Angels in lycra – an adventure in Turkey

*PROLOGUE*
The party was in full swing. The house was full of people. Music was blaring. Some enthusiastic revellers had got a fire going at the end of the garden.

We’d taken refuge in the workshop, hanging around the familiar tools and smells and mess of our day job.
The notes had done their rounds, the various members of the Broken Spoke and Agile Collective had all scribbled a goodbye/Good luck message. Now it was time to decide where to put them.
“In the front wheels. They’re bound to get a puncture within a few days”. Kiro mused.
“Won’t that adversely affect the integrity of the wheel?” Asked Sally.
“Nah” scoffed the mechanics in the room.
“Is Jamie going to approve of this? I’d hate us to be the cause of a bizarre misadventure somewhere out there…” Finn interjected.
“What could go wrong? It’s not like they would forget their spare inner tubes, would they?” Meike chuckled. Everyone nods in agreement.
So, with Caitlin and Linda causing a diversion involving mud, blood and bandages, we let down the tyres and slipped the notes in. We carefully pumped the tyres back up to the exact same pressure and scuttled back out to join the throng.

* 6 weeks later *

It has to be the bizzarest afternoon of our journey so far.

We find ourselves riding down the motorway hard shoulder in the dark. We have three lycra clad young men forming a protective guard around us, escorting us to a service station where we are told we can camp for the night.

How did we get here? Who are they?

Rewind five weeks, and we’re having our leaving party. We’ve invited our friends and colleagues. Everyone is having a good time. Someone decides it would be funny/ nice/ sweet to leave us a note somewhere we’ll find it on the journey. A note gets tucked inside the tyre of my front wheel.

Two weeks later a puncture happens and we find the note, though don’t immediately recognise it as such as its become sodden with tyre sealant. It is perhaps relevant that the puncture occurred in the exact same place that the note was found, so we can only assume that the two were related. However, the puncture was fixed, thanks dispatched and chuckles were shared and on we went…

A few days ago we pumped up my tyre having noticed it had lost some pressure. The following day, on loading up the bike we discovered it had gone flat again.
Right – off it comes to investigate the cause. The patch had failed. Jamie scraped away the old patch best he could and mended it, telling me all the while about the time he fixed a puncture with nothing but a knife and some tree sap. Puncture mended, away we go.

A few hours and another country later we are flying down a  sizable hill about 30km north of Edirne. My bike starts to wobble. Oh dear, I think, that’s not good. The wobble gets worse. Oh dear… Oh Shit…
“JAMIE!” I yell, pulling on the brakes, fairly certain that if I pull too hard chaos will ensue.
I manage to stop without careering off the road and look up to see Jamie enjoying the descent in the distance. He’s not going to be impressed that he has to come back up, but there’s not much to be done, he has the repair kit. And my front tyre is very flat.

Eventually he notices the lack of me behind him and in the distance I see him turn and stop. Even at this distance I can tell he’s not impressed.

It is swelteringly hot by now.

Jamie repairs the puncture again, twice.
Why haven’t we just swapped the inner tube you may ask? Because the spare inner tubes appear to be in the UK. Or somewhere that isn’t here, as we discover when we take EVERYTHING out of our panniers to find them.

There’s a bike shop in Edirne, we know because we checked for the nearest when we fixed it in Bulgaria this morning. So we just need to get there, before it closes.

We carefully ride the 30km to Edirne, seriously hot and out of water. We have no money yet nor mobile data. We’re hot and bothered and a little cross. We encounter Turkish drivers properly for the first time which doesn’t help anyone’s state of mind.

However, we get money, find water, have an icecream and sit in the shade for long enough to restore our bright and cheerful dispositions then hunt down the nearest bike shop. It’s a lovely establishment, nuzzled between a couple of kebab shops. Unfortunately they don’t have the right kind of inner tube.

But, on the plus side, there’s kebabs to be had. Kebabs were had.

On to the other bike shop.
It is shut, despite Google’s assurances that it was open till 9pm.
We sat on the steps and waited.
We sent a couple of messages to warm showers hosts.
A woman and her son turned up wheeling a bike. Realising it was shut she made a call. They sat for a while, then wandered off.
We waited a little longer.

A kid rolled up on a road bike, clad in vibrant blue lycra.
“It’s shut” we told him.
He flipped out his phone and started chatting away in Turkish and we carried on waiting.
A moment later he handed the phone to me.
The man on the phone explained to me that the bike shop owner was in Bulgaria till Sunday. He said he knew of a campsite we could stay at for free. I said that would be great, but that really we were looking for some parts.

“Give me the kid”.
I gave the phone back to the kid, who received some instructions then announced “I’ll take you to the campsite, just wait a minute for my friend'”
We wait.
The phone rings again. Fatih, as we discover he’s called, answers. It’s handed back to me.

“Ok, I called my friend at the campsite, that’s ok. Now what do you need to fix your bike?”
I explain.

“Ok,  give me the kid”.
Fatih receives more instructions.
His mate arrives on a fast looking road bike, in the Edirne road-cycling team strip. He introduces himself as Ömer. I’d guess he and Fatih are about 15.

“Ok, we go to a shop”, Fatih announces.

We mount up and follow Fatih back in to town. Ömer takes a protective position beside us,  sitting between us and the traffic.

They are clearly used to riding in a group, though Fatih is called back by Ömer when he takes off up the hill at speed, forgetting for a moment that he’s escorting two old heavy weary cycle tourists.

We pull up to another bike shop and are met by another member of the cycling club, Mert, and the lovely bike shop owner Mahmoud. Mahmoud and Jamie go into the depths of the shop and a little while later Jamie returns saying he’s got one inner tube and there are two more coming.

“Coming how?”
Jamie shrugs.

Our party grows as Mert joins the fun. We set off back across the city again. The streets are busy,  and the guys have us surrounded now. When a gap opens between me and Jamie the boys stretch their protective bubble around us like pros. We stop for the lights.
“Drivers are idiots” Mert explains. “He’s an idiot, he’s an idiot. He’s an idiot.”

Suddenly we pull in to a bus stop. I have no idea what’s going on but the guys seem comfortable. I ask Jamie. He has no idea either.

A man appears and hands us some inner tubes. He smiles and pats us on the back, exchanges a few words with the boys and then waves and disappears.

I ask the boys if they are sure they are ok coming to the campsite. We can find it,  I explain. They look non-plussed. Ok, let’s go.

Ömer takes the lead, I pull out to follow and  oops, I’m on the floor, bike on top of me, foot awkwardly still clipped in. I’m fine, just a bit surprised and feeling a bit embarrassed. Though not very. Maybe I’m too tired to have pride left to be damaged.  I can tell without looking my tyre is flat again, it felt like it just rolled under me.

It’s not completely flat, we decide to just pump it up and hope. It’s dark now and surely these guys have a better way to spend their Friday night.

They look worried, so I make them laugh by showing a few of my other way wounds. I’m not sure this puts them at ease.

We try again. If anything they are even more protective now. Ömer keeps a very steady pace, and gestures at me to slow down when I try to up the pace a bit.
We cycle through the dark, keeping to the hard shoulder of the duel carriage. It’s a busy road, but they show us that in Turkey you just need to own the space.

A little part of my mind wonders what we are doing. We don’t know these guys and we are cycling in to the darkness with them. But really I know it’s fine. I trust them. I feel a strange mixture of protective of and protected by them.

Eventually we pull in to a shell garage, and we see one of the garage attendants face light up. We’re here.

The boys hang around for long enough to see that we’re ok. We exchange stories and contact details and we try to thank them. They laugh us off.

They take their leave of us, I think keen to ride at a pace more suited to a road bike.
I’m sorry they aren’t coming further with us.

Erdem treats us like honoured guests. He shows us where we can camp, he helps us set up our tent. Once we’re set up he takes us through the back of the shop and shows us the shower.
When I come back through I notice he’s pinned up paper on the glass window so that no-one might see me passing in my towel.

He ushers me to a chair behind the office desk and carefully lays out paper towels on the desk as a tablecloth. He soon lays it a feast for us – çorba, yoghurt, bread, tomato stew, borek. We eat till we’re stuffed.
All the while Erdem is asking us questions about or trip and our life, using Google translate’s speaking function. Sometimes with entertaining results.
He shows us photos of his life, family and adventures. He shows us other people who’ve been to his cycle friendly petrol station, of which he is so proud. He is really keen to help any cyclists and asks us to share in with our friends.
He gives us advice on our route, and advises us not to take the back roads through the villages, as ” the village roads are made of tea”, a phrase I suspect will be a running theme for some time to come.

Eventually we call it a night and crawl into our tent.

We’re a bit shell-shocked by the whole thing. Such generosity shown, and such willingness to help total strangers. I don’t know how many people were involved in the whole operation, 8 at the least but possibly more. We are humbled by it.

The following morning, after a fitful night’s sleep caused by an overenthusiatic cockrel,  the petrol station owner’s daughter stops by to say hello. Sarah is half Turkish half Mancunian, she received a phone call late the previous night from Erdem excited to tell her that some of her people were here. I told her the story of yesterday’s adventure and how touched we were by the kindness we received.

“That’s not so unusual”, she laughed, “this sort of thing often happens in Turkey “.