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Persembe - Anakara
E.Route : Persembe - Ankara : PTD 0550 : PTA 1936 : P.Dist 367m.
A.Route : Persembe - Ankara : ATD 0905 : ATA 2052* : A.Dist 362m.
- Depart Persembe 0905
- 1109 - 1114 Bogstop/crewchange
- 1125 - 1145 Shopstop ( Samsun )
- 1336 - 1340 Bog and grape-nikking stop
- 1430 - 1445** Fuel/air stop
- 1655 - 1940 Attempt to camp nr. Ankara
- Arr. Ankara campsite 2007
P.N.A.Spd. 35.5 mph : Gross A.Spd 32.91 mph : Net.A.Spd 37.91 mph.
Stop time 1:29 hr : Speedo TD 14630 : Speedo TA 14992
Comment : Trouble with the clock worse than in the previous few days, (*)=Arrival time in the log, while the times at and after (**) (when the clock was put forward 45 min) have all been reduced by 45 min to maintain one standard throughout. It is not especially important that the times in this section should be at the correct standard -what is important is to ensure that they are all based on the same starting point.
Jim Lindsay's diary:
27 September
We could hardly have had a better antidote to the bad memories of our first
visit to Persembe than the kitchen there. It was big and warm with a fire
under a smoke-hood, and a perpetual pot of hot water.
There were two or three big women cooking, and a couple of men lifting and
carrying. They were all laughing and cheerful. There was a fat black cat as
well. Some of the trainee teachers were apparently in residence so soup was
being made for them and we were given some to go with our egg butties and
coffee.
None of the people in the kitchen spoke English so we communicated with signs
and expressions. It was really nice and cosy.
The weather had cleared and the sea was a brilliant blue. I went out shopping
but this time with Kirsteen and Roz and Pru rather than Johan and Liz. It was
a much better experience. They were enjoying the experience, testing and tasting
everything. We bought bread from a bakery where a man fetched the loaves from
the oven with a paddle and they were almost too hot to carry. When we met the
coach it was parked outside another bakery and everybody was trying pastries.
The road back to Ankara was through gently undulating arid hills. At a bog stop
some of the girls went for the shelter of a walled vineyard and came back with
handfuls of grapes that we ate rather guiltily.
We found the designated campsite on the eastern outskirts of Ankara. It seemed
adequate but as usual there was an argument about going or staying, and this
time we moved on. Eventually we found a site next to a filling station on the
road to Istanbul. They gave us permission to spend the night on the gravel square
next to the filling station and we made ourselves at home on the grass next to it.
Turkey revisited: Perşembe to Ankara by Liz Y
We stayed one night in Perşembe, before leaving the little bays of the Vona Peninsula to drive along the
coast towards Samsun, some 90 miles to the west. Around this time we began to fantasize about food. We loved
the varied tastes of the East, but were starting to miss our familiar Western diet. One thing we missed
was leavened bread. We were delighted when large, fresh loaves were discovered at a bakery in Samsun, our
last stop by the Black Sea.
Our Comex diet was 'sustainable' to use a term of today. The diet was basic but really quite wholesome. It was
largely vegetarian and made mostly with local, fresh ingredients. The cooks produced remarkably good meals on
a limited budget, often in very difficult circumstances. One time on our outward journey when a meal had been
prepared on a damp evening in Istanbul, Joanna remarked that all this was 'good for the soul', but usually
nobody was much inclined to philosophise. We had to focus on the practical tasks of simply keeping the show
on the road.
After a short stop in Samsun we turned inland towards the steppe-like plateau of Central Anatolia. We reached
Ankara after eight that evening and were allowed to camp on a grassy verge next to a petrol station. We were
used to sleeping in all sorts of places. It wasn't bad here. The ground was level and somewhat cushioned by
the grass. We slept alongside the trailing branches of a willow tree. Although Central Anatolia is a semi-arid
region, tree-planting had been encouraged in Ankara. From the early days of the Republic, a number of parks
had been laid out in the city.
Turkey had its own special treats. Three of these, among many, were the crumbly lumps of salty, fresh feta, the
large, juicy figs ripened in September and straight from a tree in Samsun, and the little concave glasses of
Turkish tea served with a traditional dense lump of crystallized sugar or perhaps a modern sugar cube. Turkish
tea was a nice morning surprise, at our roadside camp in Ankara.
The morning traffic was busy near where we camped. It was time to move on. Cuddles had a puncture and we had to
find somewhere to get it fixed. A few of the group attended to this, while the rest of us went off to explore the
sights of Ankara. At first, Ankara seemed a rather austere city, with none of the buzz of Istanbul. In 1923, it
had been named the capital of the new Turkish Republic. In the ensuing decades, various interesting, innovatory
trends in modern architecture were reflected in the design of new public and government buildings. Government
buildings were built on a grand scale to emphasise the formal authority of the state.
There is another face to Ankara. It is an ancient city, with a long history dating back to the days of Byzantium,
to the Roman Empire and even to the Stone Age. There is an old part of the city with cobbled streets, a citadel
and significant archaeological remains. The centre of the city is called Ulus, meaning nation. Some of the sights
have already been described elsewhere in the log. What I most enjoyed in Ankara was a stroll up the hillside,
where a jumble of streets led through a residential suburb. I remember the tiers of small houses with burnished
red roofs, a friendly invitation to tea in a family home and the smiling faces of three little girls, lined up for
a photograph.
Until the 1930s Ankara was known as Angora. It was renowned amongst knitters across the world for its soft wool and
mohair, shorn from the eponymous rabbits and goats of the region.
