Despite all preparations and contingencies, it was bound to happen eventually. The moment I set foot on Turkish soil I was ready to bet my last lire that the hideous highway conditions would sooner or later get the best of me. And as sure as shit, despite going to great lengths to avoid the countless potholes, shattered glass and patches of loose gravel, it only took three days for the first flat tyre to rear its ugly head. Only hours later I was standing on the side of a motorway in the middle of nowhere, holding my last inner tube which bore remarkable similarity to a wedge of Swiss cheese. It was my third flat in a single day. I was now out of spares, was sweltering in the heat, thirty kilometres (30km) from the nearest town, running low on water and buggered if I could find a bike shop. If they even sold the right size tubes that I needed it would be a miracle. Then it dawned on me, that most dreadful feeling. It’s the realisation that you’re pretty much stuck about as far up the most-shit filled creek that you can possibly find, and you didn’t pack a paddle…
It was my own doing of course; one single mistake the previous night that would have a roll-on effect and begin this whole bad comedy. I had been making excellent progress towards Gallipoli – a whole day ahead of schedule in fact – despite being waylaid by Falco to stay in his ‘palace’ guesthouse the previous day. But with a good night’s sleep and fresh legs I’d pushed on to achieve 140km in a single day, all the while cursing at the state of the roads, the various XXX dolmous mini buses that constantly cut me up whilst picking up passengers anywhere they liked, and then there was the Turkish fetish for using cobblestones in nearly every town, for whatever reason. They can look alright but certainly make for one hell of a bumpy ride and a sore arse! I rolled into some one-horse town by the coast, I think it was called Yenişakran. Then after gorging myself on a kebab (which they decided to serve to me on a plate instead of rolled into some pita bread, what’s with that?) and downing one of the delicious local Efes brews, I was ready for bed. Under cover of darkness, I found myself a lovely little patch of dirt back from the highway. It was well hidden from sight, in the middle of a grove of olive trees and even had freshly churned dirt which meant I could mould myself a bed without having to lie on hard stony ground for a change. If the farmer had driven past during daylight, he would have struggled to notice me. It was such a good spot that just as I was about to tuck into my sleeping bag, I thought I’d take a photo of the setup, and that was my undoing.
The flash went off and somewhere down near the highway, it caught the attention of a stray dog. The barking began almost immediately and with nothing better to do than investigate the strange flash, soon a second dog and possibly even a third got in on the act. I could hear them of course but it was far enough away that I didn’t even think for a second that they could possibly be barking in my direction. But as the minutes passed, the barking gradually got louder, and the dogs worked up the courage to cross the highway, climb down and then over the top of a rather large irrigation ditch and make their way cautiously through the olive trees. It was then that I realised that I’d been sprung, and though I couldn’t see the dogs entirely, with the flashlight built into my mobile phone I shone a light out into the dark field ahead to see no less than three pairs of illuminated eyes glowing back at me. And they were getting closer too! I had no idea how brave the dogs were, or how close they would actually come, or even if they might get bored eventually if I stayed still enough. I’d often wondered if I’d ever face a moment like this – every cyclists’ blog I’d read on the Internet has at least one story about an encounter with a fierce, angry dog chasing them down the road biting at their ankles. So far I’d managed to avoid it and was starting to wonder what all the fuss was about, despite noticing an increase in the number of strays roaming around the further south-east I travelled. And in any case I had always thought to myself, as if I couldn’t beat off a stray dog? But then I didn’t count on a pack of them, and in the dark I couldn’t exactly see how big they were either, and for all I knew they had rabies or some such disease too.
I didn’t hang around to find out. Cursing all the way for losing my awesome bed and now forgoing an early night’s sleep, I packed my stuff together as quick as I could and was out of there in around a minute, heading down the highway back into the centre of town. Ten minutes later I’m cycling along the quieter coast road, looking to see if I can find a beach hammock or a sheltered corner somewhere that I could use as a camping spot. My mind is racing with thoughts and rage about what it would be like if I ever got into a scruff with a wild dog, and the annoying bump of the cobblestones seemed to be getting worse. I snapped my attention back to the road, looked down and realised that somehow in all the raucous I’d caused myself a flat. I cursed once more in my mind – it’s the last thing you want at 11pm at night, and pulled over to the side of the road to replace the inner tube, so that at least it would be ready for the morning so I can get out of town early and hit the road.
I’m working away and another dog (possibly even the same one) comes over and starts barking at me. I fight off the urge to throw a brick at it when I see some local kids playing around in the street, their parents not too far away. Eventually they shut the dog up, though he hangs around to keep a watchful eye on ‘the stranger’ as I remove the wheel and begin the maintenance. And there it was – a bloody large thorn from some shrub in the olive grove had gone straight through my Kevlar-coated, supposedly bullet-proof tyre. It must have lodged there when I was carelessly running the bike through the bushes in my earlier escape attempt. Fifteen minutes later, the job is done, though I’m now all out of spare tubes and will have to buy one at the first opportunity. This is not as easy as it sounds however – every bike I’ve seen in Turkey uses 26” mountain bike wheels, whereas I opted for the narrower 700C wheels, much better for the road and a touring bike but also not as widely available in non-western countries. Well, I would deal with it tomorrow. By midnight I’m camped behind a large pile of dirt near a small harbour full of dinghies, sheltered from the wind. It’s not as comfortable a spot as the freshly churned soil in the olive grove, the ground angled uncomfortably and there was piles of rubbish and donkey shit dotted around the place, but it was the best I could find under the circumstances. I drift off to sleep wondering how hard it would be to pack a BB gun in my rear bag…
Morning comes and I roll off, cycling along the coast and stopping at one of the cheap SOK branded supermarkets for brekkie supplies. These have become my new ritual morning stops to replace Lidl supermarkets. For less than a dollar, I can grab three small bottles of soft-drink, a banana and a choccie bar for brekkie and snacks on the road. This was in the small country town of Candarli, which though it is not very prominent on the tourist map, has a lovely old fortress looming over the town and beach – in pretty neat condition too. Things seem to be going well, though finding decent food for lunch takes a bit of time. None of the takeaway shops appear to be open in any of the towns I pass by, nor are the bakeries for a slice of burek. I’m thinking it has something to do with the end of Ramadan and now the whole country is officially on holidays for the Muslim celebration of Eid or something. Eventually I get lucky and grab a deliciously cheap hamburger and chips in a cafe by the sea in one of the nicer Turkish towns I pass through. I enjoy it all the more because I feel like I’m the only tourist and everything is quite cheap. The only attention I attract is from genuine curiosity at my bike, and there are no carpet sellers or other touts in my face. It’s wonderful!
My elation is short lived. Cycling past the town of Ayvalik, I figure it would be nice to get at least another 60km of cycling in. There’s about three hours of sunlight left and so long as the coastal road remains flat, I should be able to cover it easily. And then, just as I’m thinking about what wonderful Turkish delight awaits me for dinner, once again the all-too-familiar feeling of deflation demands my attention. The bike isn’t rolling as well as it should be and the final insult is when I get a nastier than normal bump over a crack in the road. I look down and there it is again, my rear wheel looking as flat as the Nullarbor plain. And this time I have no spares and nothing to fix it with. Strewth!
I check Garry Garmin, who has become decidedly much less useful the further east I go, as the electronic maps I loaded on aren’t getting any more accurate. As far as I can tell, I can back-track to Ayvalik but there’s not much point in that because it’s a smallish tourist town. And looking ahead, I’m sure that I’ll come across a few smaller settlements within 10km or so, but the nearest real possibility of finding a bicycle workshop is at least 30km down the road in a place called Burhaniye. Well at least that’s what I assume, since the town of Burhaniye is at least big enough to warrant a blip on my GPS map, and that’s got to be worth something, surely?
On the odd chance that it’s a slow leak, I pull over to the side of the road at some unused furniture warehouse, plonk down onto an old sofa that’s been left out front for the workers to sip their chai tea on, and have a look at the wheel. It’s the rear one this time, another one of those bloody thorns from the olive grove the previous night. And looking closer, I see that there are several more thorns that have broken off in the rubber but not yet caused punctures. I’d lost both my front and rear wheels because of a panic decision to cut across some shrubbery to escape those bloody dogs! I pump some more air into it and hit the road, hoping that it will last me until at leat Burhaniye. But alas, I get around 3km down the road and the air pressure is already painfully low. Stuff it!
Wondering just how I’m going to get out of this mess, I see a billboard in the distance advertising a service station 2km down the road. Just maybe I’ll get lucky and they’ll sell at least a patch kit in the accessories section, or something I can use. So I put enough air in to last me the distance, and roll in to the familiar looking BP servo with faint hope. The bloke behind the counter doesn’t speak English, and is so dense that I struggle to even explain that I have a flat on my bicycle. In the end I manage to get the message across using a few diagrams. He has nothing in the shop that will help, but he’s even more useless because he doesn’t think to point me to the workshop behind the shop, which I notice after a few minutes of pacing out the front near the pumps. Three Turkish fellas are hanging around having a chat over a chai tea, and when I notice their little shed, it’s stacked to the brim with used car tyres and mechanic tools, compressors and other possibly useful machinery. I can’t believe my fortune, since this is not your average regular facility at a Turkish service station. Whilst most servos come with some form of specialty shop attached, you’re just as likely to find a car wash, carpet seller, antique dealer or kebab shop tacked on the side, as you are an actual service garage or tyre specialist.
I hobble Bessie over and the guys immediately identify that I need a puncture fixed. The main guy helps me unload the luggage and we get the wheel off, and within minutes he’s got the tube submerged in an old bathtub full of water, looking for the air bubbles that will identify where the hole in the tube is located. Finding one, he then sticks a nail in the hole, dries the tube and sands it down, before cutting a piece of spare rubber to shape and attaching it with some kind of adhesive glue. As we wait for the makeshift patch to adhere properly under a clamp, the Turks bring out a bag full of small purple figs and hand it around. I’ve never had one before (only dried figs in Bosnia which were pretty nice from what I recalled) and so I try one and they taste pretty good. Then I’m invited into the workshop to fill up my water bottles with spring water – solving my water crisis – and also handed a glass of lemonade. Despite the language barrier, I manage to communicate where I’m from and where I’m going, and they seem suitably impressed and interested. The Turks generally do like Australians, which I find awesome considering we were trying to invade their country less than a century ago. The tube is finished, inflated and seems to be holding air, and I think to myself, should I also have him patch the other flat tube in my bag, but decide not to push my luck. I pay a reasonable fee of 10TL (about 5€) which is pretty good considering the labour that went into patching the thing. I’m sure I’ll sacrifice two beers this evening to make up the unexpected cost. Then with a wave, I’m on my way again, happy and praying that it’ll hold until I get to the first bike shop I can find.
Ten kilometres down the road, I’m once again futilely pumping air into the tyres. The patch has given out, unable to handle the highway conditions, or perhaps the glue didn’t set properly. This one is a slower leak however, and so I manage to get enough air into it that I don’t need to inflate it again before arriving in Burhaniye. And when I do arrive, I’m excited to see that there are people in bicycles everywhere – a fantastic sign that there must be a bike mechanic somewhere in town. Now I just need to find him. Though I’m not liking the chances of his shop being open this evening, since it’s now after 6pm. And so when I notice a campsite along the side of the road, I make a decision that since I’m clearly not going to be in a position to cycle any further today, this is as good a place as any to bunk down for the night.
Now one thing that shits me about Turkey is that very rarely do you find prices displayed anywhere, and when you do, it’s probably because the shop caters for tourists and you are going to be ripped off anyway, but at least you know it before you order. At the campsite, when one young fellah doesn’t understand English, he calls over another young bloke. I figure that his parents have left him in charge of the front desk whilst they are off doing something else around the campsite. “How much for camping for the night, mate?” I ask. He seems to look me up and down and think for a few seconds. Then asks if it’s just me and do I have my own tent, to which I nod, and then he comes back with a price that nearly knocks me over – 50 lire. “Fifty? You mean fifteen?” to which he shakes his head and repeats himself. I’m incredulous that this kid, who can’t be more than about 15 years old, is trying to take me for a ride. Who the hell does he think he is? Who does he think I am? “Mate,” I said honestly, “I stayed in a palace guesthouse two nights ago for twenty lire, there’s no way I’m paying fifty to camp.” I’m wondering if he’ll realise that his game isn’t going to work, and think surely I’ll haggle him down to a reasonable price. Mind you I’m not in a very good mood (understandably) and I don’t feel like giving him many more chances. “But we have great facilities here, look, showers, beach, restaurant. Where else you sleep tonight?…” he carries on selling. “Mate, I don’t care about all that, I’m not paying you 50 lire to camp on that bit of grass over there.” I point to the patch of ground where a handful of other the tents are pitched, wondering how much those people paid. “It’s 50 lire” he repeats, and I tell him in no uncertain terms that that’s a complete joke and I’m not paying it, wheel my bike around and head off down the road. After all the bullshit I’ve been through in the last 24 hours, I don’t need some f*cking kid trying to scam me out of the equivalent of 25€ for a campsite. Crikey, that’s more than a hostel room costs in Switzerland! Bugger the whole damn place; I’ll camp on the beach again if I have to.
And so with no place to stay and nursing Bessie still suffering a flat tyre, I wheel into the central part of Burhaniye, tentatively looking for a bike shop, but actually getting hungrier by the minute. I notice that quite a number of shops are selling new bikes, displaying them in the windows, but they are not actually bicycle workshops, just general mixed retail/ variety stores. None are open anyway. Just as I’m about to give up, a Turkish man who speaks pigeon English gets up from his stool where he is sharing chai tea with several friends on the side of the street, greets me and asks if I need some assistance. I explain to him slowly that I’m looking for a bicycle shop, and point to the semi-flat tyre. He turned to his friends who were still seated with their tea, spoke some Turkish that I didn’t understand but there was a lot of nodding and then a general consensus of some form or another, and then, with this man’s assistance, what I saw unfold over the next couple of hours was truly amazing and one of my best memories of Turkey so far!
“Follow me, come!” he said, and I was escorted three blocks down the road where there was a shop bearing some semblance to being the local bicycle store. As suspected it was closed, but sitting across the road from the bike shop was another circle of Turkish men gathered around a low table, adorned with numerous glasses of chai tea. They were all the shopkeepers from the various businesses in the street and this was obviously a daily ritual. In fact everywhere you go in Turkey you will see these circles of men, and sometimes women (at their own table of course!) all passing the time of day in the street. Occasionally they wave up the road and call someone’s name, most likely an employee from the local restaurant or cafe, who are constantly coming and going, replacing the tiny empty tea cups with new glasses full of fresh brew, and replenishing the sugar cube supply. Every now and then, the cafe owner will sit down themselves and join the crowd. Who pays for each round of chai? Your guess is as good as mine, but it’s fairly cheap at around 1TL per cup – and that’s in the tourist areas. I doubt the local shopkeepers are paying half that. Still, they probably go through a dozen glasses at least per day, maybe a lot more! I had read somewhere that some Turks will reuse the same sugar cube (placed under the tongue and tea drained through it) for up to 25 cups of chai! This has not been my experience however; most tend to mix in one or two cubes into each glass.
Anyway, I sit down and typically nobody else speaks English at the table, but I’m welcomed in, with one man giving up his seat for me. With a wave of a hand and a shout across the road, a young boy comes across with half-dozen more chai teas, to which one is thrust in my hand. I must admit, for somebody who never ever drank tea before, I’ve certainly taken to it like a duck to water in Turkey. Especially the apple flavoured tea at first, but now I find the regular chai much more to my liking and less sweet to taste. The conversation continues around me, I learned my rescuers name, though quickly forgot it but let’s call him Salmet because that sounds like it from memory, and most Turks have a ‘met’ or ‘at’ at the end of their names from what I can tell.
Salmet looks at me every five or ten minutes, and gives me an update on things. “They say he is on holiday. Shop won’t open for three days.” Bugger, I can’t possibly stay here that entire time, I have to get this sorted. I couldn’t help but notice the bus station literally right behind where we are sitting and start formulating an emergency plan in my head. But I’m also interested to know where this will lead to. “Wait here for 6 minutes, we will look.” And so I wait and drink chai, and sure enough, after exactly six minutes, a motorcycle pulls up and off gets a mechanic. Not sure who he is or where he came from, but the ‘network’ had gotten word out, that I needed a puncture repair. The mechanic went off again to get some tools. When he came back once more, I showed him the inner tube and eventually got through that we could probably fix it with a patch, and that I had all the tools necessary to fix it, just not the glue or patch itself. He nodded his understanding and there was more discussion amongst the group.
More Turks gather, and then I am moved up the road about 40 metres to a second table surrounded with more men drinking chai. One of them is a teacher who speaks a little English, so as I get stuck into another cup of chai, I get my story across to him. Where I’m cycling from and to, what happened with the wheel, etc. This helps even further and before you know it, the back wheel is off and somebody has produced a bucket of water and a circle of men formed around to watch as one of the guys submerges the tube, again looking for the air bubbles – a tell-tale sign of a puncture. All the commotion eventually grabbed the passing interest of the beat police, and the funniest thing was when three of the police officers were standing around, and one of them (I think the most senior) who was a spitting image of Chief Wiggum from The Simpsons, found himself getting his hands dirty by helping out with the patch job, whilst his two colleagues smiled and watched on. Patch kits surfaced from the depths of tool boxes that had been long buried in backyard sheds, and when we ran out of glue, somebody handed 3TL to a kid on a bicycle who rushed down to the market to grab a new tube. When the kid returned empty handed, Chief Wiggum took the small BMX bike and cycled off himself to obtain the glue. It was a hilarious scene and overall it was a fascinating sight watching an entire community rally for the cause of fixing my flat tyre. Suddenly I had hopes that this might work out alright after all!
Four chai teas and one hour later, Bessie is back in business. Before we part ways, I enquire as to where I can get some food, perhaps pide, and I’m directed about 200m up the road to a shop that, for about 5€ served up what had to be the biggest, cheesiest, tastiest pide I’ve ever had! Plus there just happened to be a water fountain nearby so not long later I’m fully stocked up. Interestingly enough, the shop keeper didn’t even try to sell me a coke, he topped up my table water from the same tap for free. Contentedly eating my pide, I glance over at Bessie in wonder at what’s just happened, and then notice that perhaps there’s not enough air in the rear wheel as should be. I get up to look, and am dismayed that the patchwork job has once again failed – flat number four in a single day! I’m not out of hot water just yet, and now the sun has well and truly set and I still have no place to stay for the night. Bugger!
The locals in the surrounding shops had noticed me however, and once again, the scene repeated itself, this time with different actors. The neighbour of the pide shop, who ran a Turkish cuisine restaurant, immediately noted that I had a flat and came to enquire about it. Again he couldn’t speak English, but we managed to get by well enough. He must have made a few phone calls himself because suddenly, more players appeared. I was bought a chai tea, a bucket of water and once again had the wheel off (getting pretty quick at this now at least!). Thankfully, I had also managed to get my old spare tube (the one in my bag) patched at the same time as we repaired my back wheel just an hour earlier. However I didn’t think it looked like it would hold, so we checked it. No bubbles, it looked good to go. Regardless, I reinforced it with more glue and then thought I’d try to identify exactly what is causing all these flats. On submerging the new flat into the bucket of water, I discover that somehow or other it had obtained an additional three holes in just the short distance I’d walked to the pide shop. Unbelievable! So something was still in my tyre and I had to spend about 20 minutes removing every little foreign object. It’s amazing where things get stuck, pieces of glass, small stones, thorns, even metal filings. I removed several of these and figured that’s probably what did the damage the second time.
The most extraordinary character of the night was the bloke who rolled up on another bicycle, wearing a flashlight on his head, carrying a bag of tools in a satchel bag and with a tank of compressed air sitting in the basket attached to the handlebars. As he arrived, he honked a massive air horn – fed from the tank of compressed air and loud enough to wake the whole street. With his dark curly moustache, deep friendly eyes, his cheeky smile and wild sense of humour, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the comical scene.
The end result was a bicycle held together with everything except gaff tape (if I’d had some of that, I’d have been right from the start!), adhered with glue from no less than four different tubes and one tub, and my only remaining spare tube now decorated with more patches than a boy scout. But at least I had something that might get me to Istanbul where I could finally acquire some new tubes to last me until Cairo! We reinflated the tyre and it held. I couldn’t believe it, though it was an extraordinarily careful bit of cycling as I made my way out of town a bit later on.
I sat in town with the Turks and consumed several more chai teas, as we sat opposite a mosque during the call for prayer. I noticed the Muslims were all using taps outside the mosque to wash their hands, feet and face before they went inside to pray. I met the families of some of the Turks, including the flashlight guy, when they walked out of the mosque a bit later on. The restaurant owner was fascinated when I showed him the map in my Lonely Planet about the route that I’d taken, and then he gathered some of his friends to the shop to see the GPS when I showed him the electronic map of where we were and how I was navigating around. What was a cool little toy for me, was probably something that they don’t really see every day and they were captivated by the glowing screen and the map of Turkey on display.
I must say it was an extremely friendly town, and possibly the most authentic Turkish experience I’ve had to date. In fact the whole day had turned out to be a bit of an eye opener. It’s amazing what happens when you are forced to interact with the locals. My chai teas were all shouted free, despite my protests. They also left me with two sticks of glue, some sandpaper and enough patches that there’s no way I’d ever be able to use them all in a year of cycling on Turkish highways. Then they asked where I was sleeping and I was directed back to a campsite near the beach. They insisted it should be 10-20TL per night. One man thought it was free even. Wondering if it was the same place, and with nowhere else to go, I hopped on Bessie and VERY carefully cycled the three or so kilometres to the beach, avoiding anything that looked like a pothole, stone or speed hump.
Turns out there was a much better, more reliable campsite in town, and as it was so late, I rolled in past reception and nobody was there, so I setup camp right next to the sand, hanging the hammock between a palm tree and a eucalypt (yes they have gum trees in Turkey!). After a swim, shower and quick look around the next morning, I wanted to hit the road ASAP and get myself to Çanakkale on the outskirts of Gallipoli, knowing that there was a hell of a north-westerly blowing. That, along with another flat could lead to a hell-day of cycling, if I wasn’t careful. AS I was leaving the campsite, there was once again nobody at reception. In fact on investigating, the building almost looked like it hadn’t been opened for years. So with nobody around to pay for the night, I got a free ride for spending my night by the beach, and couldn’t help but silently thank that kid at the other campsite who tried to rip me off the previous evening. Sucker.
The wheel held all the way to Çanakkale, I couldn’t believe it. And thank Christ it did, because it was probably the toughest day of cycling I’ve had the entire trip. It started out so well, with fresh legs able to battle into the fierce headwind blowing directly from the east. But as I turned the corner to cycle west along the coast, that wind picked me up – the luggage acting like a parachute sail – and I was hurtling along the highway at about 45km/h, covering around 65km in the space of an hour and a half. It was awesome! I pulled over just at the right time to grab a snack at the local SOK supermarket, and then I encountered one hell of a hill climb that took me from the coast up to about 450m high. It’s amazing the difference it makes when you lose your tailwind and then have to pump your way up a mountain. Average speed dropped to about 7km/h which is painfully slow and torturous work on the legs! But once again, Turkish hospitality shone through when on two occasions I had stopped to grab my breath back, and local families who were also stopped to picnic or to refill their water, offered me bread rolls and fresh fruit. I couldn’t even tell you the name of the fruit I ate this time, but it was lovely and probably very fortunate in it’s timing as I hadn’t expected the cycling to be such hard work.
The final stretch into Çanakkale was the hardest leg of cycling ever. Period. I stopped about 20km from town, exhausted and sheltering in a servo from the monstrous winds outside. After a Powerade and muffin, I figured that I just needed to get it done and stop procrastinating on the road, but the moment was short lived as I once again headed into the unrelenting wind. It was blowing at 35km/h, gusting up to forty. And never before have I actually sworn at the skies like I did this day. So close yet so far, I was covering no quicker ground on the bike than I could walking, and I raised my fists at the Turkish sky and screamed “is this ALL you’ve got? You don’t want me here but I’m coming anyway!”. And for a few minutes I got back up off my seat and pushed along the highway, which was just a constant shithouse straight road with enormously long hill climbs. Never before have I actually found myself having to peddle ‘downhill’ with all my energy just to keep the bike from stopping. I couldn’t believe the force of the wind could literally prevent gravity from pulling me down but as it was I couldn’t even manage to reach faster than 14km/h going down the huge highway slopes, before being confronted by another massive climb.
When I pulled into Çanakkale, I was the weariest, happiest and hungriest man alive. But nothing was stopping me from having a shower first, and that’s exactly what I did when I found the local pension/hostel. Dinner consisted of the regular two kebabs, plus an entire litre tub of choc-caramel ice-cream. I even snuck in another kebab just before bedtime. I was so happy to be sleeping in a bed for a change! And so I made the distance – over 150km in the end, in a single day with the worst headwind and hill combination of the whole three months to date. I was showered, shaved and with a good night’s sleep I might even be in a good frame of mind when I finally would arrive in Gallipoli the next day to check out Anzac Cove and rediscover an important chapter of my Australian heritage. And hopefully I wouldn’t get another flat!
