toll | Chaos roaming the world

It‘s my birthday! But we forgot! Well, until we were in the car already, that is. First time in over a decade that I am not “home” to celebrate my birthday with friends. But holidays are short and we wanted to make the most of it. Plus, as a bit of a reprise of my childhood trauma, we are back in sync with the school holidays, which means my birthday is ALWAYS at some inconvenient time in the middle of them.

But back to the car – we left the campground in record time this morning, as we had a train to catch. Le shuttle eurotunnel to be precise. Departure 9.10am, arrive one hour early. Getting up at 6.30am as usual this meant breakfast in the car. But without an awning, we were even faster than that and on the road by 7.30am.

Much to our delight, the Eurotunnel is happy to deal with that to everyone’s satisfaction. Would you like to take the 8.35am instead, at no charge? Don’t mind if we do. There was just enough time left to grab an overpriced (but pretty decent) Starbucks coffee and munch down yesterday’s pain au chocolat (still excellent, obviously). Apart from the 20 min in the cue for the border checks (whee, Brexit!) that got Nina a bit worried for a moment, it was an absolutely smooth operation. Almost a bit too much, making this marvel of engineering feel a bit underwhelming as an experience. In – 25 minutes of gentle swaying in a dark tunnel, out and off.

With the time difference it was now 8.15am in England and not much in sight other than getting past London. We made it a proper push, stretching our range to one of the few fast chargers on the western route north (towards the A1). Just after Cambridge, with 40km range left, we pulled up to four Ionity hyperchargers … only to find them all offline! A call to the service line was no good. Two more fast-chargers from another company were at this service station, but full. In the end, about 20 minutes after we had arrived, the Ionity sprang back to life and we could proceed to a more relaxed lunch.

All should have been well, it was still early, only 160km to go and enough charge on the battery now. Campground was pre-booked, a pub to watch the game close by. But when we arrived, the warden took one look into the back of our car and flatly exclaimed: “adults only – you can’t stay here!” That’s it – good luck with your refund, not my problem (booked for 2 adults and 2 kids, obviously). Are you serious?! Its 2.30pm now. Breathe – double check. Not much nearby. Adults only … +45 camping … members only … what the !”§$% …

Then, Nina got the one we needed, kids almost mental in the car by now. We promised to get out, now its another 30 minutes plus the time spent searching. What a lot of horse manure. Although, in the end …

… 25 minutes later, at the new camp we had the warmest welcome and a big headshake from this warden for the behaviour of his colleagues. The space at Lupine Woods Camping is perfect for us – rustic but we have it almost to ourselves. There were only maybe 5 other places occupied and he had no issue with us charging the car. A bit of forest to roam free and explore and (as it turned out) other kids to find and play with for the little ones. And to top it all off, the wifi was good enough to stream the game!

So, with catastrophe nearly avoided, we settled in, made some new friends, had a real nice dinner that I cooked instead of oily pub-grub and got to sit down to watch the game. A loss, alas, but that would have been too perfect now, would it not?

P.S.: Dear England, I am not mad, just disappointed!

Time to finally leave the Göreme Camping camp ground which had been really good to us. The next camp ground would be at the Mediterranean Sea, some 250km away. Not really a big day, kilometre wise, and looking at the map…the road would be many-laned and fast. Thus we left, just to get the cloud cover back that was our constant companion before Cappadocia.

Loads of Lanes, no traffic

The beginning of the ride was unspectacular. Soon, we hit what must be the motorway…with a toll gate. There was no one around and no barrier, no sign that said motorbikes are not allowed so we just went on it. So far so good. About 20km in, we needed fuel and just to be on the safe side, Flo wanted to do a 3 km detour off the motorway rather than wait for a station on it. So we left the motorway again at the first exit. Again, a toll gate, no one around, no barriers. This time, when we left, an alarm sounded. Whoot? We stopped immediately at the side of the road to ask how to deal with it but THERE WAS NO ONE AROUND. Not even the alarm going off could produce a human being that we could talk to.

This time, with toll card

Confused, we rode to the fuel station and Flo googled how Turkish motorways work. There is a toll (*check*) and you need to have a card for contactless payment (*uncheck*). Okay, where to get such a card? “Every PTT and Shell station will sell them”. Asking the guy at the fuel station, we rode to the next post office about 5 km away. Fair enough, you can do that to avoid setting off any alarms. The real reason to fix this is because the bridge over the Bosporus us also a toll road and we really, really want to ride it. It took the staff at the post office about 15 minutes…to realize they could not help us and to send us to the post office in the next town. Great. By now it was 11.45am and with our luck, the office would just close at 12, right?

Bor, the next town, was another 8km away. Now it started raining. Yay. -.- Or not. There, the yellow of a post office! Flo jumped inside and while I got off to take cover as well, he came back out again. Too small, we needed a bigger post office. We took one wrong turn getting to the “right” one and I was thoroughly annoyed. This is hilarious…if they want you to pay the toll, maybe it should be a bit easier to get that stupid card?

We even got into one more brief rain

Now things worked out. Flo got his card, we had to put 50 Turkish lira on it as the smallest amount (!) and I now felt as if I could eat a horse. Figuratively. The first place, of course, was a kebab shop but they were kind enough to point us to a place further up the road where vegetarian food would be available. We gladly sat down and after the initial confusion about a vegetarian I was offered a cheese pide with fresh salad as a side. So good! Flo enjoyed his pide with minced meat and we were so happy about the food which was freshly made (even the dough!) that Flo had tea as dessert while I chose the sweet rice pudding. Also really good. 🙂

Feeling much better now that we didn’t have to deal with things on an empty stomach, we got back on the motorway. This time, the entrance toll gate even gave us a green light. Riding for 120km, time and miles flew past. Soon, we were only 60km away for tonight’s camp ground and had to get off. Again, the alarm went off. WHY? No idea. It should be contactless payment but it didn’t work. This time we stopped near by the three men standing around but really, they just said it needs to scan the barcode and that we should simply ride on. You have about a week to go to a post office to tell them that it didn’t work before you are fined…

Checking out our first Mediterranean camp spot

Welcome back to Europe’s bureaucracy. However, we don’t want to burn any bridges as we are unsure when we will want to ride through Turkey next so leaving with an outstanding fine seems like a bad idea.

To top today’s great experience off, when we reached the Mediterranean coast, we were not impressed. Mersin and the next towns looked too much like the Caspian Sea in our eyes: Rows of hotels blocking the view. Arriving late at the camp ground next to a construction site of the road, we are left with a feeling of uncertainty as not even the coast excites us. Will we be able to enjoy Turkey or should we really just power through to get to Frankfurt?