A triumphant husband and a bridge that wasn’t.
12.10.25
Our alarms went off at 7.30am, plenty of time to get sorted and warmed up for John’s Gelibolu half marathon.
Before starting their run there was the National Anthem. You can feel the pride the citizens have for their great nation.
I saw John off just after 9 and went back to the van to get yesterday’s blog uploaded, with a bit of a photoshoot along the way. I think this is my favourite race venue, it’s stunning.
Using my phone as a hot-spot to my tablet at a speed of 8 took forever.
Next I knew it was 11am and time to walk down to the finish line and watch him cross the line.
His time was approx 2 hours 15.
I recorded him coming to the end, but actually hadn’t recorded anything. I got a great couple of minutes of the ground as I walked to meet him after pressing what I thought was stop recording.
So we’ll have to improvise..
He was wearing his orange Istanbul Marathon t shirt, black shorts, blue baseball cap, yellow socks and patterned running shoes.
His legs were moving and he looked remarkably chilled and energetic.
After reaching the line he got some dried fruit, banana, ayran, water and was about to open his pineapple yogurt with great excitement – only to discover it was a red chilli pepper dip.
He was definitely looking a lot fitter at the end than many other races despite some nasty hills along the way.
Well done Johnboy, super proud.
Back at the van all he wanted was a nice cup of tea.
Unfortunately the gas had run out and the urge had gone by the time he changed the cannister.
Our next stop on our trip is Edirne, John wanted to press on in case it took ages to get out of Gelibolu.
It didn’t but was good to be on the road again.
I’d read about Uzunköprü meaning long bridge. We love a special bridge so made a detour there. Got a bit lost and ended up down some narrow roads and decided to park in the huge parking area and walk.
The bridge was right beside us. Apparently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzunk%C3%B6pr%C3%BC
Unbelievably the bridge is closed for renovation, so we had to make do with photos from the hoarding and a peep through a gap in the metal.
There was nothing else to sell this small town to us. I’m not going to elaborate for fear of offending anyone who lives there.
We had lentil soup in a small fly ridden lokanta. It was very tasty actually.
A man with the hugest dollop of minced beef was painstakingly making flat meatballs.
He chatted to me for a while about where we live etc.
Pru from Bake Off would have been so impressed at the uniformity of each carefully patted meatball.
A trip to A101 for biscuits turned into 8 balls of chenille yarn, a big chocolate cake and a monster truck. Oh and biscuits.
John had promised one of his regular students that he would try and use his phone as a hot-spot to his laptop so that they could do their 4pm English lesson.
The speed was over 100! That’s tripled the appeal of this town!
I sat in the cab, knitted and watched my last MAFS download.
Time to leave. We continued for another hour to the outskirts of Edirne.
We’re currently parked by a river. It has a nice visible bridge..
In the distance is a Luna Park fairground.
I’d seen reviews warning not to park near it as the music stops very late. I can hear it faintly. John has his anti wife snoring ear plugs.
It’s been warm but overcast for most of the day. Added to yesterday’s downpour and black sky we have very little electricity.
We quickly made chicken döners before it got dark, then watched some of a TV series from Netflix called Madam. Neither of us are sure if we like it or not.
Changed to the PDC darts semi finals.
By 9pm we decided we might as well go to bed rather than sit in the dark with flat devices.
We’ve had to turn the fridge power off because the gauge will bleep all night if it goes lower.
We’ve found a parking site we may have to go to tomorrow to get electric hook up if the sun doesn’t shine.
Let’s hope we don’t have a freezer full of defrosted curries, bolognese and moussaka in the morning.
Night night.
