ANZAC Day at Anzac Cove, Gallipoli

Hi Guys, Ham here with my final update of the trip.

Well, yesterday was the big day. After visiting the ancient city of Troy in the morning, we crossed back into the European side of Turkey to drive down the Gallipoli peninsula for the dawn service. We arrived at Anzac Cove at around 6pm on the 24th. We very fairly early (bus 88 out of more than 400) and this meant we could get great seats in the grandstand. It was a very long and cold night, but they had many interesting movies playing, and the bands and singers were good too. 

At 5:30am the service began. Prince Charles laid a wreath as so did Tony Abbott and the New Zealand Prime Minister. After the dawn service we had to wait a while for the crowds to clear before we began our walk to Lone Pine for the Australian service. It was about 3.5km, mostly uphill. The narrow path, and the huge crowd, made it a slow haul (2.5 hours!)

At Lone Pine, I waved to Prince Charles and Prince Harry as they arrived, and they waved back to me which was cool. I was also on the big screen TV, staying my career as a TV comedy man.

Once the Lone Prine service finished around noon, we had to wait until 5pm to get on our bus and head back to Istanbul. After stopping for dinner, we final got back to our hotel around 11pm - 40 hours since my last proper sleep! I was so tired.......

This is me in front of the Torjan Horse at Troy. You could climb up inside it, but it was really crowded, so I only climbed up half way.

This is Dad and me on the ferry crossing the Dardanelles heading towards Anzac Cove

This is me at Gallipoli with the Anzac medal awarded to my great great grandfather R. W. Kirkwood in 1915.

I was really tired so I had a quick nap before be walked to Anzac Cove

This photo gives you an idea of the crowd (more than 10,000 people)

This is the monument at Lone Pine.  It is in the middle of a cemetery for Australian soldiers who died during the battle.

This is the queue of buses waiting to collect people after the service finished - it was massive and took ages!

I feel like I am lucky that I did not go to war. I feel like I was on the bus all day( and I was, not complaining!😅). 

Tomorrow I come to home sweet home. I am all looking forward to seeing you all.

 Thank you for following the blog. HAM OUT ( for good😭.)