RETURN TO GALLIPOLI After checking out of the hotel we bought some food then caught a ferry across The Dardanelles for a mere 500TL each. We caught a dolmüs to Eceabat and then another one over to the Kabatepe Museum. There was a lovely new and clean Contiki bus there and a lot of lovely new and clean Contiki tourists so we didn’t linger and hitched a lift south along the peninsula in a grain trailer towed by tractor. When we had gone about 4 km the tractor turned off into a wheat field but one of the farmers, an old Turk, lead us across another field of wheat and down through the pine trees amongst which were a lot of old trenches, long since crumbling and filled with pine needles. In the distance we could hear the sound of waves breaking and soon the stunning blue of the Aegean could be seen through the trees. When we reached the edge of the trees we were standing on top of a small cliff beyond which was a long white crescent of beach stretching 500m away in each direction with the sea breaking against it in a continuous flow.
The old man talked to us for a few minutes (we didn’t understand a word!) then left us to swim, have lunch and make camp. We spent the afternoon swimming and sunbathing and I spent an hour or so exploring the network of old trenches which were slowly returning to the earth on the hillside above the beach.
At 4:30 we set off around the southern headland of our beach and walked 1 km to the camping ground. We had a couple of Cokes in the bar then walked back to our camp, had another swim then sat on the sand side by side as the waves slowly flattened out, the wind died to a breeze and the huge read disc of the sun set behind the twin Greek islands across the water, almost hidden in the haze.
We lit a small fire and cooked some tomatoes and ate them out of the pan along with bread and jam and cheese. By 9 it was nearly dark and after a couple of herds of goats had tinkled their way past, we went to bed.
CurseOfTheTraveller 