Great rides: Brompton oratory

“Ride it like you own it,” the strapline for the Brompton subscription service said. So I did: I went bikepacking in Turkey.

While dropping like a stone off the peak of a pass higher than the Tourmalet, a ferocious Anatolian Shepherd Dog jumped out of nowhere into the road, snarling and snapping. Should I stop, as those in the know say you should? Or try to outrun it? I did what I’d do on my own bike: slight swerve, hammer down. Fido gave up after 20 metres.

If that was the most dramatic of the ups and downs of my week in eastern Turkey with a borrowed Brompton, it wasn’t the only time I was able to sidestep any misgivings I might have had about not bringing a ‘real’ bike.

I was joining my son, Jacob, on part of his year-long cycling tour, which would take him through Europe and Turkey, then on to Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

But would a bike that folds up laughably small, and is more commonly seen in commuter-train luggage racks, be up to the job of tagging along with a global bikepacker?

Good things, small packages

My eldest has a very silver-lining disposition, so when he was ‘let go’ from his TV production job he took this as a sign to cut loose and see the world on two wheels.

While he set about repurposing my old Genesis Croix de Fer, and assembling in our kitchen a body of kit that even Shackleton would have balked at, I looked on, outwardly admiring but inside green with envy. My huffing and puffing finally solicited an invitation to join him for part of the way.

I intended to ride with Jacob on his first, day-long leg from London to the ferry at Dover, then join him for a week later on.

Unable to get my bike on any train going south from Newcastle for his departure, I discovered I could pick up a hired Brompton from a locker at King’s Cross for just £5 for 24 hours. I now regard the Brompton Bike Hire arrangement as my gateway drug. Because I then got one for a whole month and took it to Turkey.

Needing to squeeze the trip into the October half-term (I’m a teacher), I wanted maximum flexibility and easy transfers on planes, trains and buses, without it becoming financially ruinous.

Taking a so-called proper bike would turn a week’s budget bikepacking into something costing more than a car-and-Campari trip around the Italian lakes.

So, no sooner had I opened the box of my subscription Brompton, I was packing it away again into two IKEA Dimpa bags. Then I set off from Newcastle by train to catch my flight from Edinburgh – no bike reservation required.

Only a few hours later, to audible gasps from Kayseri Airport security, I was unfolding it and wheeling it straight out of the airport (no taxi or transfer needed). Shortly after, I was catching up with the boy over spicy mercimek soup.

A full-sized adventure

We rolled out of Kayseri the next day, knowing only that we would head north-east for as far as we could in the time that we had. One unforeseen consequence of my miserliness was that I had booked the cheapest possible flight, with no option to change the return departure airport. Not so clever now, eh, cheapskate?

Actually it wasn’t a problem. While most buses and some trains won’t take a normal bike, they will take a folded Brompton.

When we reached Erzincan, more than 500km away, all I had to do was pick up some cardboard, zip the bike into its bags and stow it away next to the backpacks and suitcases on a bus bound to back where we’d come from. You’d never even know there was a bike in there.

Admittedly, next to the boy’s round-the-world setup, the Brompton looked diminutive. Indeed, a leather-skinned old man at a service station eyed me warily and asked me why I was riding a ‘çocuk bisikleti’, a child’s bike. Yet despite its small wheels, it doesn’t ride like a child’s bike.

There was no place my folding friend wouldn’t go, from the comfortably broad shoulders of the D-road dual-carriageways to the snaking, single-lane roads through plains and rolling hillsides, and even, occasionally, the cinder tracks and trails by the shores of lakes and reservoirs.

We wound our way along the road less taken (by cyclists, anyway), through Sivas, where the Turkish bath was to die for, and not just because of the pummelling we got from the 18-stone attendant.

We wild-camped by the Kizilirmak River, eventually fetching up in the Silk Road city of Erzincan, having plummeted down the mountain roads, gleefully overtaking lorries as we went.

Talking Turkey

As we reached the far east corner of Turkey, the roads climbed higher, with white-capped mountain ranges in the distance on either side of us. Yet there was never a time when, as I had feared before going out there, I might slow down the intrepid explorer’s progress. Or worse: have to get off and push.

“When do we get to swap?” said Jacob, as he zigzagged his way to the summit of the Kizildağ Pass (2,190m), where I stood ready to snap the moment for posterity. He was carrying four panniers, it has to be said. And the tent.

The best thing about cycling in this wild part of Turkey is that, while the scenery might remind you of a Western one moment, the Appalachian Trail the next, and then the Mongolian steppe after that, wherever you go the people treat you like a minor celebrity.

Unbending their backs from the turnip fields to wave and smile, saluting from their tractor seats, or tooting their horns in appreciation as they overtook with solicitous care, people seemed genuinely pleased to see us.

Here again the Brompton was a conversation starter. First: “Why does it have such small wheels?” Often followed by: “Would you like to drink some çay (Turkish tea) with me?”

So it went, from the curious pensioners sunning themselves beneath the portrait of Atatürk in the main square of the tiny town of Şakişla, who insisted on paying for our tea, to the family selling honeydew melons and sunflower seeds who stopped us and stuffed a carrier bag of their wares, before sending us on our way with handshakes and smiles.

The borrowed Brompton had given me the very essence of a cheap and cheerful adventure. I was sold.