History :  Observation Hill is a low hill on the Krithia Spur, exactly halfway between Seddul Bayir and Alcitepe.

In the first days of May, Commodore Oliver Backhouse, commander of the 2nd Naval Brigade  found a decent rest area for his troops on the southern slopes of the hill and established his headquarters in a series of dugouts he had constructed in the steeper and stony eastern side.

Especially during the 2nd Battle of Krithia, the position was important : from here, Backhouse sent a number of the units under his command forward to support the French who failed to make any progress at all. The men of the Naval Division did so well that they even got close to the French objectives of the day, but with no support on their flanks, they had to withdraw and give up all their gains.

Access : Your best bet to find Observation Hill and Backhouse post, is to start from Alçitepe, the former village of Krithia.Take the road that goes to Seddul Bayir at the southern tip of the Peninsula. After about 1 km you will pass the old frontline, with the Vinyard (now a field) at the right hand side of the road. Follow the road till you arrive at the entrance to Redoubt Cemetery. Continue 300 m further and park your car.

At the left hand side of the road, you will notice that the area is covered in trees and scrub, but not at all that thickly overgrown. Enter the wood, and carry on for some 100 m, keeping the road behind you. 

If you walk around a little, you will discover that you have arrived at a former Allied position : rusty remains of bully beef tins can still be found everywhere. 

In fact, you are now standing on a low flat-topped hill. As the area is covered in trees now, it's not so easy anymore to appreciate its importance as an observation post for the artillery during the May 1915 advances. At that time however, it offered a view over some miles of battlefield, with Krithia (now Alçitepe) in the distance.

One flank of the low hill runs down in the direction of Seddul Bayir to the south. This is the spot used by the 2nd Naval Brigade as a rest area.

The flank to the east is more pronounced and goes down to the Kanli Dere, one of the three deep gullies that divide the southern part of the Peninsula lenghtwise.

If you descend this slope you arrive at Backhouse Post. The posistion consisted -and still does- of a series of deep dug-outs, cut out in the stony flanks of Observation Hill. It is possible to enter them and have a look around.

One of the dugouts at Backhouse Post

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CAUTION : Although a visit to Backhouse's dugouts poses no problems as such, it is extremely dangerous to walk on top of them. They all have air shafts that are often hidden under a bed of branches and dry leaves on the ground. Ignoring their existence might result in a fall of  3 m down one of them.      So better be careful.

If you continue in the direction you followed when coming to Blackhouse Post, descending towards the Kanli Dere, you arrive at the spot known by the troops as 'Romano's Well', one of the water supplies for this part of the Helles sector.

It is situated near a bend in the first unsealed road you cross. What remains of the old well contains but little water in summer. As so many other remains of the Campaign, also this one is not free of "çöp", the local variety of garbage that is dumped there by local farmers.