holly and ben go adventuring.

Category: Türkiye & Georgia

  • Türkiye dippers

    21st – 28th May 2026

    We’ve done enough shorter trips for me to know that around about day 5 I take a dip. For one day everything feels totally impossible. Then I get through it, and for the remainder of trip feel like I could keep cycling forever (or at least until the end of the 2 week holiday). Going on a year long trip, I knew that I wouldn’t get away with just the one dip at 5 days in, and as we left Istanbul in the rain we suspected that passing the first big milestone of our trip might send the second dip our way. Bang on the 8 week mark our morale nosed dived. The day after Ben’s bail on cycling which caused us to seek refuge in an Ibis, I am ashamed to say threw a tremendous tantrum and refused to cycle anywhere, for quite some time.

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  • Trying to find our own way

    One of my worst habits is comparing myself to others. It has never brought me happiness or contentment. I hate that I do it, but it’s something which I seem to do almost instinctively. I try to remove myself from situations which feed this; it’s for this reason you won’t see me on Strava or entering any races as I much prefer to just enjoy the feeling of getting outside and escaping into my thoughts for a bit, but I’ve never quite been able to kick the habit completely. For me, one of the most compelling reasons for the trip was to escape the noise of what convention tells us we should be doing and have the space to work out what I want to be doing instead.

    If only it was that easy.

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  • How to approach Istanbul?

    15-20th May 2026

    We would soon be approaching Istanbul and we still weren’t completely sure which of the myriad ways we’d enter into this sprawling metropolis. What we’d read online and heard from others was that cycling into the city was a sure fire way to raise your heart rate and is something that would stay with you forever. Possibly not in a good way. Whilst this sounded tempting, we weren’t entirely convinced so we looked it what options were open to us… Ah yes, but first that border crossing and a few days riding to get done.

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