Day 4 – Saturday 15th September 2007

Awoke to views of Istanbul from above! Our 5th floor hotel room had a balcony with towering views over one of the busiest side streets in the city.
Resisted the temptation to have the typical Turkish breakfast (prunes and apricots) and had mixed breads with honey or cheese. With around 500miles still to go keeping roughage levels down seemed sensible.

Driving out of Istanbul we realised its enormity; a sprawling city of millions with incredibly disparate architecture. But beautiful all the same. Masses upon masses of housing just outside the centre’s hotel and casino area, then outside the residential area acres of industry. Factories and storehouses for over 20miles outside the city’s ringroad, and even after that the industry didn’t seem to ever stop. We drove 100 miles on good motorways before making the right hand turn south and heading on more minor roads for our destination Ovacik (near Fethiye), some 430miles.

The route started off very slow; single carriage way winding through mountains. Lots of lorries and crazy Turkish drivers overtaking on blind corners… Andy was at home!

The roads got better after the first 100miles through mountains and became either very wide single carriage ways or dual carriageways. Masses of road construction and quarrying going on. Hundreds of miles of it! The funniest part had to be where they had dumped chippings for about 2 kms on one side of the road, but not bothered putting up any signage to warn you. So when a truck came the other way you just had to drive off the road! Will attach picture to demonstrate!

Ascending into the mountains we think we worked out what all the quarrying was for… a huge Portland Porcelain factory! And the more we looked the more we saw. The scenery was quite spectacular, a mix of wild scrubland and farmed fields, but amid the huge mountains were miles of perfectly flat prairies … which made driving so much fun! The final 100mile leg was amazing, pretty much all downhill (with a couple of mountain ranges to pass over) but really tested Andy’s driving skills and Sam’s nerves … and put the Bora to the limit a couple of times. Fun fun fun. Poor car sounded a bit like a tractor at the end, rattles accumulating.

Arrived at Fethiye – 2466miles completed in 41hours 46min driving, averaging 59mph and 47.4mpg, zero arguments, and only 3 listens to the Wicked soundtrack!

Sam managed to navigate us to the apartment perfectly whilst on the phone to Paul who was on route to his wedding! I think he wanted reassurance, but instead he got one frantic Sam. Congratulations Paul, hope all went well and that you’re now ‘relaxing’ somewhere sunny :)