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Day 1, June 1, Tuesday: clouded and rainy
MELENAĞZI - NAZIMBEY
At the Ankara bus-station (ASTI) a message comes that Sibel Torpil had an accident with a beer bottle and cannot come on the trip.
That means that the first of the 13 hikers is gone before the actual start of the walk.
Anil, Burak, Gürkan, Alper, Rado, Douwe and Zeynep come to the stand of the Duzce Expres firm. Gürkan tells here that he forgot to put the pan-set in his backpack.
After saying bye to parents the bus leaves at 09.07.
It is rainy and dark.
We are in the early afternoon in Akçakoca where Sarp and Duygu are already a day waiting in the Ali Ustanın Yeri.
On this rainy day Sarp is dressed in a sleeveless shirt and carries a heavy backpack with on the outside a metal thermos and an orange pioneer spade. Duygu had a hat like the girl in the Turkcel commercials.
After an hour Selen and Taylan arrive from Istanbul and the team is complete. We take a local bus to the center and from there a dolmuş to the 31st degree line. The bus is overfull because it is market day and the people complain about the space we take with our backpacks, while they forget how much space they occupy with their bags with fruits and other things.
With the GPS I control how we come closer to this line. This imaginary line is in MELENAĞZI, circa 15 kilometer west of AKÇAKOCA.
In MELENAĞZI we stop near a bakkal and buy some food for the evening. The sea is right behind the shop and we walk to the water to do a short ceremony. A small plastic bottle is filled with Black Sea water and will be carried by me to the other side of the country. Photos are taken, a short speech is held.
16.15: Off we go. The GPS tells that the endpoint is at 180 degree, exactly south, and 468 km away.
The easiest way is not to start to with a hill but to walk along the river. To get there we have to walk through the village of MELENAĞZI: the first wooden house is photographed.
No road is shown on our 25 years old map and we ask a local for the way. This is one of the most wrong things to do as we later learned. The reason is that the Turks in the year 2004 never walk over longer distances, but use cars, trackers and motorbikes. For this reason they have no idea about how long you walk over a kilometer or how faraway some place is.
We were told: "before the bridge to the left". We move through soppy fields with many fences of barbed wire. Climbing over or crawling under them makes us wet and muddy. Rado hangs an ear to the wire and is the first recorded wounded. We end up in a long lope of this meandering river and our road is blocked. We have to walk back to the east, a kind of path follows the water side. While walking Gürkan's tent slides out its straps and drops in the fast flowing river. A local fisher managed to 'catch' the tent.
A muddy road, full with water filled potholes, brings us to NAZIMBEY where we can make camp in the garden of the muhtar. It is 19.00 and we walked only 4.7 km, of which 2.9 km to the south and closer to the end.
The campsite is at (GPS) coordinate 36 331309 4546212.
Some of us have to pitch a tent for the first time and have also the first experiences with cooking in the field.
The burner of Sarp does not work well and during an attempt to repair it he looses a vital part in the grass and cannot find it back.
Zeynep washes her trousers that became muddy and cleans her boots with wet tissues. Alper the mountaineer of the DOST club is the only one who cooks a good meal and is, luckily for us, sharing it!
A few planks with plastic sheets is a field toilet, for many the first such pleasure!
A tap in the middle of the garden is the washing place for pans and bodies. Many don't feel the need yet to wash themselves.
After dark we go to our tents to sleep.
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statistics
from starting-point = 2.9 km
to end-point = 466 km
walked this day = 4.7 km
total km = 4.7 km
group members = 12
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Day 2, June 2nd, Wednesday: Sunny
NAZIMBEY - BEYLER
The wake up call is 'Good Moooorniiiiiiiiiiing!!!' and can be heard at 05.00. Not everyone likes to react immediately and the packing of the backpacks goes very slow. Especially the two couples are very slow.
Sarp discovers that he can miss many items from his already too heavy backpack. First of all the now useless gas burner, the extra gas containers, the spade and the thermos are left behind. From Selen come a pan and some extra food. All these items are placed on the table of the Muhtar and a thank note is written for him.
The village house has a depot for corn, this is a square structure standing only on four thin posts. Circular disks at the end of the standing posts prevent rodents to enter the depot.
Finally after 07.00 we can leave and that is too late according to me.
We continue the road and choose for the right fork in the road and come to a bridge. Of the bridge and some storage buildings in this village KOZLUK I take some photos.
A villager shows us a path between houses in the right direction, a 'shortcut'! This path goes steep up between some houses and through fields. It becomes a muddy track and Burak slips and grabs the barbed wire, the second wounded. After a while we come to a place where we have to choose left or right and both seem not to be good options. After a rest and a long reconnaissance of Taylan and Douwe, we go straight through the fields, heading south. However the steep fields are overgrown with hazelnut-trees and walking here is more than difficult. The field ends with barbed wire and I slip and slide down on my back and can stop sliding just before the lowest wire hits my face.
This is the pattern for the whole morning: nuts and fences!
We advance very slowly and need an extra medical break for Zeynep whose feet are already full with blisters. I empty many of them but do not see any future for her. I tape most of the feet off with strong medical tape and hope for the best. More nuts fields follow and a few buildings seen.
Around 11.00 we meet a man from AYDOĞAN KÖY who invites us for an ayran in his house. It is a bit off the road, but we sit in his courtyard and have the cold drinks and some food. Everyone is tired and feels the load of the backpacks. In the garden is a decaying depot for corn of which I take a photo.
On the way to ORTAKÖY we pass a village with the first house made of a timber framework with a mud brick infill of the panels. The other houses have bricks or wooden planks as outer-walls.
The backpack of Selen gives problems. A part of the construction hits her back all the time. Alper already tried to change the settings a bit, but it did not help much. I look at it and see not other solution then to cut that part away. So the knife has some work and the result was OK according to the user.
In ORTAKÖY a Jandarma meets us and want to know who we are and what we are doing. He looks a bit strange to my huge machete on the side of my backpack, but has no comments. In the center of the village he leaves me finally alone. We sit in the shadow of a teahouse and have a lot of attention of hundreds of school children. It is market day. We sit and drink and look again at Zeynep's feet. It is not going well and although she wants to continue, it seems better for her to return home. So we find a dolmuş that will bring her to a larger place with connections to the real world. Around 13.00 she leaves us and there are 11 of us left.
Around 13.15 we continue our way over a warm and steep road. At some resting point the missing Sarp and Duygu pass us on the back of a tractor. We come around 16.00 to the village of BEYLER. This village is not on our maps, although it is not small and rather old. It lays 10.3 km from our starting point at the Black Sea. I take some photos of the village houses.
The village has no teahouse, so we sit in front of a closed shop. We can choose out of two routes, one over the road or one along the west bank of the river. The road is shorter but much steeper with no places to stay, the river route is longer but more natural and probably with places to camp. We choose the second option; the river route. A path seems to run all the way along the west bank of the river.
While going out of the village I want to take some photos of houses but have to change films. In the hurry of not getting too far behind, I do not check the camera and the film does not get attached to the spool and no photos were taken at all, only I did not know this.
We continue this muddy road, Alper has his telescopic walking sticks in use, since he has a serious blister under his foot. Sarp we find hanging in a tree, picking cherries while below him Duygu eats them.
At some point we pass a hanging bridge over the river and a few hundred meters further stands a lonely farmhouse. Here we ask for a camping place and the farmer shows us a place next to the river. We make camp at (GPS) 36 326570 4537844, while plotting this coordinate on the map one discovers that this point is about 2 km too far to the east on the other side of the river, in other words the maps are 'not so accurate'.
Sarp and Duygu sit on the side of the river being romantic and Douwe is next to them busy to create a fishing rot.
The dinner preparations start and many variations of makarna are prepared. Only Alper has again something better to eat. Douwe catches a small fish and kills it by smashing the brains with a stone. Then he has to light a fire, soon the fish hangs over a smoking fire.
I cook my dinner and stir it with a plastic spoon, since I seem to have forgotten my metal one. As the water boils, the spoon melts in a very different shape and becomes useless. The dinner is a packet that Zeynep gave me. Macaroni Napolitana is the most horrendous thing I ever ate and most goes to the fish in the river.
When it gets darker the farmer comes with a large bowl of warm, fresh milk that many drink.
It is time to do some body washing and I do this near the bridge. Douwe uses the river after dark, but the water is very cold and muddy.
We sleep around 21.30.
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statistics
from starting-point = 11.5 km
to end-point = 457 km
walked this day = 13.2 km
total km = 17.9 km
group members = 11
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Coockson works on the many blisters on the feet of Zeynep.
The farmer and child, Alper behind them.
The muddy 'one day boots' of Zeynep.
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GPS Coordinates of places and archaeological sites in Turkey
