Turkey and into Georgia.

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Monday March 19.
I left Ordu at 7.45 am. As part of the upgrading of the roads they have put in new tunnels and have not yet put in any lighting. It was very nearly my undoing. I checked that there was no traffic and set off furiously to get to the other end. It became absolutely dark and my front light was useless. I was following the white line in the middle of the tunnel with my front light. I heard truck approaching at speed so I went for the side but couldn’t see a thing.
I hit a concrete retaining wall, went over and into a culvert in the pitch darkness. I landed across another wall on my right side .At first I thought that I had broken ribs. It took some time to disentangle myself from the bike helped by the occasional flash of light from passing lorries. I got out of the tunnel and cycled another 30 kms to try and keep my back loose in some sense.
I got to Carsbasu and stayed at a kind of Attaturk YMCA. I had a difficult night with spasms of pain.

Tuesday March 20.
I had great difficulty getting out of bed and dressing. Every 2-3 minutes I have a spasm of pain which leaves me groaning and I feel disembodied, almost looking down on myself. I got on the bike but after a few kilometers I had to give up in the next town. A guy helped me off the bike and took me to a nearby clinic. The doctor tested my back painfully. I have internal bruising. He wrote out a prescription for some tablets which I got from a nearby chemist. A café had been looking after my bike so I had breakfast there and took two of the tablets. Within 20 minutes the spasms had stopped but not the ongoing pain. I resumed my journey taking a tablet whenever the spasms returned. I made it to Rize a distance of 125 kms. These tablets are marvelous and almost immediately stop the spasms when they return.

Wednesday March 21.
At night I ease myself onto the bed with great difficulty and then don’t move an inch all night. The next morning I took a tablet and started out for Hopa the town just before the border. There were yet more tunnels which I walked. Trucks thunder through at mad speeds. I eventually reached the border which was congested with trucks and people milling around for the required bits of paper.
I cycled into Georgia and was immediately struck by the poverty. Cows and pigs wander through small town looking for a blade of grass to eat. Somebody must own them. In Batumi I stayed at a recommended place but it is a disgrace. It is a shack with not running water but I was to exhausted to find

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Photos

Hotel in Samtredia
Full of refugees from Abkhazia

Bedroom in the hotel
I kept my bike in the bedroom