CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
curated scenic road. tea country, Pontic Mountains, alpine lakes. A one-way ride of 224 km, Trabzon to Rize - roughly 3 h 44 in the saddle. On the way it passes Uzungöl and Çaykara. The highest point is about 2,200 m. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
The ride follows Turkey D915 Derebasi Bends for 16 km.
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
Trabzon looks north to the Black Sea and turns its back on the rest of Turkey, and the mountains behind it help. The Pontic Alps rise steeply from the coast, with cloud forests, tea gardens and hazelnut orchards, and the city climbs the slope in layers of apartment blocks and old houses. It was the capital of the Empire of Trebizond, a Greek Byzantine splinter state that formed in 1204 after the Fourth Crusade and survived until the Ottomans took it in 1461, outlasting Constantinople by eight years. The church of Hagia Sophia, a thirteenth-century building on a terrace above the sea with frescoes still visible inside, is the best reminder of that time.
Read the complete Trabzon write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Turkey Black Sea Mountain Road point 1 sits at 0 km, early in the day. Next is Turkey Black Sea Mountain Road point 2.
Uzungöl means long lake, and the lake in question was formed when a landslide blocked a river valley and the water backed up behind the barrier. It lies in a steep, forested valley in the Çaykara district, with spruce-covered slopes rising on every side and a mosque with a slender minaret sitting on the shore. On a still morning the mountains reflect in the water, and mist drifts across the surface, which is why the lake has become one of the best-known places on the Turkish Black Sea.
Read the complete Uzungöl write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Turkey Black Sea Mountain Road point 2 comes up 43 km in. Next is Turkey Black Sea Mountain Road point 3.
Çaykara means tea stream, which is a fair summary of what you see here. The town sits in a deep valley in the eastern Black Sea mountains of Turkey, in Trabzon province, and the slopes around it are covered with tea bushes in neat green terraces, clinging to hillsides that look too steep for any farmer. The air is damp, the clouds sit low, and the whole country smells of wet earth, woodsmoke and the faint bitter-sweet scent of tea leaves.
Read the complete Çaykara write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
87 km in you reach Turkey Black Sea Mountain Road point 3. Next is Turkey Black Sea Mountain Road point 4.
There is hardly a hillside around Rize that is not covered in tea. The bushes grow in neat green terraces up to hundreds of metres above the coast, steep enough that pickers use ropes and the road clings to the slope in hairpins. Rize is the tea capital of Turkey, and this is also the wettest part of the country, with cloud and drizzle most of the year, which is exactly why the plants thrive. The town has a pleasant hill park above the centre where you can drink tea at a table with a view of the sea, and a small castle on the ridge above the centre gives a view over the roofs and the sea.
Read the complete Rize write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Turkey Black Sea Mountain Road point 4, late in the day.