117km, 5h41, 1297hm
Today was the day it was gonna happen. We were going to connect back to the Black Sea and reach the big city of Samsun
The same daily ritual: breakfast, packing the bikes and leaving the town of Boyabat
109 km left to Samsun...
The first 20 km of the ride were tough. We had a long climb and they were working on the road which created even more resistance. It was one long climb from 330 meters to 850.
We took our time for it and completed the long climb. Good thing I have low gears on this travel bike.
Beautiful views along Turkey's D795
They were in the process is making a new road: first they put a layer of tar and then all these stones, it was up to the cars to squish them till smoothness.. This caused extra resistance for us.
Every hard climb is rewarded with a roller coaster downhill.
Havza was a city on our path
We descended but not all the way, we stayed around 600 meters and thus I knew there would still be a long descend before reaching Samsun city
Interesting to see Turkey also has a Venice...
The next climb came, this time to 900 meters. It was by no means a relaxing ride to Samsun today.
And it never went really downhill, constantly these stingers.
This is where we started descending, in the middle of heavy traffic.
This was a very long descent and we knew we would at some point see the Black Sea
Some 20 km before Samsun, I saw lightning and the skies looked creepy. We needed to descend as soon as possible
After a long struggle of more than 100 km and 1200 hm, we arrived in Samsun. Now we needed to look for a hotel.
4100 km from Lummen, Belgium to Samsun, Turkey
Actually, I had done my homework and I knew that there was a good bicycle shop in Samsun called Moda Bisiklet. I saved its location in my GPS and that's where we navigated first. It meant for us cycling through the city of Samsun, to the west side. We did 4100 km now and we needed bike service: a new chain and new tires! The big bike service!
Garmin once again proved to be reliable: we found the shop like that and the owner had everything on stock we needed. That was just amazing.
Our height profile for today. Mind the huge drop towards the Black Sea
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