position’. There are no white lines to separate the traffic. A lorry races past us and we dive in to his slipstream knowing those coming towards us will get out of his way. We trust to luck because if we slow down we’ll get shunted from the rear for sure. A maelstrom of dust and gravel is kicked up and we know the oncoming is now behind us. This isn’t just one incident, this was continuous, for mile after mile … life in the fast lane… Ha!

Now well in to Eastern Turkey, close to the border with Iran, we are heading towards Hakkari. We near a village and a dog runs from the left hand side of the road and directly under Sue’s front wheel. There’s a helluva thump as the TTR leaps in to the air but Sue manages to stop on the bike, the dog was less fortunate and dropped to the ground motionless. I guess we should have stopped but Sue rode on for a couple of hundred yards and pulled up. She was distraught and in tears. Ten minutes later we continued but it had upset Sue for sure. Half an hour later she pulled up with intense pains in her chest, she thought she was having a heart attack. I diagnosed post traumatic stress, I jest not, or indigestion from the fish she had eaten earlier in the day when we had been fortunate enough to find an Armenian restaurant… no Ramadan for them. Ten minutes later and we’re on the road again, more slowly, but still some 60km from Hakkari, the only place we were going to be able to find a hotel. The sun was dropping and it would be dark soon. We had made a pact on our last trip not to ride in the dark on these ventures but today it looked like we would have to.

After a road check by the army, who wanted all our details, we road the last 30km in to Hakkari in the dark.

The next day Sue was feeling much better. We retraced our steps to where the army checkpoint had been, to make our turn for the border crossing with Iran at Serow. You’ve guessed it, stopped, checked and all our details taken again.

We have our game at Border crossings. Sue guesses how long it will take; I have to go over or under. “Three Hours” she says. I go under and win with a time of 2 ¾ hours. The crossing was hassle free and smooth, and we found ourselves in Iran.

Trying to leave Orumiyeh, our first stopover in Iran, we seek the help of a young man on a motorcycle who leads us out of town in the direction of Bukan. It was like something out of the Elvis Presley film. He looked like Elvis, he preened his hair and checked in his mirrors for pimples as he rode along one handed and carefree, missing the cars by inches. We followed, stuck to his exhaust like a limpet. I was singing ‘Wooden Heart’ as we three played dodgems. The lad pulled up and Sue wanted a photograph of him and in her haste to get it promptly dropped her bike. ‘One all’ … I had dropped the GS at Mount Nemrut when I lost my footing on uneven ground.

So we had re learnt what we had first discovered in Russia in 2005… when riding into town wave down another motorcyclist. As we rode in to Bukan this is just what Sue did, and another page is written.

Now in Hamadan after almost four weeks on the road, with not a day off the bikes, over 4,000 miles on the clock, we’re having two or three nights here to chill out, get some washing done and stretch the legs.

We don’t count the hours or days, we don’t count the miles, we’re just riding our bikes to India one day at a time. We’re in a different world.

PS. There is no mobile phone signal for us in Iran, but the email working fine.

1) On the road
2) Ferry from Kahta to Bitlis
3) Turkey close to the Iranian border
4) Now in Iran
5) Elvis gets us out of town
 

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Now from the Yamaha's point of view...;)

This TTR250 is a great little bike; she goes all day at the same speed 40 – 50mph with a drop down to 30 above 7000ft. Using a little oil but other than that, touch wood, nothing to report. No bearings to replace – yet. One up to the Japanese then!

The road conditions are abysmal in the main, both of us turning up at hotels in the evening looking like scruffs, covered in white dust; both bikes though are the largest we have seen in Asia where they tend to ride 125 and 200cc’s so when we do ride past there seems to be lots of interest.

We have been doing a little of the tourist bit just lately, visiting historical sites – or ‘bloody castles on hills’ as Mick is fond of grumbling. In Cappadocia we visited an underground city, crawled along in a tunnel 3 feet high at best, for what seemed like miles between the chambers. Mick’s technique was to crawl on his hands and knees regularly banging his head, mine was to have hands on the floor, bum in the air – that now has bruises on it too! Emerging from the underground city, which I might add was delightfully cool, the locals squealed with delight as two ageing and scruffy motorcyclists huffed and puffed and tried to straighten their backs.

From Adiyaman we rode first to see the 1st century B.C.Tumulus of King Karakus so I tried to impress himself with a bit of knowledge – Rolf Harris singing about the court of King Karakus wasn’t appreciated. The Roman bridge built by the XVI legion during the reign of Septimus Servus was next, but the piece d’resistance was the 9000ft (baring 500ft which we walked) ride up Mount Nemrut to see the stone heads. The road was awesome in the extreme, up through the gorges, hairpin bends like I have never seen in my life, narrow, steep, melting tar in the mid day sun, unbelievable, I was dreading going back down before I even made it to the top! Incredibly the surface evened out about 2miles from the top and the smoothest block paving you have ever seen had been laid. That was where Mick chose to drop his bike and grind a little corner off his pannier – they are already attaining a genuinely acquired patina!

The first people we met at the top were a family of Kurds from Sheffield. He works at a kebab house on Sheffield Road in Barnsley. I was literally gobsmacked talk about a small world. Lovely people.

Heading east towards Iran there is more of a police and army presence here and the attitude of the men has changed towards me too. The Kurdish men are very open and will greet us both, shake hands, but now the men talk only to Mick and when I mistakenly offered my hand to a young man he recoiled instantly.

As mentioned earlier by Mick, on arriving in Bukan and not being able to find a hotel, I flag a young man down who has two women on the back of his bike and ask him if there is a hotel. None of them understand English but two hands together at the side of the cheek and a quick snore and he gets my meaning. We think he is taking us to where the hotel is and follow. Pulling up outside a gate he intimates that we follow him in – we do – into his concrete garden space.
We are invited to stay the night, we pitch our tent (though he actually wanted us to sleep in the house) and another memorable evening begins. Family members roll in to greet us and we have a picnic on an Iranian carpet in his house that would cost many thousands of pounds back home.

I drift off to sleep later that night chuckling at the absurdity. We are in Iran, sleeping in the home environs of a Kurdish family – wonder what the news reporters would make of that!
 

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We don’t count the hours or days, we don’t count the miles, we’re just riding our bikes to India one day at a time. We’re in a different world.

Nobody here is remotely jealous of you, not at all.

Oh no, not in the slightest.

Honest.



:blast It's not working is it!! :blast

:clap:clap:clap:clap:bow:bow
 
orate mick an sue
looks like your havin a proper time, carry on i`m watching with great interest.
all the very best.
chris from tickhill,.
 
Fairplay Micky and Sue, :bow:bow:bow
What i would give to be in your tyre
tracks right now, from the foto's I see you,ve found
the saffron chicken and rice, great meal...
Post as much as you can, because your bringing
a ray of sun shine to a very damp Ireland...
good luck
ride safe
joe
 


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