Steve's Cycling Blog

Never mind death by a thousand paper-cuts, the middle of today felt like death by an endless 1% climb – in the end we spent 95km climbing gradually through the same valley which was starting to send me slightly crazy by the time I got to the top!

The wind continued to blow for quite a bit of the night, including great clouds of dust and sand which unfortunately manage to find their way under the fly and through the netting into my tent. I’m not sure what time it stopped (I was asleep 😉 but by 0315 when I needed a pee it was pretty much flat calm.

‘On paper’ today looked like it should be pretty straight forward, not too long, not too much climbing and a decent amount of descending.

Stage 96 route notes

The bonus of scrambled eggs for breakfast which got the day off to a good start, though it was still pretty dark here in our valley as we were eating so departure was delayed somewhat waiting for it to be light enough to be safe to ride.

The first 10ish kilometres continued yesterday’s downward trend but then the climbing began – nothing steep, but constantly up!

We passed through Meyaneh, where my artwork purchase of yesterday originates from, and which also has the first statue of a woman that I’ve seen in Iran. Unfortunately it’s not for happy reasons – it commemorates a woman from the town who died when Iran Air flight 655 was shot down in 1988 by the US Navy.

I carried on up the hill stopping now and again for photos and to break up the day – I rather enjoyed getting into camp at 1530 yesterday as it made the afternoon in camp much shorter, so as well as riding more slowly I also spent even longer than usual at lunch and at the coke stop many of us stopped at.

Erwin, Paul and Jackie at the coke stop (photo Paul ten Brummelhuis)

The last few kilometres were the most enjoyable of the day, we’d (finally) reached the top of the hill (give me a real hill any day – these long slow climbs do my head in 😉 and the wind was behind us to add to the fun. I stopped in the village above camp for cake from the bakery – they do eclairs here but not with icing so neither chocolate nor coffee, but very tasty all the same – before the final ride into camp.

We’re camped in a pretty nice spot under some mature trees (though not gum trees as the route notes predicted) with decent grass to camp on. There’s also a well at the edge of the field which has clean, clear water in it so Michael and I have pulled up several buckets and washed ourselves and our cycling kit out. Like Desert Pete we also left a barrel full for others who have subsequently done the same thing.

It also had to happen – I had my first puncture today some 10,xxx km into the trip – not bad going really, got to love the Schwable Marathon Plus tyres. Thankfully it was only a very slow leak which happened shortly after lunch so by pumping it back up at 92km I managed to avoid having to change it on the road.

Mark’s making a smoked eggplant salad for dinner so has lit a fire and is deliberately trying to keep it at the ‘smoky’ stage of things. Unfortunately the wind’s blowing a lot of that smoke through the rest of camp and into our tents so we’re really going to smell like we’ve been camping!

Later: We’re camped right beside a field what had been recently broken up and just as we were finishing dinner the tractor driver arrived to continue working the field – he sat on the track for a while scratching his head before deciding that he could pick his way through the tents and into the field

When the tractor came to camp

After we finished dinner Michael and i wandered up to the town for ice-cream and a drink. While there we gathered up all the flagging tape that had been used at the corner for re-use as apparently supplies are beginning to run low. We also got ice-creams for Ivan and Ruth and managed to get them back to camp still pretty much frozen by walking as quickly as one can in jandles.

Andreas and Fari drove into Tabriz this afternoon to scout out the route and locate the hotel and have determined that it’s too dangerous to ride into the city – apparently the traffic is even worse than in Tehran. Tomorrow’s also a holiday in Iran (Eid Al-Adha – something to do with Ibrahim and sheep – I’ll find out more tomorrow when I have internet access) so there are no busses to charter. The result is we’re going to ride to a park, and then get shuttled into the hotel in the white van, five riders at a time. I think it’s a good day to be first to lunch 🙂

Riding data

Unfortunately something seems to have gone horribly wrong with importing today’s riding data – the map is correct, but the other metadata is (clearly) all over the place!

View from my tent

Other rider’s tents and the hills beyond our camp