Day 33 - Alexandroupoli to Tekirdag

Dimitrios and his friends were medical students and had arranged for me to come to the medical school in the morning and talk to their class about my trip and the cause. Further, they said they would try to introduce me to a Dr Demosthenes Bouros, a leading researcher in pulmonary diseased generally and Cystic Fibrosis in particular. I knew that the trip to the hospital would mean I would arrive in darkness at Tekirdag. This was not ideal but I reasoned that if I could justify arriving in darkness the previous evening for no reason but my own folly I could certainly justify doing the same today. There could be no better reason for doing so.

I met Dr Bouros and gave a little talk and was very pleased I had. After getting my things together and stopping briefly at a cycle store for inner tubes, I left Alexandroupoli close to noon. A strong wind blew from the east and a thick, low blanket of cloud hid the sun. These conditions made the going slow and cold. I arrived at the Turkish border after around three hours and stopped to talk with the young soldiers at the border. They were friendly, took photos for me and assured me I had a flat and easy ride to Tekirdag.

I was then waved through three stages of border control only to be stopped at the fourth and final booth. I was instructed to return to the beginning to obtain a visa and police stamp. These processes stole a further half hour from my day but, going on the assurance of a flat road, I felt fairly confident that I would arrive in Tekirdag in low light rather than no light.

It soon became clear that the road was anything but flat and I climbed slowly up bulging hills before descending slowly down steep drops into a brutal and persistent headwind. I was stuck in this pattern for five hours and I had to forgo any breaks longer than five minutes as I could not tell how long the day would take. It was exhausting, both physically and mentally. At Alexandroupoli, Dimitrios, who had recently studied psychiatry, had explained to me the psychological phenomenon which causes castaways to drown within a few hundred yards of the shore, though they might have been swimming for several miles. He had joked that I should be careful not to meet a similar demise in my final stretch. Looking out over endless successions of hills, I saw the close relevance of this phenomenon to my situation. I had less than two days left in a seven week trip, but the next few dozen miles felt impassable. More than once I found myself screaming at the wind which kept my speed between ten and twelve miles an hour.

Fighting through the hours, I came to the base of a large climb at around half past seven. The light was beginning to dwindle but I had not eaten anything more than 200g of chocolate in several hours and I needed a boost for the final 15 miles I was expecting. I stopped at a petrol station and devoured a stack of junk food. The proprietor came over from a nearby building and spoke English to me. He told me I had just this next climb and only 10 miles left. One of his attendants, a boy in his late teens, made me my first glass of sweet Turkish tea and these human kindnesses helped me ready myself for the final short push.

I put my light in my pocket as I had done 24 hours before and started the climb. The light faded quickly and as I reached the top I was dependent on passing cars for setting my course. The downhills were dangerous. I had to pick my route well in advance as headlights were few and far between. I hit half a dozen bad patches of road and prayed that my spokes would stay intact. At one point a chorus of yaps and barks told me I had just missed a pack of strays making their way across the road. A few miles short of Tekirdag a sole policeman waved me down with his torch. I explained I had to make it to Tekirdag to sleep and he allowed me to continue.

Finally I arrived to find the hotels full with students at a university conference. A boy attending tables at a café came out to attend to my bewilderment and showed me the way to a hostel. The old chap running the place made me tea and took me to a restaurant where I was fed well on meat, rice, vegetables and yoghurt. I spent what was left of the evening repairing a puncture I had picked up in the final hour and burning holes through my shorts on the electric heater.

Distance covered 98 miles