Mountain road in central Turkey near Sivas

Mountain road in central Turkey Our choice of the route through Sivas in central Turkey rather than the coastal route along the Black Sea was a decision we could easily have regretted. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but at a cost. The road was terrible, and enroute we had a puncture.

We carried on to the next town using the spare wheel, but it would have been foolhardy to have continued in that state. The town (probably Sorgun) was small and had no repair facilities, but we found a couple of locals who indicated they could fix it for us. Fortunately I was carrying tyre levers, because they only had a screwdriver. The inner tube was soon out and the puncture found by the time honored method of blowing it up and holding it under the surface of a bowl of water and looking for bubbles. There was then a considerable wait while someone scurried off to get a puncture repair kit, but eventually they had it fixed.

We left as quickly as we could. About an hour and a half had been lost, which was a concern because we needed to get out of the mountains and onto a decent road before sun down.

But fate was not on our side. A mile down the road the tyre blew again, so back we went to find our two 'experts'. We were not in a very good mood, especially when we found that the reason for the second blowout was that they had not checked the outer tyre and the nail that had been the cause of the initial puncture was still in place.

It was dark when we crawled into Ankara. But in retrospect we were lucky - crossing central Turkey could have been a lot worse.