Purring along in Bluebell2 to Ilgaz

?

Not sure whether I tweaked a few nerves in my last blog but it looks like Andy has got a lot off his chest, so perhaps we can return to normal friendly banter. We still have five weeks together hope I don’t sadden him too much or drive him mad in that time Lol ???

Just to allay all your fears I am not a dog so I don’t bark just raise my voice to compensate for Andy’s deafness. As he is so sensitive I will be a pussy cat and purr the statement each time and when he says WHAT!! I will purr back to him until he hears the answer!!!

As for currency matters I think Andy has used poetic licence to describe our discussions, perhaps more licence than poetry. In Kirklarelli I said to Andy at the ATM shall we take £75 worth, equivalent to 600 Tl, Andy said “no Andy go for the middle of the road 100Tl, I rest my case

Anyway a cool bear in a bar served by a good looking barmaid in a back street of Kirklareli Turkey soon dampened the fire in his belly. Followed by a good nights sleep makes all the difference..

We are back on the road in Turkey with 1500 miles in front of us. We have decided to skip Istanbul due to time and the reality that you need a minimum of three days to see the city, coupled with the difficulties Turkey has just experienced we gave it a miss. We still had to drive through it, which was an experience even though we stayed on the main highway. Turkey has a radar toll system that has completely befuddled us and despite our attempts to purchase the required disc we failed so every time we go through the toll it screams at us.

We met the Catalan Mongolian team today on the highway and pulled into a service station for a chat ranging from polotics to motorway tolls. We asked them why they had a Buff sticker on the side of their car. Apparently Buff come from Barcelona their home town and Buff did a special one with their team name on it. Andy piped up “I have a Muff sorry Buff so I feel I have been sponsored by them, I never take off my neck even at bedtime”. We were all mystified, so we just humoured him and carried on with the conversation.

Onward, at our next pit stop we met up with the Norwegians who were quite delighted to see us. Our conversation was captured on film by a producer who is tagging along with them to do a television documentary. He secretly told me that when the film reaches the cutting table in the Editors room Andy’s contribution would be left on the floor, but he assured me mine was good quality and would be included in the documentary

Being the tight arses we are, as confirmed in Andy’s last blog, we do not have roaming internet so our internet access is reliant on our stops. Not one of the motorway restaurants have wifi or so they told us, so our attempts to forward book accommodation were foiled. That turned out to our advantage, see later.

Travelling on the main roads in Turkey is easy they are all at least two lanes mainly three lane carriageway. Lots of Germans in big 4×4 BMW or Mercedes travelling at about 100mph so we only see them as a flash as they pass by.

The culture is very different to our experience in the UK as Turkey is an Islamic secular society. As we pass the villages close to the highway we saw numerous mosque towers sticking up out of the landscape. One town I counted at least 14 mosque towers

Now I have to be a bit careful here because you know how sensitive Andy is about me taking the piss out of him (aka previous blog) well suffice to say the statement he made about “the person driving is responsible for pointing the car in the right direction” I have to use that again. He tried to take us to Ankara, so we had a 50km detour.

The remaining journey today was uneventful and we by chance came off the main highway into Ilgaz where we pulled up outside a kebab/restaurant. We decided to ask the shop owners where there is a bank, I barked (turned back to a dog from a pussy cat for a moment) “BANK” and he pointed down the street two doors. At the ATM I asked Andy how much we should take out and he instructed me on the correct amount, I did point out again that we could put the remaining currency into the petrol tank!!!

We then decided to look for a bar for the Internet, Andy returned to the car to get his glasses (I did say in a previous blog he needs his eyes tested) and typical Andy he starts chatting to the Kebab shop owners and a crowd starts to assemble talking to us in a language we don’t know one word of except BANK!!! However, we get connected to the Internet which is in the telephone shop opposite. One of the young lads keyed the code into our iPads, goodness only knows how he knew the code, perhaps his middle name is Jonty Brook. They then proceed to direct us to a hotel locally from where I am writing this blog.

After having a photo shoot with these guys we decided to partake in one of their pizzas from a woodfired pizza oven. I did show them my pizza oven and they were very impressed well they made the right noises anyway. The food was excellent and cost a massive £6 Andy said should we tip you can guess my answer. Before we left they tried to give us another cup of the local sour milk which we reluctantly had to refuse.

The Turkish pizza boys