Day 20 - Continually Generous Turkey

It was chilly this morning before the mist burnt off. However, despite cold fingers slowing down the process, we got on the road at 8am as planned! The sun did not, however, manage to burn off the smog and it was pretty grim going into a dark cloud on the road, although I suspect we will get much worse later.

We stuck on the big road, which got us to our first destination of Decathlon nice and quicky, despite the headwind. Yes, they have Decathlon here too, although sadly we seem to be out of Lidl-land. We need more gas and proper bike lights, I'll say no more...

We set off to once again do battle with a headwind. If you're fed up of reading it, imagine how fed up we are of pedalling in it! Long straight roads allowed us to find our groove though and we weren't about to let it throw us off our pace, so soon enough we'd made it to lunch. We stopped at a very local establishment and while Emma went to the supermarket I went to see if I could find us some vegetarian food. What initially felt a little hostile - everyone went silent when I walked in dressed rather differently - very quickly became a wholesome group activity trying to interpret my request.

We got there and had some plates of bulgar wheat and onion salad for which they flatly refused payment! They just wanted a photo with their son. A group of guys kept waving and laughing so I went over to have a chat. They were very pysched to see us, asked if we were tourists and then went back to their conversation. Just a completely different vibe to home. Completely different but oh-so-nice!

We were overtaken by a fire brigade water tanker under lights, with a milk truck hot on it's heels which created a pretty funny image: "They might need milk too!"

Over the afternoon the landscape changed from pretty to stunning as we headed out of the farmed flatlands and into the drier, hilly, more desert region. The wind was relentless but we weren't having any of it and determined to make our minumum goal, just kept pedalling.

We both had a really nice time bombing along at our own pace with great tunes going. Another pure happy moment for me 😁

As I headed up a track looking for a place to camp a tractor came the other way and turned his engine off, curious. I asked if we could sleep here and he happily agreed, warning about a particular cold sink hollow. A little later another tractor rocked up and we once again we asked. "No problem, mind if I work this field behind you?". Provided we don't get flattened by a tractor, it should be a relaxing night!

Food spend today: 17.25 euros