Beside the Seaside

« In Which Raindrops Are Falling On My Head | Home | In Which I Gate Crash A Soap Opera All Stars Reunion »

In Which A Triumph Bonneville Actually Manages To Break The Speed Limit

November 3, 2008 by Mike

Tsarevo/ Bulgaria

Route: Istanbul - Bahçeköy - Arnavutküy - Vize - Dereköy - Malko Turnovo (Bulgaria) - Tsarevo

Up the Bosphorus, through Beşiktaş and Bahçeköy, then Kemerburgaz to Göktürk, a series of diversions to Bolluca -- I wouldn't make that up, promise -- and Arnavutküy. Aren't these names great?

I had hoped to spend another night in Turkey, somewhere rural and empty and quiet after the hustle and bright lights of the big city, but with the knowledge that winter is a-comin' I'm not giving myself long to get round the Black Sea, and with the distance from Istanbul to the frontier not being great I couldn't justify going that slowly.

Which is ironic, because this afternoon I got a speeding ticket when I could have *sworn* I was under the limit.

It was a particularly desolate stretch of the D020 between Vize and Pinarhisar. Vize is a one-horse town. The horse was pulling a cart; the driver appeared to be asleep. No-one else was in sight but the dogs asleep at the road's edge on the outskirts of town. Nevertheless, there's a built-in incentive to stick to the speed limit here: potholes, ruts and rubbish on the road.

Beyond town, the road opened up again and I picked up speed. I saw the old, worn-out sign: "Radar". Even though I've seen it a hundred times or more, I checked my speedo instinctively: between 80-85. Even if the cops are awake and working all the way out here, I reasoned, they won't stop me if I happen to be 5kmph over the limit.

Wrong!

They were very friendly: apologetic, even. But, they indicated, as I was travelling so much over the limit, there was nothing they could do. (No hint or indication for a moment that they wanted a bribe.)

So much over the limit? The speed limit is 80, I pointed out. I hadn't been going that much faster, had I? No no, the limit for bikes is 70, they replied -- all this in sign language and scribbles on the dirty bonnet of the police car. Huh? HUH? Since when? Since forever, apparently.

Yes folks, motorcycles are legally obliged to travel 10kmph slower than all other vehicles on the road. This is dunderheaded, cack-handed, ill-thought-out, populist political buffoonery. Stupid. Dangerous. Since when did Sarah Palin start writing Turkey's traffic laws?

Ignoring the fact that most lorries here were built, seemingly, before the Age of Steam, and that many bikes are designed for speeds three times as fast as that -- I am no apologist for speeding hooligan bikers, and certainly not one myself -- this aberration of legislation requires bikes, the most exposed and vulnerable road users, constantly to be travelling slightly slower than everyone else. That means more frustrated car and lorry drivers growing impatient; more overtaking of little bikes by big heavy painful vehicles; more pressure on the biker to stick to the very edge of the road, where the potholes are bigger and less swiftly repaired, and where roadkill normally ends up. And riding a bike into a dead dog or sheep is not very funny. In a car, you'd feel the jolt, and possibly sick. On a bike, you'd crash, and possibly die.

Which is not to say that speeding is big or clever.

Which is not to say I never do it.

Which is not to say I ever speed, officer, if you're reading this, thankyouverymuch.

I checked this with Erkut, my Istanbullu biking buddy. Seems that is the speed limit and the cops had every right to stop me. Or, as he so eloquently put it: "Yes unfortunatelly, they sucks. U r foreigner." (Yes, before you ask, this was a text message.)

Here's an interesting update: turns out I wasn't the only bike caught doing exactly 91 kilometres an hour in Turkey this week. Coincidence? Or the default setting for 'foreign bike'?

All of which got me to the border, quite some way inland, slightly later than I had hoped.

It was twilight when I arrived and by the time I emerged into Bulgaria it was dark. Time enough for the Turkish authorities to charge me for the photocopy of my passport that they needed for their records.. how is that anything other than crap?.. and for the insurance desk on the Bulgarian side to attempt a really naughty little scam -- I've linked to a description I've posted on the same biking forum; no need to get hot under the collar here too.

There is a hotel in Malko Turnovo, the first village after the border, but it was full. It has a jacuzzi. As I rode the 60 kilometres to the next available bed, in Tsarevo, I decided that the hotel had been booked by a convention of boozy Bulgarian lingerie models who were, even now, moaning that they should have left at least one room free so that some random male traveller could have joined them.

This was a ride at once fantastical, thrilling and bloody stupid.

Once I was away from Malko Turnovo, pointed toward the right road by a young Roma kid standing at a dark crossroads on the edge of the village.. and I don't want to let my imagination wander down that dark pathway.. the road grew.. you've guessed.. dark.

Dark like you seldom see in northern Europe. A complete absence of electric light. No houses, no vehicles, no street lights. No moon. Trees rising on either side of the narrow tarmac ribbon. Dark sky, dark trees, dark road. A couple of times I pulled over, switched the bike off and breathed in the darkness but the fear that, after all this time, this is when the bike would choose not to start again, made me nervous to do it again.

And I've just realised, as I wrote this down, that I really did pull over to the side of the road. When the silence, and the darkness, were complete enough to know that there was no other vehicle, no other person, for many miles in any direction.

Loved it.

Between Malko Turnovo and Tsarevo I saw three cars, two policemen at a checkpoint, and one man gardening at night in the solitary hamlet of Gramatikovo. He didn't even raise his head as the bike chugged past. I wonder if he bothered mentioning it to his wife that night. "You do go on, dear. That's the second time you've mentioned the traffic this year."

I'm writing these words. I made it. But riding at night, in a new country, with dodgy roads, in forested country full of goodness knows what creatures -- that's dumb.

Several hours in the country and I haven't told you about When I Was Arrested In Bulgaria For Spying. This can't last.

Beside the Seaside

In Which A Triumph Bonneville Actually Manages To Break The Speed Limit

Comments

Leave your comment

Latest comments