After a restful night, and a slow start, and after taking a quick stop to look at the hotel receptionist’s Fiat 124 Sport, being introduced to the hotels neighbours who had a Chevrolet Impala, the obligatory selfies with the car for our newfound friends and a quick bit of route planning. we were about ready to hit the road again.
We were concerned that we had done damage to the exhaust the previous night getting off the ferry and I spent some time trying, via google translate, to email local exhaust repair garages to have it checked out. Whilst I had helpful responses, we would have had to travel several miles in the wrong direction for this. Dad checked the oil and coolant, had a brief crawl underneath and seeing no obvious damage at 11.20am we set off along the Turkish coast towards Antalya.
We were graced with some incredible scenery! We were also graced with some tappet noises from the car which turned out to be pinking, pre ignition, as we climbed the mountainous coastal roads. This led to overheating and caused us to make a few unscheduled stops to let the car cool down. This is when we began to realise that the 98-octane fuel bought in the North may not be what it was posted as.
We were somewhat shocked at at the old cars, whole families riding motorbikes, lots of Renault 9/11/12 – and more fiat Mirafioris than I’ve seen since the 1980s!
We experienced the first sign of difficulty buying fuel – all has ethanol and 95 octane. We stopped at an old shop and coffee bar in a beautiful location, where no one spoke English. It was a struggle, but we google translated our way. When in Turkey you surely have to stop for a proper Turkish Coffee.
3 hours, 85 miles, into our journey, I received a call to say we’d left our walkie talkies in the hotel at Tasucu. We had brought these especially for when we’d be traveling in convoy later in the trip and would need them, so yet again with another knock to our spirits we headed back to collect them.
We arrived back at the hotel around 3pm in the afternoon, right back at the start of our journey again. We thought about staying another night. We were both getting pretty despondent and wondering whether we had taken on too much and whether we could complete this. We also considered staying another night at this hotel and starting again tomorrow but decided instead to change route and head north towards Ankara via Konya.
We also found ourselves in a difficult situation regarding fuel. It became clear Turkish fuel stations don’t sell 98 octane petrol. They have 95 Octane which we knew would not be good for the MG. They also don’t sell octane booster. This meant we had to buy 95 fuel and nurse the car carefully on the hills to avoid excessive overheating. Keeping the speed up on level ground was fine but there were inevitably hills on this journey, but less on the motorways than we would have faced on the coastal route.
We were also getting concerned at the accuracy of the rev counter, although its faceplate stated 6 cylinders, it was overstating revs by 50% showing 4,500 when we knew from our speed it should be 3,000. We managed to find a hotel in Karaman that we could book at just an hour’s notice. We found we had booked a 5 star hotel! For just £80. A welcome break given our journey so far.
We had a lovely evening with some great food and very luxurious bedrooms. Much to my surprise the waiter even escorted people to the toilets! That’s far enough thank you – I can find my own way from here!
A good dinner and some superb Turkish beer were followed by a very good night’s sleep – right until 4:20am when prayers started at the nearby Mosque.
From Tasucu to Karaman, via and interesting and abortive deviation along the coast. 7 hours of driving and 275 miles covered.