Day 136: Friday 1 August – No Room At The Inn and A Sticky Moment, by Ken

The Muezzin at the nearby mosque ensured we didn’t sleep in with another stirring performance as he called everyone for the dawn worship. With more than 270km to travel from Pammukale to Bodrum on the west coast we were happy to be up and about early so we could get Mabel ready for the road in the relatively cool of early morning. ‘Cool’ is very relative in Turkey, the temperature was 21° at a pre-dawn 05:45 and we knew from previous experience it would climb rapidly once the sun was up. Mabel was good to go before 08:00, but by then we were both dripping wet from the modest exertion of stowing everything away.  

I took a short drive in Smarty to get cash from a rank of ATMs we had spotted yesterday and to get some bread for lunch. The ATMs were a challenge with the sun shining directly on their screens. The first one I tried it was nigh on impossible to read anything on the screen and I was fortunate to be able to retrieve my card. I eventually found a machine with a display I could read and got some cash. The bakery was the real McCoy with baskets full of freshly baked loaves, the smell was enough to make me drool. At the back was an old oven with a cast iron door and a man was busy needing dough in an adjacent room.

After showers we got on the road, hitching up outside the town so as not to have to haul Smarty up the camping ground’s steep access road. Conveniently, we stopped to do this next to a field that provided a good opportunity to empty our grey waste tank.We had yet to find a grey waste disposal point in Turkey.

As usual Jane drove the first leg that initially followed the route we took yesterday to Aphrodisias. As yesterday, Smarty attracted a lot of interest when we passed through Denizli with heads turning in passing cars. The occupants of three gave us waves or the thumbs up. The black rivers of bitumen we had driven through yesterday afternoon weren’t as viscous, presumably because it was cooler. Nevertheless, the tread patterns of vehicles were clearly visible.

Real Plants Growing On Underpass Walls

When we set off Mabel’s range was nudging 300km but a steep climb into the hills reduced it rapidly and it was soon showing less than 100km. We pulled into a Total service station where two attendants came over to serve us. It was a repeat of yesterday’s performance. One of the attendants shouted out Mabel’s registration number while another typed it into a keypad near the pump. It took three attempts before they were satisfied they had got the number correct. Once diesel started to flow one of the men asked if we would like çay (tea). Diesel and tea - that had to be a first, but then we spotted a carpet weaving centre on the edge of the filling station forecourt. We wondered whether that’s where a glass of tea would have led us?

After passing through the town of Kale the road climbed a long way winding its way through pine forests and then started to descend after we passed as sign which we interpreted as informing we had reached the summit at 1010 metres. (As usual Mabel’s satnav was taking at least the morning off). We passed lots of roadside stalls advertising süt misir which appeared to be brown and came in jars. We knew süt was milk and our phrase book translated misir as corn. That didn’t make any sense so we gave the stalls a miss.

There's Quite An Art In Loading These Trucks

Workers In Fields

Yesterday I was spooked by a car coming towards me in the fast lane on my side of a dual carriageway. This morning we encountered three driving on the wrong side of the road, this time on the hard shoulder. One appeared to be being driven by a cop, it was a man in uniform with epaulettes on the shoulders of his shirt.

Car Travelling Towards Us On Hard Shoulder

We eventually reached the plains around the town of Muğla from where we headed north west on a dual carriageway. Near to the town of Satağan the satnav let us down instructing a left turn when there wasn’t one. However, there was an off ramp on the left that we should presumably have taken. We had to drive another 10km before we found a spot safe enough to make a U-turn to enable us to drive back to the interchange.

We drove through the town of Satağan where the streets were desperately in need of maintenance and the number of parked tractors matched the number of cars. Perhaps farmers came into town on their day of rest? We parked for lunch of bread and cheese on the outskirts of the town with a delightful view of a large steelworks.

The road from Satağan took us west through the town of Milas and thence south west along the coast to Bodrum. The road skirting the town was very busy and we sat in stationary traffic for quite a while before driving slowly to our chosen camping ground at Gümbet west of Bodrum. 

Bodrum

The camping ground was very busy and there was no sign of reception. We drove the length of the camping ground, tents, caravans and a few camper vans were parked cheek by jowl. We unhitched Smarty, turned Mabel around and drove in convoy towards the entrance. A man stopped me and asked if he could help. He agreed with me the place was full. Jane walked ahead and found reception, but there wasn’t anyone there. Jane wanted to wait for someone to turn up, I thought that was wasting time as the place was clearly full and, in any case, it was far the most salubrious place we had seen.

Jane was not at her happiest as we re-attached Smarty pointing out the next camping ground on our itinerary was a four hour drive away. I came up with a number of options:

Plan A: Backtrack about 20km and check out, one or both, of the camping grounds we had passed en-route. The entrances appeared steep and narrow, but it was worth a try.

Plan B: Head North to the camping ground we had stayed at in Kusadasi about 100km away.

Plan C: Stop at one of the many roadside restaurants we had passed and ask if we could park overnight if we ate there.

Plan D: As a last resort drive the 250km to the next planned stop.

Jane wasn’t keen on B as we would be going backwards and 350km from our next stop and certainly didn’t want to resort to Plan D and drive for another 4 hours.

We backtracked and found ourselves approaching slowly a very steep hill on a one-way street in Gümbet town as we threaded our way through parked cars. We didn’t get far up the hill before Mabel’s front wheels started to spin. It was clear we would not be able to make the hill with Smarty on the back. We both jumped out, unfortunately I was left dangling in mid-air by the handbrake lever which had slipped up a leg of my shorts, it took a while to get a foothold and free myself. By the time I had got to the back of Mabel the soles of my feet were burning as I had been driving in bare feet (feet swollen by the heat had caused my Tevas to chafe and leave me with grazed toes after a lot of walking on hot days). I haven’t seen how a cat performs on a hot tin roof, but my dance on baking slick bitumen would have left the cat for dead. Jane was in Smarty by then and later wondered why it had taken me so long to appear. She chucked me her jandals and I was able to stop dancing. By then cars behind Smarty were tooting their horns, but I had no idea what they expected us to do. Next problem was being on a hill Smarty’s weight was hanging on the tow bar. A paramedic standing by an ambulance nearby spotted my predicament and tried to help, but even the two of us couldn’t get the A-Frame off the tow ball. I had to get Jane to start Smarty and nudge her forwards before we were finally able to unhitch her. By then there was a lot more tooting. I thanked the paramedic and jumped back into Mabel. Even without Smarty on the back I struggled for traction with just slight pressure on the accelerator spinning the front wheels and generating a lot of smoke off the tyres. Reflecting on it afterwards we probably had too much weight in the garage which sits well behind the rear wheels. By steering left and just tickling the accelerator I managed to get Mabel moving after which the hill was plain sailing. Jane was laughing when she finally caught up with me in a space with room to hitch up.

Well past 20km from Bodrum we hadn’t seen either of the two camping grounds we passed earlier. We did a U-turn and found the entrance to Camping Kaya in the town of Guvercinlik. It was indeed narrow and steep and we parked in the road while I went off to explore. While the road was steep it was rough concrete and I was confident Mabel wouldn’t have traction problems when leaving. There were olive trees on both sides of the narrow road, but I felt there was just enough room to squeeze through. I reached the camping ground proper which was full of semi-permanent caravan set ups similar to those we had seen in Kusadasi, I asked a group sitting in the shade where reception was, a man started keying a number into his mobile phone and one of the women beckoned for me to follow her down the road. She ran ahead and came back with a lad about Harry’s age. She had a bit of English, he had none and seemed to ignore me. Between us we managed to agree there was space for Mabel at the end of the camping ground 10 metres from the sea.

Jane was delighted Plan A had worked. As I threaded Mabel down the steep slope between the olive trees she was dubious we would ever get out, but at least we wouldn’t be parked outside a restaurant for the night. She was even more delighted to see she could be in the sea within a few seconds of stepping out of Mabel. A downside was we couldn’t find anywhere to hook up too a power supply, but that wasn’t a game breaker. Mabel’s solar panel would keep the batteries topped up and we could use gas to power the fridge and boil water.

As we sat in the shade of Mabel’s awning eating an evening meal of macaroni cheese and the remainder of my sausage dish a woman from a nearby caravan came over, said welcome and offered us Turkish Delight and sweets.

Waterfront Outside Camping Ground

The camping ground was in a great location, but its facilities weren’t the best. The showers and toilets needed a good clean and our evening showers were cold water only. But we could live with that.

Today's Trip (327km)