Giresun

Giresun itself looks a bit like Rio when you first drive in from the East. I turned inland after calling at some shops when my passengers demanded a stop to buy hazelnut spread, a specialty of Giresun. We were on our way home from the Kaçkar Da ^[1]ğı expedition ^[1] and my colleagues were making it clear that almost every town in Turkey had a food speciality for which it was obligatory to stop and sample.

After many stops, I was in a bit of a hurry and enjoying the winding mountain roads so I was driving rather quickly. I went around a corner on opposite lock (the roads are a little different now) and looked ahead to see rocks falling onto the road. I slid and slowed but felt the rockslide banging against the underside of the Ford Escort. I watched the needle of one of my gauges fall back to zero. Damn. An electrical problem. I put my right foot down and bumped off the rocks. The car went another hundred metres and stopped. I got out and looked at the trail of petrol that led back to the rocks. I had punctured my fuel tank.

We were on a lonely mountain road with night falling. I wondered what to do. My passengers stood in a group, complaining about my driving. I pushed the car to the side of the road. I started to get a bag ready to walk back to the nearest village. I couldn’t remember how far back it was. A man appeared from a track above the road. He looked at the car. Almost immediately, two men arrived from below. Within ten minutes, there were twelve people there. Then someone drove up on a tractor.

People in this area were used to this. The tractor towed by car back to Dereli, I was sent to a shop to buy salt and vinegar and two men with a piece of tin and a variety of hammers were building a new fuel tank. We ate at the restaurant of someone’s cousin and slept in a hotel belonging to another cousin.

Early the next day we set off. That episode would have cost me hundreds of pounds in England. Here, it all cost about the same as the next night’s hotel in Sivas. A little way down the road, I took this picture of Şebinharahisar.