The Lycian Way: A not-so gentle stroll in the mid-day sun

Unlike Mt Olympus, hiking a section of Turkey’s ‘Lycian Way’ had always been part of the Plan. And on paper, the merits of this were unquestionable.

The Lycian Way is a 540 km path following Turkey’s exquisitely picturesque “Turquoise Coast” from Fethiye to Antalya. The path, which ranges from 0 to 1800 m in elevation, incorporates seaside villages, mountain hamlets and a number of Lycian and Roman historical sites. The Sunday Times lists it as one of the top ten hikes in the world, and there are plenty of hiking reports online that attest this. So, stunning coastline … check (happy Alice); mountain paths … check (happy Alex); historical sites … check (well, it helps to maintain our façade of cultured intellectuality). Our original plan was to spend 10 days hiking a section that incorporated a good balance of each of these components (read: passing through at least one seaside town a day that had a developed enough tourist industry to serve beer).

As I said, this all sounded wonderful ‘on paper’. The first spanner in the works was that we discovered Southern Turkey has far too good a rock climbing scene to pass up (a separate report on this to follow) by dedicating all our time in the region to hiking. So, we reasoned five days hiking 30km a day would suffice.

In the end, we managed four, averaged 23km a day and caught two buses and a boat along the way.

Turns out, Turkey in June is hot! Seriously hot. It easily passed 30ºC by 8am, and walking with full packs on in those temperatures was wearisome at best. What’s more, the path was frequently covered in loose rock (heavy going on the ankles and knees), often overgrown with thorny bushes, and at times the way-markers were elusive.

However, despite our scratched legs (at one point someone asked Alice if she had been walking on her knees) and sweat-drenched clothes, the experience was wholeheartedly a positive one. For starters, the coastline surpassed anything else we had seen in Europe in its beauty, and the path facilitated access to deserted and untouched sections of this.

Our second overriding memory was the exceptional warmth and extraordinary generosity of the locals we met along the way. One man stopped his car on the middle of the highway to give us a bag of home-grown tomatoes and peppers, seemingly just because he saw we were hikers. Another time, the owner of a café we ate in offered us his terrace to sleep on, a bowl of freshly-picked nectarines and a plate of his mother’s incredible cakes, totally free of charge.

The below is a breakdown of our route. We would by no means argue this is the best section of the trail, and for a detailed account of the entire path we would recommend the wikitravel article

Day 1: Çıralı to Adrasan Bay (16km)

The initial climb up from Çıralı was at times exceedingly overgrown and very steep. However, this was all forgotten when we descended to Adrasan Bay, threw down our packs and dived into the crystal clear water. There are plenty of shops stocking supplies here, including one manned by a genlteman we can only describe as Turkey’s version of The Big Lebowski’s “Dude”.

Wildlife sighting: tortoise crossing the path

Day 2: Adrasan Bay to Karaöz, via the Gelidonya Lighthouse (24km)

The path to the not particularly inspiring lighthouse (to any Plymothians out there … not a patch on Smeaton’s Tower!) was step and rocky, making for a hard morning for the knees, but the views of the coast more than made up for this. Nice shady picnic spot to sit out the worst of the midday heat.

Wildlife sighting: another tortoise; two metre long black snake!

Day 3: Bus from Karaöz to Kumluca, then another on to Demre; walked to Üçağız (23km)

Yes, yes, we know buses count as cheating but this section of the Lycian Way actually just followed fairly major roads, and so would not have made for particularly enjoyable walking anyway. This was also the day that we were adopted by Stray Doggy ,a placid, doe-eyed mongrel we later learned spent her days following walkers along various section of the path.

Wildlife sighting: judging by the faces of the schoolgirls on the bus, we looked pretty wild ourselves by this point!

Day 4: Üçağız to Kaş (30km)

After a pretty sleepless night (Stray Doggy, who slept obediently outside the tent, was rather vocal), we set off early with the hope of making it to Kaş by nightfall. Stray Doggy followed us the entire way to Liman Ağzı, where she was recognized by bar staff and remained, whilst we caught a boat taxi across the bay to Kaş.

Wildlife sighting: not really a ‘sighting’, but at two points we heard wild boar, very close by. Fortunately Stray Doggy scared them away.

We spent our final night in Kaş exhausted, desperately in need of showers, but content with a bag full of cold beers. We slept under the stars by the sea, resolved to walk no further and return to Toby (the Toyota) in the morning, but agreed the trials of the past four days had been, without doubt, worth it.