#2: [13-Dec-09]

10-Apr-2005 -- Immediately following our unsuccessful visit to 42N 34E, we continued east along the coast road for about 110 km towards Sinop, which lays almost at the tip of a peninsula pointing eastwards into the Black Sea. Prior to our visit to Sinop we visited the town's website, which contains a lot of useful information and is one of the better websites, especially for a small city like Sinop. One section of the website details different versions of how Sinop came by its name. One of the more entertaining stories (not necessarily the most accurate) tells of Sinope who was the daughter of Asopus, the river God. Zeus fell in love with her but his love was not reciprocated and in an attempt to win her over, he promised to grant her any wish. Sinope was still not interested and to free herself of Zeus's attention, she took the drastic step of requesting eternal virginity. Realising that he had been outwitted, Zeus granted her wish and let her live peacefully at the tip of the peninsula which became known as Sinop.

After a pleasant few hours walking around the city, we left Sinop and drove west towards the Confluence. Our first aiming point was Çobanlar, which, on the map, appeared to be the nearest village to the point. Following the homemade sign off the main road, we continued towards Çobanlar with the road at times cutting through dense forest. If the point was in one of these forests, we were in for a difficult trek. We continued driving and soon reached the village of Fidanlık, which at 42° 00.077'N 34° 59.704'E was very close to the point (about 190 m).

After confirming with one of the local inhabitants that the area was safe, we drove NE down a track to 42° 00.113'N 34° 59.939'E where we left the car for the few hundred metres' walk to the point. The walk was not too difficult apart from having to traverse a stream (twice) and a slippery carpet of leaves. The point itself was in a well-wooded area and the GPS struggled at times to maintain a good signal. We tried to obtain "all zeros" but after walking around in circles for ten minutes we settled for 42° 00.001'N 34° 59.997'E.

On our walk back to the car, we were confronted by three local villagers who seemed very concerned at what we doing in their area. It is not too easy sometimes to explain to someone why we drove 5 hours to take photographs from inside a forest - just for fun. Thankfully, they realised that we did not pose a threat and after a short chat we departed for our long drive back to Ankara.