Bicycle touring the Küre Dağları: Amasra to Safranbolu

Posted on March 25, 2025 by Bryan Keith

This short trip was my only self-supported bicycle tour in Turkey in 2024. I piggy-backed it onto our rainy Bartın Bisiklet Festivali. It was raining when I walked to breakfast my last morning in Amasra, but the rain had stopped before I finished eating. I guess you could say I was lucky with the weather that day. The next rain was mid-afternoon, but it was light and didn’t last.

My last view of Amasra was on the same climb that we had done one of the mornings during the festival. It felt harder with a loaded bicycle. No surprise there, but almost all my touring is with a heavy bicycle, and I tend to forget how much easier it is without carrying stuff.

bye, bye Amasra by bryandkeith on flickr

The second climb was about 400m, and then I descended through İnciğez (with too many nasty dogs)

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9. Bartın Bisiklet Festivali

Posted on March 15, 2025 by Bryan Keith

The 9th Bartın Bicycle Festival. Notice that this is called “festival”, not “tour”, making it quite different from the two organized bicycle tours that I’ve done in Turkey (Kayseri and Gökova). The big difference is that we were based in one place the whole time — Amasra — instead of moving every day, like on a “tour”.

For years at my office at work I had a photo of Amasra from the first time I pedaled through in 1998. It was taken from a similar location as this photo which we took this year:

20241017_130015 by bryandkeith on flickr

No one ever guessed that that was Turkey. Amasra is a beauty on Turkey’s generally ugly Black Sea coast. Not surprisingly lots of tourists come. The festival organizers got permission for us to camp on one of the beaches in town, Büyük Liman Plajı. It’s the beach you can see in the center of this photo:

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A week in Saint Petersburg

Posted on March 5, 2025 by Bryan Keith

Don’t think you can see the highlights of Saint Petersburg in a week. We barely scratched the surface, and after a week our list of things we wanted to see and do was still longer than what we actually managed to see and do.

I guess I’ll start with the riding to get into the city. The outer suburbs like Pushkin and Petergof are mostly connected with auto-centric development, somewhat miserable for cyclists. However, after riding about 12-15km east from Petergof, we arrived in more dense urbanization. It was still another ~20km into the city center, but the riding was surprisingly easy and pleasant considering the size of the city. Compared to other large cities I’ve pedaled in I’d rate Saint Petersburg favorably, above Tokyo, Mexico City, Cairo, İstanbul, Los Angeles, Bangkok, but not (yet?) up to the standards of Seoul, Madrid, or Fukuoka. Since I’m here comparing the ease and joy of bicycling in large cities, my experience in Saint Petersburg was on par with Manila and Barcelona.

Some Asian stir fry out in these residential blocks powered us the rest of the way to the city center.

IMG_20240926_124841 by bryandkeith on flickr
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Bicycle touring Russia: Ivangorod to Petergof via Gatchina, Pavlovsk, and Pushkin

Posted on February 23, 2025 by Bryan Keith

Wow, what a week of bicycle touring! Of course, I had been to Russia before, but not by bicycle, and I was a little concerned with how we’d be treated as cyclists. We needn’t have worried.

First, though, we had to get there. It took about seven hours (perhaps a personal record?) to cross the border from Narva to Ivangorod. Much of that was waiting to be interviewed on the Russian side. They were more polite than the immigration officers doing a similar job at the Tel Aviv airport but less competent than the officers I spent a day with in Ust Koksa.

Ferda made a friend while she waited for me in the sun.

20240918_141523 by bryandkeith on flickr

Finally in Ivangorod we changed money at a bank and went straight to a restaurant ’cause we hadn’t eaten anything all day.

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Two days in Helsinki

Posted on February 13, 2025 by Bryan Keith

What a fun short visit to Helsinki. Since we were in Tallinn, we figured we ought to make the trip, but I must admit that I wasn’t so excited about the Finnish capital. The ferries wanted too much extra money for the bicycles so we decided to leave them in Tallinn. That was fine. It’s easy to get around central Helsinki on foot. Also we used the tram twice and took a ferry to visit Suomenlinna.

Finland’s history seems similar to Estonia’s. The Swedes were ruling until they lost the Northern War to Russia (Peter the Great), and then Finland became part of the Russian Empire. Finland became independent in 1918, but unlike Estonia did not become part of the Soviet Union. Suomenlinna (UNESCO-listed) is a fortress built on four islands by the Swedes. It protected a city larger than Helsinki (at the time) but wasn’t strong enough to keep the Russians from taking it. It’s a pleasant area to walk around.

This must be Vallisaari Island. by bryandkeith on flickr
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