5/9/19 Erzincan to Trabzon via Soumela Monastery

After lots of looking at maps we decided to aim for Trabzon on the Black Sea.  We were hoping to find a minor road to go over the mountains, but all too hard.  We still went over more 2000m passes.  I'm still blown away by the road network in Turkey.  We spent most the day on divided dual carriageway on a D road.

We went up to a lookout in the process of looking for the minor road.  You could pay to go out on the glass bottomed viewing tower.  We didn't bother.

The road below

The turnoff to the UNESCO listed Soumela Monastery was on our way, so we headed the 30km up the valley for a visit.  Perhaps our lack of Turkish language meant we missed out on finding that the monastery is undergoing restoration works, so there really wasn't much to see.  Plus low cloud meant low visibility