After saying goodbye to Ali in the morning and then a quick swim in the Black Sea we left Ordu in the early afternoon. This is going to be quite a short post. All day we were riding along the highway, and nothing of note really happened. 

 
The traffic was moderate, the weather was fine but overall the ride was nothing that special, that is kind of trade off with cycling on the highway, you tend to make great time as the road is straight and direct with gently incline most of the time but it’s often not all that interesting.

 

 
We had made a plan to leave the coast road a bit before the Georgian border and ride around in the Kaçkar mountains for a day or two. By we were on a tight schedule and still had to actually reach the mountains so we were happy, in a way, to be riding on roads that gave us the chance to cover a lot of ground without too much effort.
So we rode along the Black Sea highway, though not getting to see a whole lot of the coast. The early afternoon turned into the evening and we tried to find somewhere to camp. After two failed stops, one at a park that was too close to the road and another a petrol station that didn’t want us camping there we found a trip of beach. It was secluded from the road and some abandoned changing rooms and beach huts provided a concrete platform to sleep on so we didn’t track sand all over our gear. We finished up the day with another dip in the sea.