Two days ago I rode out from Antioch, where I spent some time tracing what remained of the ancient city besieged by the knights of the first crusade in 1098. In fact, there is only one of the city's five gates remaining, and it is the one which so confounded the besiegers: nestled in between the two mountains which formed Antioch's near-impregnable defensive backbone, this "Iron Gate" is still there, though you'll never find any tourist signs to tell you so.
I felt that I went some small way toward recreating some of the suffering felt by the two armies during the siege when, in an effort to climb up the mountain for some pictures of the gate, I slipped and sliced open my foot. At first I thought all was well, but the squelching of my sandal quickly alerted me to my mistake, and to the blood pulsing from my foot. One makeshift bandage, much limping and some Kurdish band-aids later, I was back in business, snapping away. As a note to mother and girlfriend, I am pleased to report that there are no signs of infection so far, and no black streaks running up my leg...
The last two days of riding have been somewhat brutal, each around eighty miles and each with a major climb through passes of strategic importance held since time immemorial. These climbs have stretched days in the saddle and in the sun, leaving my legs both sore and sunburned.
Today's climb was about 40km long, steepening signficantly in the last 15km and taking me from sea level up to 1500 metres at the "Cilician Gates". This pass has long been the only vaguely easy way to get from the Anatolian high plain through into Cilicia, and has therefore seen some notable foot traffic over the years. Xerxes would have brought his army through here westwards on his way to Thermopylae, Alexander returned the favour by passing through eastwards on his way to rout Darius at Issus in 333BC (I skirted that battlefield yesterday), a Crusader expedition under Tancred of Hauteville and Baldwin of Boulogne came through as the vanguard of the first crusade in 1098, and so on. These days the pass itself is a rather ugly affair, with motorway construction taking place along the side of the old road; the climb up to that point was gorgeous, however, or at least seemed so whenever I could divert attention from the uphill grind long enough to check.
Having now made it from Antioch through the Cilician Gate, I have replicated in two days Tancred and Baldwin's expedition of some months. Much of the difference is in superior roads (not to mention maps), but at least some is due to the delays caused by the Crusaders' penchant for besieging and pillaging any city unfortunate enough find itself in their path. In fact, the only thing that could induce either Tancred or Baldwin to move faster across Cilicia was the prospect of beating the other to the next city, with all the booty / slaughter awaiting therein. Times have indeed changed.
Nowadays, what induces me to move faster from town to town is the prospect of the booty waiting within the modern petrol stations that seem fortunately to litter my path. Whereas in Syria the petrol stations were rather grimey local affairs, Turkey has apparently over-invested in building out snazzy new Shell, BP, Petrol Ofisi and other forecourts, all of which will be found in any given town, no matter how small. The glorious thing from my point of view, however, is that each is complete with the coca-cola fridge haunting my dreams along the baking asphalt. Although these fridges lack the 1.5 litre glass bottles that so enriched the South American cycling experience, they compensate with an admirably dependable frigidity!
Next stop is Konya, which is a mere 140km away to the northwest. There I will rest my legs for a day, wait for the top layer of skin to peel off, then head half-refreshed for Istanbul.
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