Day 46

We had breakfast in hotel Laleli Gonnen at around 09.30, there was lots to offer including soup, olives, salad and then the usual breakfast type things!

After this Roger's tappets needed checking, which were done where we were parked up for the night and there was even a very friendly young Turkish guy on hand to help with putting nuts and bolts back in place!

The weather outside was absolutely rotten, not only raining hard, but also very cold. Maybe only around 4 degrees. This seemed to inadvertanly delay us somewhat and we spent a while browsing the free Internet on the two laptops the Hotel had in the reception.

After packing up the bikes and drinking a cup of tea with the guy running the car park we set off towards the east of Istanbul so that we could cross over the water dividing Europe and Asia. Istanbul is vast and so this took us rather longer than we had hoped also! By this stage there was also sleet in the air and along with Turkish driving, which is rather reminisant of the Albanian, this made the driving conditions a little tricky to say the least!

By the time we headed out of the city it was about 14:30 and we still had a border and 250 miles to cover!

We stopped for lunch soon after getting clear of Istanbul in a place called Silivri, it was then a long stint west along the motorway west towards Edirne. We turned north before we got there and then only had around 40 miles to cover before reaching the Bulgarian border.

The border was quite high and there were bits of snow around so we tip-toed into the Turkish and Bulgarian border checks and got a few odd looks!

After this the road dropped back down and we made our way towards the coast to a place called Sozopol where we had booked a room for the night. The room was only 23 Euros so we weren't too bothered that we only arrived at 12am! A fantastic guy welcomed us in, showed us around and even gave us some food as everywhere was closed for the night!

250miles covered today.