About ten km further on, near Kirikkale, rounding a bend a huge gypsy caravan was coming towards us. But where were the horses? As we got closer we saw it was the remains of a bus that had, amongst other things, been rolled. It had no front at all. Here we also saw a beautiful green brick minaret with a man on the oratory platform mending the loudspeaker. The side of the road is punctuated by broken-down and crashed lorries and buses. They build a stone barricade round their vehicle if it's still on the road. Often these stones are not removed.

Just outside one village a posse of four just men is proceeding in our direction on donkeys. They are all well-dressed by peasant standards. We pass a ute with the men sitting in the cab and the women in the back. Brian drove about the first 100km while I had lunch, then I drove about 200km to supper, which was taken just before Havza. Then we drove on and found this parking spot by a water spring 42km from Samsun where we stopped and arranged the car for sleeping.

It was too cold to get up until about 8am. Very misty morning, and as we got out a car drew up on the other side of the road and three men came over to the tap for a wash and a drink. Next four birds appeared - very shy of us - and climbed into the "water bottling factory" through the window, which they prised open. Meanwhile we had breakfast, washed, put the car back together, watched people come and wash their car and finally left about 9:30.

After driving round Samsun we found the post office. Parked car in a large square where we firmly told the self-appointed attendants that we did not want it washed. When we returned to the car it had been washed and, when Brian reappeared, money was demanded. We sat and ate a delicious small loaf each and debated what to do. Various threats were called down on us, several beggar women wanted bread and/or money and a lad came and offered us hash. Eventually we drove away without problems, apart from being spat on, much to our surprise.

The Bitumen Bath - Black Sea Coast

The next surprise was just before Ünye where we saw a dolmuş so loaded that there were two people on top. Soon after that we paddled in the Black Sea, then stopped again near Persembe, about halfway to Trabzon to eat lunch. Four km before Ordu I drove onto a section of road that looked rather wet. Two lorries went past in the opposite direction. It wasn't water on the road, it was very "cut back" ie liquid bitumen. What a mess! It's everywhere. We had to stop and wash the windscreen with petrol. A while later we stopped for petrol and found that the overrider I fixed in Thessaloniki had fallen off again! What a time to fall off again with everything covered in tar.

As usual Turks gathered round and gawped as I prepared to replace it. Brian, sensibly, decided to do some more car washing with petrol. An English car (which had been parked near us in Samsun) pulled into the garage. Mr Shah, a Pakistani welfare officer with Derby City Council and his teacher wife and three children were on their way home to Lahore for a three-month holiday. He had had a new engine fitted to his blue Austin 1800 in Izmir and was running it in. Nevertheless, if took us several km to catch up with him again. Then we had a touch of the mountain route, narrow winding road up with a series of hairpins on the way down and at the bottom. One-and-a-half km before Espiye a traffic jam! Mr Shah caught up and overtook us again. A bus had gone off the road and the winching lorry was parked across the road. Got stove and kettle out, but they had removed it before we had time to make a cup of tea, which was sad.

Already it was growing dark, and just about here there was a short stretch (3 or 4km) of reasonably smooth unmade road, including a flyover and a bit of dual carriageway; near, if not in, Tirebolu. We stopped in Gorele for food, then we went next door and had two cups of tea with the locals. In the lokantasi (restaurant) there was an extremely drunk gentleman who was taken away by a policeman. We had the usual diverting sign language conversation until the local English teacher appeared. We drove on until we found a suitable place to pull off the road about 5km from Trabzon.

In general, the road was quite good today, rough in places, with three unmade stretches, which were short and reasonably smooth. Work seems to be in progress on them. The Black Sea coast appears to be very fertile, green and looking almost like England. There is a small river flowing into the Sea every few miles. Most of the way the road follows the sea and there is a narrow coastal plain, so that the road is fairly straight. Without the tar patches (there were two) and other hold-ups we could have made very good time. The mountains are never far away, but there is only the one section where there was much of a deviation into them, and even that wasn't far.