Hi Geoff, I know exactly what you mean, the things that we just took for granted back then and its usually a case of “if only I knew then, what I know now” or, I am amazed at what I have just found on the internet.
One of my favourite runs in the summer months from the U.K. was down to Izmir in Turkey. It was completely different in the winter which could add an extra five days onto a trip.
Two of our main customers were Courtaulds with textiles and Leyland parts, for the B.M.C. factory in Izmir and it wasn’t unusual for us to have two or three trucks shipping out to Turkey, on a Sunday evening.
Most of the time we would go via Yugoslavia and Greece and the road took you past the ancient ruins at the town of Drama, on the way to Kavala.
On the road between Izmir and Cannakele there was a signpost which pointed towards the ancient ruins of Troy, which was famous for its story of The Wooden Horse. It was only a couple of kilometres off the main road and for me it was always a case of, the next time that I am passing this way then I shall go and have a look around but of course, I never did.
On my second trip to Izmir, I remember parking up between the town of Gallipoli and Eceabat, somewhere along The Dardanelles Straights.
It was about midday, time for a break, time to put the kettle on and I probably made a cheese and tomato sandwich. The sea was looking really inviting for a swim but I decide just to have a bit of a stroll along the beach and then to carry on with my journey to catch The Canakkale Ferry.
The water was crystal clear, it was so smooth and I could see shoals of fish swimming close to the small beach next to where I had parked. But the thing that really annoyed me at the time was that three or four small, sunken, steel boats had been left there to rot.
They had obviously been there for many years and I couldn’t understand why the locals had dumped them there, making what was now an eyesore on what I would have described as, a nice little quite beach.
The rusty bow of one of the boats was just sticking out above the water, which was what had brought them to my attention. From the passenger seat of the truck, I could clearly make out the old rusty hulks resting on the seabed, about ten feet away from the waters edge. I would have said that they were between thirty and forty feet long. A big piece of rust had fallen off one of them which was laying close by.
At the time, it had never crossed my mind what they actually were or why they were there, until about three years ago when I came across this website and after forty odd years, the penny finally dropped. 
awm.gov.au/articles/blog/ga … nding-boat
Not My Photo.
