Kings of the castle

Charlie and set off from our hilltop camping spot above Refahiye and made our soggy way along the highway for Erzincan. We arrived late afternoon, met some locals, stopped for Internet and a load of supplies (my appetite for tahini and dried figs is starting to get out of hand!) before getting out of town as twilight came down. Stopping for water, we met our first Turkish cycle tourist at the petrol station where he worked and he even showed us his bike.

We continued from Erzincan as night fell, seeking a secluded camping spot that would be good for 2 days' camping. Between the mountainous borders both sides, the flat plains east of Erzincan were marked with imposing hills, and we roughly aimed for one of them with no real idea if our route would actually take us to it. Picking an appropriate side road from the highway, we soon slid through the flocks, greeting the shepherds as we passed, before finally finding the road to our hill of choice.

We arrived near the foot of the hill, found the likely access road and followed it to the base. To our surprise the entire hill was fenced off, but we were in no mood to defer to mere chicken wire, and had our bikes and luggage over the top within minutes. Then it was just a matter of us each pushing our 40 kilo bicycles up a 30 degree the 75 odd metres slope to the top! Atop, we stumbled across tourist signs indicating this was a castle ruin dating from the 9th century B.C., and took a quick look around in the dark before finding our haven on a side of the hill overlooking the shepherds' pastures below.

It rained through the night and the morning Müezzins were unreasonably long, reaching our campsite above the low cloud from several directions simultaneously. On venturing out of tent around sunrise we were dazzled with the views, and glad we'd not camped below, where the pastures were now flooded in many places.

This was to be our well-earned day of rest after many days of slogging it in the rain. We also had a day to kill to allow the worst of the weather to pass us and time our arrival in Erzurum for the Monday, when the Iranian embassy would be open for Charlie. We breakfasted and settled down to our day of reading, reclining and stuffing ourselves. The rain came and went, came and went, and we were unfazed for once. Later, we watched the classic David Lynch adaptation of Frank Herbert's 'Dune' on my N900 in the afternoon, my palatial tent serving as cinema.

The day of repose passed all too quickly of course, and both of us would have liked to have stayed longer had we had supplies enough and a less pressing timetable.