August 28, 2012
Alarming the Turkish army: Sarkoy - Eceabat
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SOME DAYS there's not a lot to report. You get up, you ride, you have good moments and bad and then you get there. Today wasn't quite as mechanical as that but it was practical rather than romantic and the story ends with our reaching the port across the shallow ridge from where British and Anzac troops discovered that invading other people's islands isn't as simple as it seems at soldier school. The landings and the bloody defeat that followed aren't big for the British, who tend to overlook their shortcomings or, like Dunkirk where they were driven into the sea, romanticise them into a victory.
For Australians and New Zealanders, though, the battle is a founding moment, bonding each nation and bonding both to each other. It is Aussies and Kiwis who come to experience their history.
Well, we left Sarkoy this morning straight on to a roller-coaster road swept by a tree-bendıng wind that reduced us to less than walking speed on the way up and forced us to pedal on the way down.
Our road followed a sea of dark blue on which waited half a dozen large ships - tankers and container-carriers for the most part - presumably ahead of time to pass the narrows at Istanbul.
Our road climbed above them, dropped to their level, rose again and repeated the exercise several times before falling definitively to sea level and turning to dust and stone. It sounds like bad news but the flatter rough road was easier than the smoother, more irritable road we had left. It took time and now and then we were swept by dust by others who passed that way but, on balance, we were well off.
Except for the washboard ridges.
We couldn't decide what could have gone up and down this road on tracked wheels heavy enough to pit the road into hard little troughs a hand's length apart. And then we found the army base. We're coming to the conclusion that Turkey is quite the militarised nation. It could be that we have always been close to the frontier, be it land or sea, but even then the fortifications are generous. And you'll remember the armed soldiers blocking our road when we came into the country.
Well, we got the impression that our slow passage along this road gave the army the fidgets. The first sign was a lookout on a concrete structure of the sort the army goes in for, turning first towards us, then back towards the camp to signal in semaphore with red flags. And, yes... semaphore. It surprised us, too.
When we stopped to drink from our bottles, a soldier began walking up behind us on his side of the fence. When we set off again, a truck bumped along towards us, again over the fence. Nobody said anything and nobody gestured. But they didn't need to. The camouflaged tanks and half-hidden block-houses were important to the army even if we couldn't care less, and they weren't accustomed to civilians on bikes going slowly and stopping at will. The only other traffic was an occasional car or a truck. The army knows about cars and trucks.
That road ran out on to the main highway to Gallipoli and Eceabat, two ferry towns, and there we saw the army again. This second base was on the old and crumbling original road, which we followed until it vanished beneath the newer E-road. Things at this base were a lot more casual. Uniformed men ate and sandwiches and watched us while pretending not to. And one of those comical columns of marching men stomped by chanting macho, team-making words that in reality are 'Hey ho, hey ho, and off to work we go.' They're curious people, soldiers.
Of the rest, not much to report, just a 60km blast down the variable shoulder of the only road to the peninsula and five or six kilometres on an unopened section that we had to ourselves. And you've ridden plenty of roads like that in the past, so I won't bore you with more.
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