Easter weekend normally means paddling for us – but this year Babsi and I decided to go to Turkey for a mountainbike adventure. With perfect weather (25-30°C and blue sky), the Taurus mountain range (which rises up to 3500m) and the comfort of the hotel we had all ingredients for a perfect trip …
If you want to know more then you can read the article – if you are lazy then you can have a look at the pix or if you want to go to turkey then you can download a pdf with all the bike tours (in german language).
We started our exploration of bikeable ways on the Kemer mountain. A really nice view of Kemer and Kiris are the rewards of this little mountain (only 300m high) – and the smell of the forest and the flowers.
On the next day we wanted to go longer and higher so we headed to Kuzdere and further on to the high plateau of Gedelme. After 1000hm we had enough – we moved our bikes to a jeep track and everything started perfect … but then I had the first stop – my tyre had a hole … After that, the real adventure started: the next 4h were a mixture of biking, portaging the bike above endless mudslides or somehow making a gap when the road was destroyed …. but finally we made it …
Thanks to the Gedelme tour, we decided to make a comfy tour on the next day to the Göynük Canyon. Lots of streetbiking, a superb meal- and teastop at Ali’s Gardencafe and the lovely canyon made this a brilliant day.
Of course we had to visit some „still standing stuff“ in Phaselis – the greek architecture there is really impressive and we found some really nice ones (like the ancient bathing tub in the sea ;) ). Finally we mounted our bikes again and we found a brilliant trail back to Kuzdere. Like always we had some dead end trails but thanks to one of these, we found a mountain hut, where we met some goatherds – and they shared their bread and selfmade cheese with us – yummie yummie.
The next day was rather cold and cloudy (20-25°) so we went to Antalya – the capital of the region. After endless hiking in the city (on the food market, the bazaar and in the ancient city center) we were ready for some biking. On then next day we headed to Kuzdere where we found some really cool singletrails, turtles, frogs and lovely people.
… and then we had to pack and head back home … where we swapped from biking to paddling and had some cool runs on our local rivers
cu babsi & werner
ps: special thx to Alex and Dietmar for their biketips and to Michaela for organising everything.
