Coast to Coast
Long Distance Walk

Advertisment in Bilkent News in the spring of 2004

-Long Distance Walk (LDW) along the 31 degree (latitude) line
-Horizontal length: 443 kilometer
-Real length: unknown, but probably less than 600 kilometers
-Starting point: the seaside east of Kocaali (north-west of Bolu) on the Black Sea (Karadeniz)
-End point: the seaside south of Sillyon on the Mediterranean (Akdeniz)
-Average height of walking between 1000 and 1500 meter, with 3 mountains higher than 1500 meter, but less than 2000 meter.
Allowed deviation to east and west to see archaeological sites and villages: ca. 10 km (exceptions will be made for some major archaeological sites)
Time of walk: June 2004
Places to stay: tent, guest rooms in villages
Hotels/motels/restaurants on the route: None
Places to shower/wash:
-Organized: None
-Free: rivers, springs and wells on route
Places to buy food supplies: farmhouses, an occasional village shop, and products 'borrowed'; from the field
Places for fresh drinking water:
-to buy: None or the occasional village shop
-to fill bottles: Springs and wells
Medical care: None except my rudimentary 'first aid knowledge'

The aims of the walk:

1. The sportive element

The first aim is to do a sportive hike in the landscape over a non-organized line, without roads and paths, the route depending on the group. A 'fresh air exercise' to explore the 'narrow' land between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. This is the shortest distance between these two seas.
The landscape is only flat near both seashores, but rises after a few kilometers to a plateau of about 1000-1500 meter high. Map study shows only 3 locations where peaks are higher than 1500 meter. However a landscape with constant changes of circa 500 meter gives the hiker enough to keep his body and mind busy.

2. The research element

The second aim is to collect data about villages and their occupants, old and recent. During the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century many 'villages' of the shrinking Ottoman Empire, were moved to locations in the bare countryside of Central Anatolia.
The CtC walk makes a north-south cross-section through the heart of Modern Turkey. The idea is to collect information about where the original villagers came from. Second, to create a photo-slide documentation about these villages, especially the old houses. Can we observe building styles and traditions that have roots in the original settlement regions, like Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, the Caucasus etc. ?
Ethno-archaeological data will be collected, and might result in articles and lectures.

The equipment for the walk

Maps and compass are the basic tools in combination with the hand held GPS. Maps at scale of 1:25.000 are not easy to obtain so we will walk using inaccurate large-scale maps scale 1:250.000
The photo equipment will be a 35mm. Minolta.

Communications

Mobile telephones will be out of reach for most of the time. Only near the major highways will there be a chance that contact can be made.
In villages there might be a public telephone.
In other words: we will be out of contact for almost 1 month.

Costs

There will be very few costs, since there is nothing to buy and there are no bars to drink in. Only in villages might we visit teahouses and the bakkal. Food will be mostly without meat and obtained from the villagers, so most likely it will be very cheap.

Insurance

No need to take extra insurance, since we will not do any extraordinary dangerous things. We won't climb rocks and mountains.

Vaccinations

It is advised to have some protection against Hepatitis and Tetanus. The last one is a shot for at least 5 years so maybe you have had it already if you are an excavator. More cannot be done.

All about walking

This 'CtC' will take place in summer. The weather in this season is not characterized as rainy! Warm and very warm weather might be expected.
During the day you will need light cotton clothes, no nylon and the like. Cotton gets wet but dries easily, nylon makes you sweat like a pig but doesn't absorb anything. T-shirts and shirts with long sleeves are the thing. Long sleeves might prevent heavy sunburn at the beginning of the walk, when you are not used to the outdoor circumstances. Later they can be used in the evenings to keep the mosquitoes away from your arms.
Hats are nice on a terrace or near the swimming pool, but during long, warm walks they get very wet with sweat and don't dry easily and they start to irritate the skin of the head.
The Arab scarf is here a better option. It is soft, covers the whole head, protects the neck, absorbs sweat in its many layers and dries very fast after being spread out on the ground.
Walking without a head-cover will be not allowed at the beginning. Later you might get used to the light. It is important to cover the neck, since sunstroke starts in that part of the body.
Sunglasses: I personally can't stand them long on my nose, but the intensive sunlight gives some people headaches.
It is very pleasant to walk in shorts through the field on nice sunny days. But the Central Anatolian population has its own ideas about shorts and visible legs. It might arouse comments and some very unpleasant situations, so we will not wear them during the trip when near and in villages. An alternative might be trousers with the zips halfway so you can unzip the lower part in the bush when no one can see us. Light, wide cotton trousers are the best, narrow trousers will kill you after a while. During rain these stay wet forever and shrink.
Shorts have another negative point that vegetation with thorns may hurt your skin (but they will damage your trousers too). Using shorts has as advantage that your legs get dirty and not your trousers, the first are easy to clean the second not.

Socks need to be of wool or cotton to prevent sweating. They have to be without holes and repairs because that causes blisters. They have to be the right size. And they have to be, under these circumstances, 'relatively' clean, to prevent the development of flora between the toes.
Boots are of course the most important element, since they do the walking. It is all about your own preferences here. It is important that you have already walked a few hundred kilometers in them, so you know them and they know you! But not so much that all the profile has been worn off and the inner lining has decayed.
Leather boots, the classic walking tool, are fine in summer. On the route some streams and rivers have to be crossed. It is unknown how much water they will contain in this season. Gore-tex boots are said to be waterproof; sweat seems to go out while water can't penetrate. However while crossing water barriers, the boot isn't waterproof if the stream is deeper than the height of the boot's shaft!
Boots made with many synthetic parts are not good, too warm with no ventilation > sweat > fungi > pain!
Your backpack must fit well and should have been used over long periods. All I want to say is that you have to carry it! It must contain everything so that nothing hangs to rattle all the way!
The tent can be very small, for 1 person. It will be used more as a visible marker and mosquito net, then as a waterproof home.
The sleeping-bag can be very light.

Personal defense:

Knife

A good, but not overdone, pocketknife on a string. Good for all kind of work and food processing. Dogs don't like them!

The walking-stick/staff

It will certainly do well to the image building of the new hiker! It has some practical use if you walk in rough fields to keep you balance but it is very doubtful if you will see much of that type of terrain during our walk.
It gives comfort when you get tired but there are also moments that you want to throw it far away! However you get used to the staff and in the end you don't want to live without it. Probably the most useful function: a weapon; 'the stick to hit the dog', it will help you to keep the large Shepherd dogs at biting distance. Don't try to hit them with long and high blows but keep the staff close to their head and poke it in their eyes and mouth!! They don't like that... The long overhead blows, on the other hand might be too slow and they have you!!!!
These days the Nordic Walking sticks are very common and easy to obtain. They are telescopic light metal sticks, to be adjusted to your specific height, they have a good metal point to motivate a dog to go away!

Medical Care

We will be on our own, which means that you are the doctor when I am ill, but I will be the doctor when you are ill. No help can be expected from outside during 80% of the route. The medical kit will be very limited.

What is likely to happen to you: (not in following order of chance or appearance!)

Heat-water related illnesses:

-Sunstroke
-Dehydration
-Overheating
-Diarrhea
-Headache

Hygiene related illnesses:

-Blisters
-Fungi

Fungi between the toes is not what you really want during a long hike!

Animal-bacteria related illnesses:

-Bites (of dogs, insects or reptiles)
-Diarrhea (see above)

Accidents

-Twisted ankle
-Traffic accident
-Burning: in campfire or gazburner
-Cutting: with own knife

Sunstroke

When the head and neck are exposed to too much sunlight, the sun rays burn the neck. A heavy headache is the result, often accompanied by vomiting. This is the end of the walk for this hiker, who needs to be placed in a cool and shady place from where transport to a hospital has to be arranged. If it happens in a very isolated spot a helicopter might be the only option. But we will try not to let it get that far!

Dehydration

The hiker didn't drink enough (water)! Maybe there was nothing to drink! anyway a terrible headache will occur. You don't want to eat, will get a red skin, and dizziness, can't walk anymore, visibility goes down.

Overheating

The person becomes pale in the face, the skin is cold but still sweats, with dizziness, cramps. It ends with first being delirious and then unconscious.
Bring the person in the cool shady place and give water slowly with re-hydration solutions. The trip stops for the day: rest is the word.

Diarrhea

You can get this disease from many different sources, like dirty flies that walk over your food, contaminated water, etc almost everything that is dirty!
The symptoms: a fever, with lots of sweating, and never ending diarrhea. The danger is to dehydrate too fast. The unpleasant part is that we can't wait to give rest to the patient. So we give pills and lots of drinks with salty solutions. For the patient it is also not funny to dive in the bush every few steps, with no means of cleaning yourself properly.

Headache

This is the result of many things but usually of not enough drinking water and sharp sunlight.

Blisters

Blisters are a combination of movement and irregularities of the skin, against the fabric of socks or in the sole or upper-part of the boot. All this in combination with soft and slightly humid or wet, sweaty feet.
Although you might think: 'you Dirty Dutch"; it is not good to wash the feet every day with warm water and soap.. this makes the skin soft. Better to wash only with cold water and not every time with soap.
Always wash well, with soap, between the toes because this is the 'greenhouse' in which the most horrible and painful fruits can develop, these developments can make the walk very unpleasant! Fungi irritates, and scratching the skin makes bloody wounds and the fungi finally make deep cracks between the toes. This hurts like hell and the pleasure of the hike is soon gone. Sprays and creams can cure and prevent these effects.
Back to the blister: during a long rest, presumably in the middle of the planned day trip, it can be good to remove boots and socks and let the feet dry out in the fresh air. However don't do this ever during very cold or rainy conditions. After the rest take fresh dry socks for the second part of the day. (the reality is of course that the 'fresh' socks are the dried socks of the day before!!!)
Well-trained feet don't blister easily. A well-trained foot gets hard and usually a bit wider after many long walks. Since the beginning of my army period when I was about 22 and my feet should have been full-grown, my shoe-size changed from 43 (wide) to 45. For this reason its better to have the boots one size too large. Not more because then it can move too much and blisters will come soon.
Once you have a blister it is better to open it. This cannot be done only by puncture it with a needle, in that case you will empty it at that moment but the hole will close itself in a few hundred meters and you will have the same blister refilled soon. The way is to let the partner do the job (he or she can't feel it personally!) and cut a square hole or open a triangle shape that can't close again. This needs to be well treated with a disinfectant, then covered with a plaster bandage. This has to be placed over, for example the heel, in layers starting low and the next layer a bit higher and over-lapping like roof tiles. This way you create a 'second skin' on the damaged place and you can (probably) continue to walk. When the blisters are filled with liquid that has blood in it, treatment with the disinfectant is very important!
Some people prefer to place the 'second skin on the foot before something goes wrong but this is not advisable during the long walks you are going to do.
Do change the bandage every night and preferably don't cover it during the night so the skin can dry and get hard again. In the morning place the second skin on again.
The bandage that we place over the blister has no cotton pad in the middle but is only the sticky band. If you use one with cotton, then it can move and makes it worse. The sticky band will of course also stick to the skin on the blister and one day when you pull it of this skin will come off too!;but that's how it is folks! No pain, no gain!

Bites (of dog, insects or reptiles)

-Dogs
The bite of a dog is never funny, but the bacteria on the teeth of the creature make you get really ill. With some bad luck you might meet a dog with rabies. This is the worst you can get. If you don't know it you will show a general irritation to everything around you, you will want to stay out of the light, show hydrophobic behavior (this means you don't want to be in contact with water) and in the longer turn you will get paralyzed. If you don't reach a medical post in time to receive a vaccine you will die on the Anatolian Highlands.

-Snakes
Snakebites are not life threatening if you get an antidote in 1 or 2 hours after the bite. Since it is very unlikely that we will be able to do so, you had better watch out for snakes! The book says keep it cool with ice! You understand that that must be a joke!
Only a few snakes are poisonous, but I don't know which ones are.... do you? Anyway a bite is never pleasant, so use your eyes well.

-Scorpions
The stings of scorpions are not lethal for most people! But how do I know that I am one of most people? Although not fatal, it is not advised to try a sting, since the few people that I have seen after an encounter with a scorpion seemed not to enjoy it very much.

-Spiders
These small friends can bite you too and again it isn't a joy! But the spiders in Turkey will not kill you.

-Flies
Some flies can bite you. There are very small flies about 1-2 mm long that bite. First you don't notice it, but after a day an irritation starts on the bite spot. Then you start to scratch and a wonderful infection will take place. Since this happens in many places at the same time you will feel extreme miserable!

-Mosquitoes
You probably know them already! In the area we will walk there is no malaria, so they are only a painful nuisance. A spray might prevent bites.

-Twisted ankle
During the walk the most common problem, when you get tired or your attention is somewhere else, is that you can misstep and twist your ankle. This hurts! It is the damage of tissue around the joints of the bones. Although the doctor might not agree with it the only way is to walk on. If you stop you never walk again. Cold water if we have it might prevent swellings. But better is not to look at it and not to take the boot off. If you take it off swelling will make sure that you never can fit it on again! The swelling in the boot, although painful, works as a kind of support.

Advertisment in Bilkent News, after the CtC walk, in September 2004