Alex and Gill's Adventure: Wrecks, boomerangs and a wooden horse

Moving out of Istanbul (which, for the record, is a really good place for a short break but you might need to remortgage your house to stay there for much more than as few days - we were charged £8 for 2 cans of sprite!!), we headed southwest to Gallipoli and 'bush camped' at a town called Eceabat next to a place called the Boomerang Bar. We were camping within about 10 feet of the waves lapping against the beach. The first major challenge was putting the tent up! Normally no problems but pegging into a dry and rocky beach in gale force winds was a little tricky.

The owner of the bar was called Mesut and he was a crazy alcoholic who was besotted with the song 'The Boxer' by Simon and Garfunkel. The first and best thing he did was to throw away all of our cheese as it had been put in his beer fridge and it was properly stinking out the whole bar! So I immediately liked him! Even if he does drink 3 double whiskies before 9am.

The bar had western toilets, a power shower in the mens and and an outdoor hose pipe for the ladies so we were bush camping in luxury.

We had a bit of a wander around the Gallipoli peninsula and found out about the invasions back in 1915 and after this, we ventured down to the beach and went snorkeling. We found a wreck from the invasion 98 years ago and across the seabed were strewn bullet cases. We must have seen a good 30 or 40 of them. And Gill saw an octopus which was very exciting.

We also visited Troy and saw a large wooden horse which we all climbed inside. The ruins were still there and were actually quite small! Not the mighty metropolis we had imagined.

We have heard the bad news about the weather at home and know you are suffering with the cold. Just to let you know, that we are mid thirties during the day and high twenties at night with temperatures predicted to soar into the forties in the next few days.

This is now really starting to feel like our adventure has started