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Summary:
565km along the coast to get back to Antalya from Adana. Twisties oooo yeahh!
This entry covers the last two days and it is fairly simple. As I mentioned at the start, my riding in Thailand and Japan taught me that it's always fun to ride along the coast. This was confirmed in Turkey - there was a lot of fun to be had riding corner to corner through small seaside towns. Nothing stood out particularly except the immense greenhouses they have built. These are literally cathedral sized and cover whole hill slopes sometimes. Some are plastic covered structures, although the majority were glass! It made for quite an impressive view sometimes with a glass covered hill face on one side and the Mediterranean stretching away below on the other. For example Yenikas here in this photosphere (try using Firefox or Chrome browsers I'm not sure it'll work in Internet Explorer).
There's not much else to be said for the ride back except it's a must if you're on a bike in that part of Turkey. I'd be very jealous of a local, you'd become quite a skilled rider if that was in your neighbourhood.
So, that's the trip! I planned it with very little information apart from the recommendation from a friend that Capadocia is a great place to go in Turkey and finding out on an internet forum that a good place to rent a bike from is Antalya. I think it turned out very well and, apart from left wrist inflammation from all the clutch changes on that windy, hilly road along the coast for 500km on the way back I can wholeheartedly recommend this bike! I've recently purchased an Aprilia Pegaso 650 which actually has the same engine but feels a bit lighter than the Tenere. It's also not quite as high, but does not come with a windscreen as standard. This is a pity as when you're touring you're essentially using a windscreen which happens to have a bike attached to it.
There were many highlights and the lowlights were only due to my stupidity such as getting down into that valley at the end of the Capadocia walk :-) The biggest highlight though is going to have to be finding the stone huts nearby Mt Kucuk Hasan. It felt so remote and had obviously been a serious settlement at some point in history. Unfortunately I didn't have time to stick around and explore it properly but at least I have something cool to show people if I ever go back again.
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