A cycle tour in Western Turkey in 2022 including Eurovelo 8
Turkey might not be everyone's first choice for a cycle tour but read on…there are a lot of great reasons why you should choose to head there with your bike. This article describes a tour taken with four friends in September 2022, the choices we took whilst planning, and the discoveries we made when we were out there on the road.
Who are we?
This wasn’t our first rodeo (cycle tour). Some combination of this group of friends has been doing this every year since 2013. This time round the group consisted of Graham, a restaurant manager, Norman a psychiatrist Alexa a carpenter, and Steve an architect. We are all in our mid to late 40s.
How did we choose Western Turkey?
We had taken tours in France, Spain, Portugal, Corsica, and Sardinia and were looking for something a bit different. We toured Central Turkey a few years ago and enjoyed it. Our time was limited to 6 days of riding and we didn't want long-haul/multiple flights. We discussed the Vîa De la Plata in. Spain; it was too long and bikes can’t easily be taken on trains in Spain. We discussed returning to re-ride the RAID Pyrénéen in France but again we didn't have enough time to do this properly.
Eastern Turkey was suggested with the idea of flying to Erzurum in Eastern Anatolia, but this involved two flights so again we didn't have the bandwidth (although we are definitely going to return to that idea).
Time was marching on and people's diaries were starting to fill up, it was beginning to look like didn’t have a firm plan we could all sign up to. After I got taken ill with Covid I had some time and started looking at the maps again. I was looking for a short-haul destination in Turkey, my idea being that you could fly into one location and fly out of another. From my experience, a point-to-point route delivers a greater variety of landscape and terrain. So I started looking at the airports on Turkey’s western coast; Dalaman, Bodrum, and Izmir.
It's sometimes fun to end a tour with a mini-city break so returning from Istanbul looked like a good option. For this reason, Dalaman was too far away and Izmir seemed too close; we choose Bodrum. It's also worth acknowledging that whilst Istanbul is a beautiful, vibrant, and achingly interesting destination if we could avoid cycling through the industrial zones that border the largest city in Europe we should. Train travel is restricted with bikes so perhaps we could get a ferry for the last leg into the city across The Sea of Marmara. More on this later.
Route Planning
I put together a staw-man route that began at Bodrum airport and wound its way up the coast before striking inland and heading to the ferry port in Bandirma. The first cut of the route was 645 km and we gave ourselves 6 days to complete it (‘day’ 1 was after landing and was going to be a night ride).
We wanted to avoid big roads where possible, stick close to the coast for possible swimming opportunities, and take in a few bits of Turkey's rich cultural heritage if possible. When I started drilling into the maps on Komoot and RidewithGPS I noticed the middle section of the proposed route included the established Eurovelo 8 route. It made sense to coopt as much of this as we could as it should be cyclists friendly. I left the last two days pretty loose at this stage as plans can change mid-tour depending on the weather, fatigue, mechanicals etc. and we could finalise these on the road to suit our purposes.
I phoned each of the parties in turn and made my pitch stressing the utility of this tour; “Close to the sea”, “Ancient ruins”, “point-to-point”, “achievable distance”, “ferry ride”, and “Istanbul finish”. There was an agreement and relief that we had alighted on something after weeks of prevaricating. I Booked the tickets.
We would fly out with Easyjet, the low-cost carrier that services the regional coastal cities, on the 10th of September but return with Air Turkey from Istanbul on the 18th.
The ride was planned in Komoot and I made use of one of the premium features; creating multi-day routes and adding them to a collection. You could then share the collection with the others in the group and they can make their own changes to the route, either on their desktop machines or mobile phones. Later this second piece of functionality meant that if one person edited the route whilst riding the route the updates would sync to everyone's fancy bike computers. Bonus (thanks Steve).
The summer rolled along with each of us separately doing low-key prep for the tour in parallel with our other commitments; staying in relatively good shape, tweaking our bikes, refining our kit options, and occasionally meeting up for a beer to discuss the holiday. Invariably these occasions were more about the beer than refining the ride. We were all pretty happy with the route, although with each day being over 100 km and some closer to 170 km we knew would have little wiggle room.
Boxing Bikes
To put a bike on a plane it needs to be boxed up. This is both for the bike's protection and to protect other people's luggage from your bike. Getting the bikes from your house to the plane presents an interesting challenge. You can’t ride the bike because you would then need to box it up at the airport, this takes a good 30–40 mins also and how would you transport the boxes? So you have to box it up in advance. You can choose to have a bike shop do this, the cost is around £30–50 including the cardboard box, or you can buy a bike box and do it yourself. I choose the second approach. I brought a bike box on eBay for £5 plus delivery but unfortunately didn’t check the dimensions and ended up with a box for a child's bike! It was going to be very snug. Breaking down a bike for boxing requires a number of steps, they don’t need to be done in the following order but this is how I do it:
- Remove the seat post inc seat (if it can’t be pushed right into the frame) and tighten up the seat clamp so it doesn’t come off in transit
- Remove the pedals with a 6mm alen key.
- Remove the front wheel. To prevent the forks from compressing replace your through axel or use a large roll of toilet paper (thanks Graham)
- Remove the rear wheel (if using an undersized box!)
- Remove the front wheel
- Remove the rear mech and tape this to the frame between the rear stays. No need to break the chain.
- Remove the handlebars from the stem and twist these around to hook into the frame.
- There is a recommendation to deflate the tires but as the pressure is only the equivalent of a 16-stone person riding the bike (thanks Graham) this is unnecessary.
You should be able to place your bike in the box now. Be sure to put the tools you need for reassembly into the box (in a bag along with the pedals) as you can't take them as hand luggage on the plane in hand luggage. Personally, I also put all my bike luggage and kit into this box as well, however, carriers request that you don't do this. Perhaps it's because it saves you buying an expensive baggage allowance. I shouldn't be cynical, I’m sure they have a good reason.
Each carrier has its own size and weight limitations. In our case, these were 140 x 30 x 100cm and 32kg. Restricting the dimensions makes sense as Steve found out. His box was over the height and it couldn't be put through the scanner so he had to wait for a porter to take it separately.
To get to the airport from our homes Steve's partner Lesley picked each of us up in turn with our boxes in their camper and delivered them to Farringdon station in London (if you are not traveling at peak times it is possible to get boxed bikes on London busses though). Farringdon is a good option if you are going to Gatwick as it's cheaper than the Gatwick express and you can buy a groupsave ticket costing just £7.20 each).
At the airport, we put the bikes on trollies and wheeled them to the check-in desk. Tip: Don’t all push the bikes along in the queue. Keep all the bikes to the side of the desks and one person walks the queue. Get the boxed bikes (and kit!) weighed…this gets a bit competitive as it's always a good idea to minimise weight. Once weighed pass them over to the person at the oversized luggage desk and head off to mooch around the airport.
I have an Apple Airtag inside my bike frame as a tracker so it was interesting to keep an eye on the bike's location as it was moved around the airport.
The flight was delayed by 2 hrs. We left at 5.30 pm We arrived at 11.30 pm after gaining 2 hours. The boxed bikes arrived in good condition. Bodrum is a surprisingly large, modern airport. The staff were really helpful. Over the course of the next 45 mins we built the bikes up outside the main entrance. The police encouraged us to leave the boxes there when we had finished.
Day 1 — Sunday night from Bodrum Airport to …an olive grove
We opened up the route for day 1 on our cycling computers and navigated out of the complex via a series of roundabouts. Tip: Make sure you install the base map on your head unit for the area you are traveling to as well as the routes. These are available via the manufacturer’s website. It was 1 am and we were on the road and almost immediately onto a relatively quiet dual carriageway. This was our lot for the next 6 km before a left after an all-night garage took us onto b roads. There was a full moon and sun-bleached fields lined the road.
A note about roads in Turkey. There are four main types: motorways, dual carriageways, state highways, and provincial roads. The first of these should obviously be avoided. We are always aiming to ride on the provincial roads, however, sometimes short sections of dual carriageways and state highways are needed in order to join up sections of the route.
Graham and I scouted out a place to camp next to an olive grove a few hundred meters along the country road. We were about to put up our tents and to our surprise, a car pulled up and two men got out. We didn’t want to appear to be hiding from them so we tentatively waved and said hello. They greeted us and then proceed to walk up into the olive grove in conversation. After some discussion, they returned to the road and within 10 minutes a flatbed truck pulled up with men and tools in the back and they began working on the track…at 3 am. This seemed strange until we tried to do anything the next day…the temperature was so oppressive. We reasoned these men were time-shifting; working at night rather than in the heat of the day.
We moved on from the olive grove and found another spot a couple of km further down the road. Beyond a layby, there were arid, dusty terraces, but these were flat and you could move the stones aside. After keeping an eye on the weather when back in London and determining the chance of rain was close to zero I had opted for a bug bivvy. It looks like the inside of a tent but with one external pole that you hook guys into for support. I had an insulated mat and a silk sleeping bag liner…and a new inflatable pillow (I'm getting old!). Two of the others had the TerraNova Competition tents and the other two one-man MSR and Big Agnes tents. More on kit later.
Day 2 — Olive grove to a hotel near Priene
We slept for a few hours. It was a litte chilly…but then the sun came over the mountain top and you were aware of the first rays touching you as you dozed. We struck camp. I was down by the roadside putting sun cream on at 8 am, it was 30 degrees celsius. This set the tone for what, thankfully, turned out to be the hottest day of the tour. After 10 km we stopped at a small, touristic, cafe for Börek, Ayran and Turkish Coffee and sheltered from the heat. We made the decision to begin the subsequent days at dawn and take long lunches to avoid cycling in the hottest part of the day.
We followed rolling provincial roads until a massive descent dropped us into Kaziki. We followed this for 10 km before meeting a busy state road which merged with a dual carriageway after 7 km. We stopped at a garage to cool off. The heat was intense. People were wondering if they could do more of this type of riding. Steve brought us ice lollies and we sat by the air compressor in the shade. From what I could see we had a short section of fast descent before a turn-off onto a minor road. Once we reached that I felt sure our luck would change. It did. The rest of the days riding was fantastic. We could slow down because we were no longer riding on a hard shoulder, the sun began its descent westwards and the landscape opened up; small towns, people working in the fields, children playing, men sipping chai at the cafes that lined the road. All the while our goal, Dilek Yarimadaski Millie Parki, was ahead of us on the horizon. A mountain that seemed to behave like a background in Grand Theft Auto: always present and never seeming to get any closer. This last section was a great antidote for the stresses of that morning; a cool breeze and empty, well-surfaced flat roads.
We rolled into a small square west of Gullubache that acted as the gateway to the ancient temple complex of Priene. After the previous night's lack of sleep, we had booked very reasonably priced rooms in a hotel. We went to dinner at an impressive local restaurant on the side of the mountain with views over the valley floor. When we returned to the hotel a wedding was in full swing a few meters from our rooms…Tip: Always pack earplugs for occasions like these (thanks Lorna). I even managed to remain asleep when the Karaoke kicked off.
Day 3 — Hotel near Preine to Denizi
We managed to get on the road around dawn the next day. It was going to be a long day. Stopping briefly in Söke for breakfast before taking a direct route to the coast. We then hugged the coast mainly on decent cycle paths. The Eurovelo 8 begins at Selçuk and we didn't realsie we were riding it for the first 20 km. When we did spot the signs for the route they definitely helped us maintain a good speed. We stopped at Gumuldur Cumhuriyet for lunch at one of the many small restaurants on the front and sat at a table next to the sea. It was possible to change into swimwear in the restaurant toilet and then climb down a short set of steps into the turquoise water and take a dip while we waited for our food. The afternoon was more of the same until we came off the coast near Beglier Mah briefly leaving the Eurovelo 8 and heading up a verdant valley in the golden-hour sunshine.
Prior to Seferihier you are forced onto a busy dual carriageway and taken into the town but the Eurovelo 8 then serves up a rough gravel detour to the charming coastal village of Sigacik Malliger before taking you up into open heathland. All the agricultural land as you approach the sea provides enjoyable riding. The others took a different route to the ‘hotel’ but I stopped at the coast and watched the sunset before heading over to our rooms for the night.
The low cost and utility of the previous night's accommodation had peaked people's interest in finding beds for that night too. A sensible argument was put forward that ran “If we want to avoid riding in the intense heat but still be able to complete 100 km plus days we should set off around dawn and take a couple of hours over lunch. To enable us to get up before dawn, rested, phones and computers charged, without tents to pack away and be on the road by first light the best option was to take a room somewhere”.
Pins
It was easy for me to meet up with the rest of the group. When they had booked the accommodation they were sent a pin by the proprietors, they forward this on to me. Sending your location as a dropped pin, or even a moving one, proved to be an invaluable way of staying in touch with people. Someone might find a decent cafe, they would send a pin to the WhatsApp group. If you wanted to let people know how far in front or behind you were, send a pin to the WhatsApp group, etc. On this occasion, I reached the pin first only to find it was a suburban house. After I had rung the bell with no answer I was joined in the street by a workman from a neighboring house. After 10 mins of neither of us understanding the other, he offered me a cup of tea. This is the Turkish way. After the rest of the riders arrived a few minutes later we put our bikes on the balcony behind the house, ate some takeaway pide, and headed to our beds.
Day 4 — Denizi to Foça
The next day we started on a fast road but the traffic soon thinned out as we left the coastal town. There was a realisation that traveling south to north on the Eurovelo 8 meant crossing four lanes of fast traffic to get to some of the small, quieter, sections of the route meant and often the payoff wasn't worth the hassle and the decrease in momentum. I would have to look at the route ahead in Komoot and decide whether or not the detour was going to be worth it for the group.
Trying to beat the algorithms
Eurovelo 8 hugs the coast where possible and tries to take you away from state roads. Because of this, the route was often on the left side of the left carriageway. This made accurate route plotting in any software hard as the algorithm would never put you on an adjacent bike path if it was heading against the flow of the traffic. For this reason, our gpxs were often trying to take us into fast lanes of traffic when the Eurovelo 8 was meandering alongside the lefthand lane next to the turquoise water. This became a theme. NB: Ridewithgps lets you draw lines instead of snapping to the road, this would have helped here.
We did 20 km on the fast coast road before reaching a Eurovelo 8 detour outside Balçover. This took us to the seafront and we cruised along past joggers and dog walkers on a well-marked cycle path through a park with gardens and a lake. Here one of our party took a tumble after clipping a low-lying curb and dinged his rear mech dropout. Luckily a quick google found a bike shop less than a mile away in Izmir and we limped there where it was realigned for the equivalent of £5!
Izmir
Izmir is a large city. The Eurovelo 8 follows a well-defined cycle path along the esplanade by the seafront but there is an issue with the route here. The center of Izmir is dominated by a commercial port that separates the south from north pedestrian zones. A cyclist is forced into a sequence of walking the bike over pedestrian crossings, footbridges, and finally, joining a busy gyratory to get past this obstacle. Once beyond it, we were back on the blue cycle lane until we left the city. We rolled out of Izmir flanked on our right by an air base and on the left by lagoons filled with flamingos and sea birds. After stopping for lunch in a huge, nearly empty restaurant a long section into a headwind was rewarded with empty roads that took us through a wild foul nature reserve (aka filter beds). Great light in the afternoon sun and no cars.
Dogs
It's worth mentioning dogs at this point. Turkey has a reputation for dogs being an issue for cyclists and there is some truth in this. Broadly speaking you can encounter three types of dogs on your journey here: the stray dog, the tethered guard dog, and the untethered guard dog. The first two don’t pose a problem. The stray dog knows it's at the bottom of the pecking order and is hungry so is almost always passive or sniffing about for food although some of these look pretty terrifying you shouldn't have an issue here. The tethered guard dog, whilst it's going berserk, is doing so at the end of a chain or behind a fence so there is little to worry about here. It's the untethered guard dogs that present a problem as you roll through small villages and farmyards.
After some experimentation, we developed a strategy that sounds counterintuitive: slow down …but be ready to sprint! In 9/10 cases it was the speeding bicycle that set them off and had them chasing after you, this would only continue for a few hundred meters until you were out of range and away from the farm they were guarding. If you slowed down they may continue to bark but they don’t try and bite and they don't chase you: their instinct to hunt isn’t triggered. The caveat here is that it's a good idea to keep your eyes on them and be ready to sprint if this tactic fails! Be wary when riding in industrial and agricultural areas. NB: There is rabies in Turkey (mainly in the bat population) and we investigated getting vaccinated but my doctor consulted with a tropical diseases expert citing the area we were traveling in and they advised against it.
We met some dogs in the farm yard beyond the wild foul park that fell into this final category and we had to step on the gas. One of our party, the first to head through the farm, was unlucky and got cornered by two of them. After a lackluster intervention on the part of the farmer, she was able to extricate herself. This was the worst dog encounter we experienced on our tour.
The rest of the day was fast to Foça through golden-hour drenched landscape on the most direct provincial roads that skirted the coastal marshland. The descent into Foça was stunning and we were greeted with an almost psychedelically rich sunset.
Foça is a well-appointed Turkish holiday destination that serves as a getaway for Izmir’s residents. We camped on a promontory that looked back over the bay to the street lamp-lined esplanade. If I returned to Western Turkey with the idea of spending a few days by a beach, this is where I would come.
Day 5 — Foça to Soma
We struck camp and climbed out of town on a well-surfaced empty road that hugged the cliff edge. This provided a gentle rollercoaster for 25 km before a breakfast of misc pastries and Turkish coffees at a beachside bakery in YeniFoça. The going remained good until around the 33 km mark outside Sitela.
The Eurovelo 8 does a great job of seeking stunning bits of road that introduce the rider to wonderful landscapes normally unseen by non-Turkish tourists but the unavoidable flipside to this is that sometimes it runs out of provincial road or cycle path and all its got to work with is the state road and dual carriageway to join you back up with the good cycling roads. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the outskirts of Sitela as you navigate past scores of heavy haulage vehicles laden down with goods from the international freight depot there. We arrived at one junction and were convinced we had taken a wrong turn. The options looked bleak. Trucks tore past as they headed toward a complex gyratory system on a hill. Everyone had a different idea of how to approach it. In the end, we had to bite the bullet and ride alongside the storm ditch until we could descend. The next 30 km was a mixture of fast state road and worthy Eurovelo 8 detours.
We had made plans we reach Bergama for lunch but our progress had been slow. I had gone ahead in the hope of setting the pace on what was going to be a long day. 64 km into the day and with Bergama still 40 km away I rejoined the state road and did 10km on this to make up some time. Just prior to leaving it I stopped at a garage for a refuel (water and Fanta 3:1 mix) and dropped my pin in the group chat.
Owing to logistical constraints one member of the party needed guaranteed passage on the early ferry from Bandirma to Istanbul and this meant the last section of the route needed to be done in one day by anyone who wanted to make this connection (more on ferries later). I got a message back on the chat informing me that two members of the party had decided to put their bikes on a bus in Bergama for this last leg whilst the other two were going to head directly to Soma and skirt Bergama.
I decided to take the Eurovelo 8 into the countryside and ride towards Soma. These were great, well-surfaced, empty roads that rolled through the verdant countryside of fertile orchards. Slow gentle climbing with Bergama always present 10 km across the valley to my left, its white buildings mapping themselves to the contours of the mountains beyond. I reached the fast road around 4 pm and then it was a fast 25km to Soma.
Soma is a reasonable size, but only half a dozen hotels in the centre. I tried calling a couple of them hoping my pleas for English would be met with “A little” but no such luck. I decided to pay the closest one a visit. I made my request clear using google translate on my phone whilst keeping an eye on my last 5pc of battery life. They had a room for three and we could also keep our bikes with us. It was so cheap I presumed the price was for each person. The other arrived two hours later. We ate out at a sit-down street market cafe and paid maxi-tourist prices. Back at the hotel room, we made sure we had everything on charge and got to bed. Tip: it's best to have earplugs in case the first person to get to sleep snores and it's not you.
Day 6 — Soma to Bandirma
The three of us woke at 5.30 am. We had 175 km of riding ahead of us with mid-30s celceus predicted for midday. This was going to turn out to be a ride of two halves. The day began on gravel and we climbed on this before staying high on great, empty roads for close to 50 km in one of the best stretches of riding of the tour. These lasted until Balikesir. From there the situation changed. The mountain range arched east with few opportunities to head north on cycle-friendly provincial roads. We had to try our luck on the state road and it was busy with trucks heading towards the coast. The next 20 km involved climbing over the second peak of the day on the hard shoulder with lorries flying past us.
Around 1 pm with 93 km done we pulled into a roadside truck stop at Demerkapi and asked if we got get some lunch. The smartly dressed proprietor welcomed us in and showed us what was on offer; haricot bean stew followed by kofta. Perfect. We had lunch at a table on a patio outside surrounded by tomato plants that obscured the fast road beyond. We waited out the heat here for two hours. We each took power naps. I lay on the ground and dozed.
After swapping selfies of our group with the owner and a few rounds of Chai we headed to the garage next door and filled our bottles. Then it was a fast shallow descent with a tailwind for 56 km. After that the last section of the day to Bandirma dragged but as began to close in on our prize we were joined by a pro-team-cyclist for the last 15 km who delivered us to our hotel in the port. We were reunited with the rest of our party who had passed us on the bus when we were riding. We had beers in the bar at the top of the hotel before heading to a local fish restaurant for dinner.
The riding was over but it's worth sharing a few bits of information about the ferry to Istanbul. The main reason why we had this huge day at the end was the necessity of one of our party making it onto the first ferry of two ferries that sailed to Istanbul each day from Bandirma. We had had little luck finding out details of these sailings. After we had managed to get a Turkish-speaking go-between to contact the company, Ido, by phone we had been told you couldn't book tickets in advance unless you were a Turkish citizen and also that only three bikes were permitted on each sailing. Steve was leaving on a flight back to London the following day and so couldn't take the risk of being refused passage on the second sailing of the day, hence the need to make the first at 7.30 am.
We all headed to the ferry terminal for 7.00 am. The idea being that if we couldn’t sail we could at least see what the situation was, buy tickets, and make ourselves known to the staff there if we were to be forced to gamble on the later sailing. To our amused relief we were all able to buy tickets and sail on the 400-seater ferry.
We arrived in Yenkapi port two hours later and headed to our Air B&B in the Balat area of the town.
A key component of the tour and one that gave us the opportunity to ride a point-to-point route and leave from Istanbul was being able to pay a company to re-box our bikes and transfer them, and us, to the airport. This involved a fair bit of organising (thanks Steve). When I first contacted them it looked like they had a shop or similar where this would take place but this didn't transpire and Steve had an endless email exchange with them which resulted in the bikes and boxes being stored in our Air B&B. The bikes were boxed-up in a car park opposite our place. The boxing was okay, but not great (my front disc was bent in transit) and cost around 65 euro per person/bike including transfer to the airport which I think is expensive. Boxing them ourselves would have yielded better results, however, we couldn’t have guaranteed being able to obtain bike boxes. This is part of the puzzle we are yet to crack.
The next two days were spent visiting the historical sites of the great city and enjoying a well-deserved Hamen (in some cases two!). The transfer to the airport was relatively painless despite the labyrinthine one-way system congested with building works offering up every possible obstacle to prevent our departure in the min-bus the company was using for the purpose. We got there in good time and Istanbul airport can best be described as monumental.
The flight was enjoyable. Turkish Airlines are certainly a step up from Easyjet in every respect. The cost of the flight was £130 against the cost of Easyjet being £80. Low-cost carriers are not licensed to fly out of Istanbul's main airport. However, great food (by airplane standards) was served, and inflight entertainment was available so the three and a half hours passed quickly.
When we collected our bikes in Heathrow we found that in some cases the boxes had been opened and this made it tricky to transport them to our underground connection on the Elizabeth line. Norman and Alexa built their bikes up on the train in the 30 mins it took to reach Paddington. Graham and I elected to un-box the bikes and carry them onto the N30 bus and got home that way.
Conclusions
I’m biased here as I designed the route, however, I’m really happy with how it went. We had some constraints (mentioned in the opening paragraphs) and we worked with them to create a route that took in the sea, mountains, and unspoiled countryside, which could be done in 5–6 days and ended in a city break. Having said that there are things I would change about it if I was to do it again. A good alternative tour of a similar length would be to fly in and out of Izmir. You wouldn’t get the Istanbul finish but you could leave hard bike boxes at the airport, and ride the Eurovelo 8 north before peeling east into the mountains and looping round to the section of Eurovelo 8 south of the city. Another alternative would be to take 7–10 days over the tour. This would give the rider time to stop at the plethora of world heritage sites in that area and also allow enough time to always choose the quietest roads where available.
Turkey is a great place to cycle tour and I'm definitely going to be coming back.
