Along the black sea

From Tuesday June 28 to Friday July 22, from Istanbul to Trabzon

It’s not that flat

We chose to follow the Black Sea coast from Istanbul to Trabzon, a city located in the northeast of Turkey. It is a long journey of more than 1300kms. We will alternate deserted roads and those with heavy traffic. In this northern part of the country, the nationals are almost always two lanes. But unlike France, you can come across cars as well as bicycles, tractors or horse-drawn carriages. As they are in steep areas, we find many long and poorly lit tunnels, crossing them is stressful.

For more than 25 days we drove along the Black Sea, which despite its name is very blue.

This part of Turkey is very steep with a very accentuated relief. It is not uncommon to travel roads with percentages over 12%. The setting is magnificent and the interest of this part of the country is of course this wild environment. We also cross urbanized areas with mosques with different styles and aspects.

national tourism

The shores of the Black Sea are little frequented by foreign tourists. But during these 25 days along the coast, we met a lot of people. The population, not used to foreign tourism, is very welcoming and curious about our trip. She regularly invites us to share her meal.

It is a region where coal mines are still exploited, we crossed one which still has 600 miners. In this northern part of the country the climate is quite temperate, which is why crops are very numerous. In a few days, we can go from very high temperatures to rains and storms.
Like this Monday, July 18, when we stopped at one of the few existing campsites. Located on the beach, it is extraordinary. However, torrential rain disrupted our day and in one night the beach was covered with an unimaginable number of tree trunks and plastic waste.

The main axes

Tuesday, July 19, after two nights at the campsite, we resume our journey to Trabzon. We follow the coast for about a few tens of kilometers before reaching the main road and the only way to Trabzon. It is a very busy route that we have to take for about 300km. We drive on the hard shoulder and cross many tunnels.

We are lucky to have a very favorable wind and the speedometer regularly shows more than 30km/h. Our stages exceeding one hundred kilometers, we quickly arrive in Trabzon, where we settle for several days. A city frequented by tourists from border countries such as Iran and Armenia.

It is in Trabzon that we wait for our visas which will allow us to go to Iran.

Did you know

Turkey is the world’s largest importer of hazelnuts. The production is done in the north of the country and the Kurdish population carries out the collection by hand.

Some encounters

• Bahatti 75 years old, 48 marathons to his credit, including 19 in Berlin.His record 2H46mn in New York
• Tofig and his wife. They live in Azerbaijan.
• Murat from the warmshowers network
• Sarah and Jacob two Turkish women traveling to Russia
• Turks who invite us
• Selfies with the police
• Aurélien, a Frenchman on a bike from Mayenne who played an accordion tune for us. 
• Amin an Iranian who travels by bicycle only in Turkey.

Where are we

During these 25 days at the edge of the Black Sea we traveled 1365 kms.We are heading quietly towards Iran.

You can find the route on the map below.

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