It’s a little bit of a shame that EU border guards don’t stamp EU passports when you pass the border.
I’ve pedalled my little heart out, uphill and down, into the wind and through the hellish blue skies and sunshine of early summer. I’ve crossed from Asia to Europe (geographically). And then, I’ve crossed from Turkey into Greece.
And all I have to show for it is one smudgy exit stamp from the Turkish border this lunchtime. Well, that and several shops full of tzatziki (and other assorted dips that I don’t like) around the corner…
I caught sight of Europe on Sunday morning. I was lucky it was a shortish ride, as the headwinds were really giving me a kicking, for the third day in a row. The incessant whistling in my ears was doing my head in. As well as making the riding much harder than it needed to be. I needed some good news.
And then, the headland I was slowly rounding (above) curved south to form the eastern edge of the Dardanelles strait. That landmass in the background, which is part of Europe, was only a couple of miles away.
I found the ferry, and prepared to hop across the narrow waterway to my final continent of the trip. Of course, it was also my first continent, and I still have to cross pretty much the whole thing to get home…
The boat was a nice surprise. Somewhat bizarrely, there’s a charge for cars, a charge for trucks, and a charge for pedestrians. But, apparently, no charge for cyclists. You can’t get better value than a free intercontinental cruise!
And so I landed in Europe. At Gelibolu, on the peninsular of the same name. For the British, and more especially, for Australians and New Zealanders, the English name is more significant – Gallipoli.
During World War One, the British Empire (as it still was at the time, including British, Indian, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand forces), and the French, decided to attack the Ottoman Empire (as it still was at the time), which had joined the war on the German side. Somehow, this degenerated into an eight-month stalemate. Presumably, they weren’t expecting the Ottomans to fight back. The invasion never got far beyond the beaches, and by the time the Allies withdrew, there were a total of nearly half a million casualties.
Which, along with the rest of the First World War, is an astonishing waste of life.
In any case, from Gelibolu, it was just a gentle day-and-a-half’s riding to the Greek border. Up the peninsular, and across eastern Thrace. The wind finally shifted to a slightly more sensible direction (much to the dismay of a French tourer who I met going the ‘wrong’ way yesterday; he was trying to wrestle a tandem through the wind by himself, aiming to meet his girlfriend in Izmir). So it was a reasonably gentle run for me, spoiled only by a valve problem on one of my inner tubes, which is now forcing me to pump the tyre up every 90 minutes or so.
This afternoon (Tuesday), feeling reasonably fresh, I arrived in Alexandroupoli. It’s a pretty standard seaside town nowadays, but, like Gallipoli, its short history is a reminder of what a turbulent part of the world this has historically been.
The town was founded by the Ottomans, only about 150 years ago. Since then, it’s been controlled by the Russians, the Ottomans again, the Bulgarians, the Greeks, the Bulgarians again (World War One), the French, the Greeks again, the Bulgarians again (this is now World War Two), and finally, so far, the Greeks. Amazingly, it’s not suffered any significant damage through this whole period.
But those shifts of control have shaped the history of the whole area I’m now moving into; the Balkans. Empires have washed over this region from the dawn of written history, from Alexander the Great onwards, leaving a bewildering mixture of ethnic, religious and cultural influences behind.
The next couple of weeks should be fascinating, as I head north and west. I’m having what feels like a well-deserved rest day tomorrow (Wednesday), trying to finalise a sensible route through the region.
But I think it’ll be interesting, whichever way I go…
The Unknown Around The Corner 