From My Notebooks In 1977: Turkey

With this excerpt I’m only days away from the end of a four-year journey, approaching the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, still in the company of Ted Holst and Mina on their BMW.

Still Monday June 6th

At Mersin a fertiliser factory is producing the worst smoke pollution I’ve ever seen. A pall of salmon smoke completely obscures the road and the country around.

Trying to get to Silifke before dark. Tried at a MoCamp (BP). Prices were too high, and I thought it was all too lavish. We went on and spotted the “Yilmaz” restaurant overlooking bay. They let us camp on a terrace, and we ate and drank – fish, salad and wine – for 48 Lira each.

Tuesday June 7th

Stayed at restaurant. Met two burly bulldozer mechanics who were liberal with fish and raki. Peter had difficulty accepting it. (He turned up just before lunch.) In afternoon another family came and dished out fruit and yoghurt. A lazy day.

[The question of which offers to accept and which to refuse can be tricky. I took the rather grandiose and self-serving view that since I was intending to give all my thoughts and experiences back to the world as a book, I was entitled to take from it whatever it offered. I was on a mission. Peter was not.]

Wednesday 8th

Left, and forgot to pack the fishing rod. Slept in woods before Alanya, with fire. Nice coast.

View from the road

Thursday 9th

To Antalya. Public campground on road to Kemer, on beach. Grilled kebab meat. Nice port. High stone walls. Fish restaurants. Cheap apricots. Dropped gloves twice in street.

Friday 10th

Next day left Pete and rode north. Then vibration started. We fiddled with timing and stuff.

[I guess Pete must have caught up with me.]

Lost lots of time, and stopped long way short of Afyon, the target. In small hotel, where French couple, coming the other way, joined us in trip to the Hamam, escorted by hotel owner and Turkish friend. All together in bath, while Turks waited outside. Afterwards lots of lewd remarks about “spielen” – and next morning the foolish scene in bedroom between Hennie [the French girl] and hotel keeper while Mark slept. So a good impression spoiled, but not too badly for us men. We are not Muslims.

Next day, Saturday, stopped again to camp behind BP station eating bread and sausage and cheese. So, Sunday into Istanbul.

The bridge out of Asia – across the Bosphorus to Istanbul

[I spent three days in Istanbul and saw plenty but wrote nothing about it. I only have one very clear recollection. In a residential neighbourhood the three or four storey houses, built as a U, enclosed an open space where a long table was set up and people all ate and drank there together. I, a total stranger, was invited. I found it extraordinarily civilised.]

Thursday 16th

Left Istanbul at 12.00. Milometer reads 31310. Fresh oil to full mark. Fresh engine oil. Tank full of petrol and five lira in pocket.

Difficulty to find way out of Sultanahmet. Once on road vibration was as bad as after Antalya. Hot day. Met idiot driver who nearly pushed me off the road.

Retarded timing. No effect. Plugs white. Put on choke. No apparent change. Spent much time contemplating engine failure. Had to change another £10 [traveller’s cheque] in Tekirdag. Lunch of Köfte, rice etc, 23 Lira. Changed 235 Lira at border into 510 Drachma. Border is 150 miles from Istanbul. Called Hudut. Got to Kavela, slept under concrete skeleton in lovely bay. Good fish, chips, salad and retsina for 49 drachmae.

Next day Thessaloniki. Rained. Prisunic [supermarket]. Spent about 54. Got litre of oil. Balance in Petrol. Thought I was diddled by 6 Drachmae. Ran out of petrol 100 m from border. Had 10 Dinar given by mistake. Worth a litre. Got one and a half litres by mistake. Absurdity on Yugoslav side with money and coupons. Changed £10. Rode on through rain. Stopped for tea. Met Dieter’s bro-in-law. Hash story. We went on together, but he lost me just before Skopje. Thought I saw him pounding back on the other side of dual carriageway.

Tried motel. Awful little box for 114 Dinar (£4) Went out of town. Slept in field with tent. Did well. Next day changed £10 in Nisi and had scratch breakfast. On to Belgrade by 1.15. (Yugoslavs always sitting at empty tables).

From West Turkey the New German Empire. Every other car in Yugoslavia is Deutsch. Belgrade surprised me. So many tall blocks. They do well at apartment buildings it seems. Hwy runs in and out. Stopped for a moment on a grassy side turning. Already 225 miles today. Vibration varies. Loosening primary chain seemed to help. Alignment also better (next day). But still lot of ache in limbs. Now countryside changes. Lower lying. More prosperous. Tidy towns with churches. Stopped somewhere near Sisak. Altogether about 425 miles.

Friendly waiter in restaurant gives short measures in beer but good goulash. Camp at end of field. Again OK, but ground very bumpy. In morning first sign of backache, but not serious. Bread, chocolate and tea. Put in litre of oil. Began to think of reaching München today. Past Zagreb and Ljubljana.

On way, nastiest accident scene. Little car torn apart and two TIR trucks askew on road. Mother and 5-month baby dead. Great queues of traffic form in no time.

I skip past, exchange a word with TIR drivers, all standing around in singlets. Then on with no traffic ahead or behind. Made my journey easier. They didn’t give their lives for nothing. Very little though. Don’t know who was driving the car. The baby maybe would have had better instinct for survival. Strange how we lose the instinct in a car.

After Ljubljana spend my last Dinar on petrol. So £20 gone in Yugoslavia and almost all of it on petrol. New frontier roads, through broad mountain pass, to Villach where I was waved into Austria and met Gaby of Neckerman Reise. Also, the Grüss Gott witch with the goulash supper. But very gentle man in bank. There’s a jazz festival in Ljubljana. Oh God, No way.

Sunday 19th

To Spittal and then the amazing toll road under the mountains, Katschberg, etc. 4 endless tunnels. 50 schilling toll (£2). I burst out laughing. It seemed preposterous, but of course it’s in line with everything else. [What was I thinking? For once I simply can’t put my head back into that place. I may have been slightly nuts.]

Now lots of rain, and hail. But dry patches afterwards. Tank up once near Werfen. Petrol still over a £1 a gallon. To border. No formalities at all. Could have brought anything at all into Europe. Then the long, fast motorway to Munich, but I’m the slowest thing on it. And just at nightfall, in rain or drizzle, I pull up in the Rosenheimer Strasse and call Octavia [one of the German sisters I met in Ceylon] from a Gaststätte.

Wonderful. Home and dry after a lot of searching for house. Pleasant looking girl in VW which seems to be full of mongoloid idiots with faces pressed against windows.

Miles 32750. So, 1400 from Istanbul. Average 400 a day. 2 litres of oil – not quite. Bike fell over in Austria in rain. Had to lift it, but with back already bad put my body to severest strain. Felt it and laughed about it with Octavia.

2 days in München with O and one more alone. Meanwhile contact with Jackie Stewart and Mme Albaret in Paris about my things.

So I’m in Munich, and almost home, though where home is remains to be seen.

I began publishing these notes two and a half years ago – as single excerpts at first, from Cairo and Aswan, Chile and Ceylon and then, as I got into the fun of it, in sequence. But the sequence began halfway up South America, so most of my notes from the beginning of the journey have not yet graced your Sunday breakfast table (or wherever it is you read them).

Starting next week I’ll go back to the beginning of the story.

I am still thinking about how this might be made into a book. It presents some peculiar problems, but it could be beautiful. More words of encouragement from you would be welcome.