Introductory remarks

In late April 2007, I started walking the Lycian Way, a 509km route from Ovacık to Antalya along the Mediterranean Coast and hinterland. In fact, I lasted a week and managed about 75km, all up, before it turned into a slog and I packed it in.

I have started this new blog expressly for these notes and divided the account into sections corresponding more or less with days of walking. There are additional posts providing

• a critique of the documentation for the walk,
• a list of equipment, with some notes and explanations, and
• a summary of trip costs.

Blogger makes it rather time consuming to upload photos, so I will be adding these gradually. Meanwhile, you can view a selection of 181 images at www.harryfeldman.myphotoalbum.com. I will also place a slideshow linked there in the right column.

I also intend to add a post with links, although there are some hypertext links within the posts.

Unless I decide to make another attempt at walking more of the Lycian Way, there will probably be no additions to this blog – it’s just a record of the trip.

Fethiye

I set out on the bus to Fethiye on Wednesday night, arriving on Thursday morning. I walked around town checking out the Amphitheatre , the Lycian rock tombs, and the museum before looking for accommodation.

I ended up at the Karagoz Pansiyon where I bargained for two nights including breakfast for YTL35. The room was truly single with a single bed and a wardrobe. It had its own bathroom, but not ensuite. The water was actually hot, but very low pressure. There was no top sheet on the bed, so a sleeping bag liner would be good. The breakfasts were skimpy and not worth anything.

On the Friday, I took the compulsory twelve island boat cruise, as directed by the Lonely Planet guide. (I was using the 9^th, April 2005, edition. I believe a new edition appeared last month, April 2007.) This time of year, the boats are on a roster. They all charge the same YTL25, including lunch. Vegies are accommodated by leaving out the main dish of fish or chicken. I was expecting a rousing cruise with lots of people getting pissed together. I chose the little boat that was supposed to proceed part of the way under sail. Perhaps a mistake. They hoisted the sails for about half an hour before deciding they weren’t making enough progress and starting the engines up again. Maybe I should have gone for the big boat with the waterslide? Anyway, I had prepared myself with a 350ml bottle of rakı and ended up having to drink it all myself. I seem to have managed to alienate the two Aussie girls and about everyone else on the cruise and spent most of the time alone. With the benefit of hindsight, it might have been fun to do as part of a group, but it just ended up depressing me. There are some nice views you wouldn’t get from shore and you can visit some secluded spots, although I doubt there’d be much in the way of seclusion with forty boats, each with up to 170 passengers, plying the same route later in the season.

An easy stroll from Fethiye to Ölüdeniz via Kayaköy

Saturday morning, I set out for Kayaköy, the abandoned Greek village. The road goes behind the kale, which I hadn’t visited before, so I spent some time exploring the ruins there.

It's supposed to take an hour and a half but I must have missed a turnoff or something and ended up climbin up a clear firetrail to about 475m before I met a guy named Ibrahim, who pointed out I was going the wrong way and showed me a trail that would take me back to the right road. On the way, I ran into two of Ibrahim’s fancy goats and a tortoise . I had been following yellow blazes. The trail joined the bitumen road at one point and there was a bent blaze indicating a left turn just beyond the circular structure, behind the cemetery.

After about three hours bashing through scrub, I hit a road, which soon butted into another, bigger road. I wasn't sure which way to go, so checked my position against David Carter's waypoints and determined I had to go west. From there, it was a bit of a slog and I again took a wrong fork, although it took me into Kayaköy eventually, as well, by a longer route. I stopped at a restaurant and had a nice, but overpriced gözleme. I stopped by 'Muzzy's Place'/Gavuşoğlu Yeri to enquire about accommodation. As I was the only guest, I talked him down to YTL20, including breakfast. The room was nice with a little balcony overlooking the pool. There was hot water in the afternoon.

In the morning, it was not ice cold, but not really warm enough to qualify as tepid. The breakfast was good, but Muzzy wasn't there and the old man charged me for it, after all. I had a vegie caserole there for dinner, as well, and that was very nice. There are now at least ten restaurants in Kayaköy, including some new upmarket ones. In fact, one fish place directly opposite Muzzy's appeared to be having their opening night that night and there was live music going until about 2AM. I think it kept waking me up, but I didn't mind. There was one band that I was pretty sure sucked, but I was only partially conscious.

On Sunday, I planned another easy warmup day with the 2 hour walk to Ölüdeniz. I followed the red dots and arrows through the old village as instructed in both the LP guide and the LW guide and ended up at a wine bar at a completely different bay . As you look up at the hillside from Kayaköy’s main road, you can see two passes out of the valley. The one on the right has a small chapel on each hill overlooking it. This is the one on the right. There is an easy trail up to it and it’s worth a look, at least for the view. I couldn’t find a trail to the much higher one on the left. If you follow the red dots and arrows, this is the pass you will go through. There is no trail from there to Ölüdeniz.

I had to walk all the way back up to the pass into Kayaköy. There was a tour group wandering through that part of the village, so I asked the guide, who told me to go back through the same pass, only take every left fork. After a couple of such forks I again found myself on the side of a cliff deep in scrub. I made my way back and traversed across through thick, prickly scrub until I eventually found, a couple of hours later, a very neatly marked trail, with glossy red and yellow blazes that takes you through the pass on the left, not the one on the right that the red dots go through. Apart from a little confusion over the significance of the chevron shaped blazes, which turn out not to be arrows pointing in the apparent direction, but signals to make a sharp turn, it was an easy walk to Ölüdeniz . Or would have been, if I hadn’t been buggered already.

As soon as I got to the water’s edge, I found a spot concealed by shrubs, changed, and dived into the cold water. It was a refreshing dip, but regrettably, I didn’t manage to get every grain of sand off before dressing. I stopped at the very first caravan park to replenish my lost carcinogens and electrolytes with a cold coke and met a Glaswegian woman who worked there or owned the place. As I recall, she wouldn’t go below YTL 25 for a cabin without its own shower and toilet. It seemed a long slog along a row of caravan parks to get to the centre of Ölüdeniz, which is a jumping place full of bars, restaurants, and tour operators, all very expensive. I didn’t even bother to check motel prices there, although a couple of Germans I later met in Kalkan, who were coming the other way from Olympos, but had been there before, told me there are cheap places. I considered trying to find a place to stay in Ovacık, right near the beginning of the trail, but had heard that it was quite expensive, too. So I just hopped on the dolmuş (YTL3) back to Fethiye.

By this time, I was thoroughly exhausted and wasn’t looking forward to a long walk, fully loaded, looking for a place to stay. I stopped at a nice pide place around the corner from the dolmuş depot and had a spinach pide and waited for the rain, which started while I was there, to subside.

Fortunately, the very first hotel I came to, the Funya, right near the Tourist Information Centre, had a room with bath for YTL20, without breakfast. The room they were going to put me in had a bogus light that kept flashing, so they ended up giving me a big room with a double bed, a single bed and its very own balcony, and tv. There was this scary show on the tellie that I couldn’t take my eyes off. A woman was hanging by her fingernails on the edge of a cliff, pulled herself up, and lodged some kind of clip in a crack in the rock. She got the rope into the caribiner, and then somehow slipped and the clip pulled free of the rock and she plummeted quite some way, but another rope caught her. Then something else pulled loose and she fell even further. She was swinging back and forth, apparently helpless, when somebody threw her a line. Then all of a sudden, a guy jumps off the top of a butte and starts hang gliding through these narrow canyons for quite some way.

Ovacık to Faralya

I was hoping to make an early start and pick up a nice fresh gözleme or börek on the way to the dolmuş stop. They leave literally every ten minutes, so I wasn’t too fussed when I missed one while I went to the bakery. I ended up having two ‘cheese’ poaça instead of what I’d been hoping for – everything else was shut. The dolmuş takes just about half an hour to get to the trailhead (YTL2.50) . Note that the Lycian Way sign is partly obscured by the ‘Sultan Motel’ sign. Also, it is only visible from the road as you go towards Ölüdeniz. The Sultan would be a brilliant place to spend the night before setting off, but an English couple I met a little later told me it was a bit pricey – I think they said €30 each or something. Ovacık looks like a happening touristy village, with plenty of banks, restaurants, bars, pharmacies, etc. Much bigger than I’d expected.

Anyway, I ended up setting off on my big Lycian Way adventure at about 8:30 on the Monday morning. The starting point is at about 250m. I intended to keep detailed notes and check GPS readings and so forth, but it was all I could do to keep up with the people I was trying to walk with and my resolve quickly dissipated. Most of the elevations are from the altimetre, which I no longer trust very much, as it tends to differ from the GPS altitude and seems to be off every time I get to sea level. Presumably this is due to changes in the weather. So, they could be off by up to about 30m one way or the other.

I did make a note of an undocumented stile less than an hour up the trail at about 323m (36 32.689N/20 08.067E). It was at this point that the English couple who had stayed at the Sultan overtook me.

There is considerable roadwork and new construction at Kozağaç, the high point of the stage from Ovacık to Faralya at 743m (36 31.721/29 08.794), which I reached about 10:50. There a young Belgian couple and Hasan, of George House, caught up with me. Hasan had some spray paint and refreshed some of the blazes. He said he had never walked the route before, but also painted some new blazes. The English couple later told me they thought that the trail actually crossed a field below the road and Hasan had erroneously marked a new trail along the road. Somewhat unconventionally, Hasan painted a number of red arrows, which I believe are on the actual trail and point towards Faralya. There may be other locals who are being helpful by refreshing or adding blazes or marking the trail as they see fit. Something to be aware of.

Anyway, following the road past Kozağaç, you come to a distinctive looking tree at a fork, where you have to bear right.

It is an easy walk and worth pressing on until you get to the lunch shed at Kirme at about 680m before stopping, as there is a good spring and shade there. I arrived at about 1310, but made the mistake of stopping at another spring just a hundred metres or so short of there to soak my hat and so forth.

The trail descends rather steeply from the lunch shed through Kirme village and a series of switchbacks and along a dry creekbed to Faralya which you enter at about 310m after perhaps half an hour. The first place you come to in Faralya is the restored mill. Joyce, a woman I met on the next stage, and three English blokes, Martin, Bob, and Dave, had stayed there. It cost them about €50 for a single, but they weren’t complaining, as the food and accommodation are apparently very good.

On the strength of the Lonely Planet recommendation and something I’d read on a site linked from the Trekking in Turkey site, as well as because I’d already made contact with Hasan, I bypassed all the alternatives and went straight to George House at about 270m. It’s supposed to be paradise, so I thought I’d have a rest day there. The last time they updated the website, in 2002 or something, they were charging in the vicinity of €2 per night. No longer. Now it is YTL22.50 per night for a bungalow, dinner, and breakfast. A bungalow has two mattresses on the floor and enough space at the end to get in and out of the door. There are four showers in the ablution block, two of which are also toilets. The first night I was there, there were about 35 people staying, so this was a bit of a problem. But the second night, with only four of us there, it was quite comfortable. You can camp on the grounds for free, but pay full price (YTL8) for meals. There is a pool, but I wasn’t even tempted. Breakfast is a normal Turkish breakfast of hardboiled egg, white cheese, bread, tomatoes, cucumber, yoghurt, honey, and jam. Apart from the cheese, I think they produce everything there themselves. I got the impression that there is one egg per person and the rest is more or less all you can eat.

The big attraction of George House, however, apart from the location, is dinner, comprising six or seven different scrumptious vegetarian dishes, which suited me perfectly, with bread, rice, bulgur, yoghurt, and honey. Tea and instant coffee are available pretty well all day from a vacuum flask for free. Any food you need during the day is a la carte. As I recollect, it was about YTL3 for a salad, yoghurt and honey or a plain omelette, and about YTL4 for menemen.

Right behind George House is the trail leading down to Kelebekler Vadısı ‘Butterfly Valley’. The guide books claim it’s slippery and dangerous and takes 45 minutes each way. The Belgian girl I met on the way said her boyfriend had descended in 17 minutes and came back in 22. As I was resting and it was not butterfly season, I didn’t see much point in doing it myself, but everyone else did and came back without looking too stressed, or even sweaty.

Another option in Faralya is Melissa’s Pansiyon. Nicole and Marleen, who I met in Alınca the next night, had stayed there and it sounded like a ripoff. Or at least they got ripped off.

Anyway, in strict accordance with my decision to have a rest day, I spent all day Tuesday virtually motionless. I had some conversations and gradually people left in ones and twos to catch the dolmuş back to Fethiye, and thence to the Dalaman airport.

Faralya to Alınca

I planned to get an early start on Wednesday, but got involved in conversations and it was 8:30 before I managed to get moving. Hasan gave me a huge lump of bread and some cheese and a couple of tomatoes and a cucumber for lunch on the way out. From George House, you walk up to the intersection and turn right, downhill, to get back on the trail. When you reach the Lycian Way sign, it’s rather confusing. There’s one dirt road intersecting the main bitumen road from the left right next to the sign at a very acute angle, and another ten or fifteen metres further along and going virtually straight, as the road curves at the point. This second one is the one you want. I wasted some time checking out the first one, looking for the ‘G3’ trail to the left after 20 m described in the book. If you take the correct turnoff from the main road, of course, this is quite obvious. I had gained about 100m when I realised I’d left my pole behind at George House, so I hightailed it back there, said goodbye to everybody again, and started off again. By the time I was back on the trail, it was well past 9.

On the way back to George House, I ran into the three Englishmen I mentioned before. And on the road, photographing a tomb, was a vanload of other tourists, the ones I later caught up with who had the different guidebook. Anyway, I kept wandering off onto side trails, then retracing my steps, meeting up with that group again. At one point a lone woman came storming past. I caught up with her and asked if she minded if I joined her. I obviously needed help to follow the trail, and was real pleased to have some company for the walk. That was Joyce, a retired phys ed teacher of Glaswegian origin, although she now lives in some other part of Scotland.

We were taking the shortcut that bypasses Kabak Beach. The trail ascends to about 440m, then descends again to about 250m. The directions tell you to turn left before you reach Mama’s Restaurant, but of course ordinarily you wouldn’t know that until you had actually reached it. On this occasion, however, we ran into two Dutch couples who had just come from there and assured us that we were near it. From there, the trail ascends gradually until you come to a washout, where you have to ascend to the left for about thirty metres before the trail continues on the right. There were a couple of guys surveying there when we passed. I don’t know what that was about, but I think it’s safe to anticipate further changes to the trail in that area.

Joyce had been over this section before and missed the turnoff going up to Alınca. I don’t know if this is the point for a lesson in Turkish phonology, but rest assured that Alınca is not pronounced ‘alinka’. Anyway, she was understandably paranoid about repeating that error, especially as the timings in the book are wildly deceptive. As I recall, from the Mama’s turnoff to the spring was supposed to have taken 80 minutes, and took us about 30. From there to the Alınca turnoff was supposed to take 20 minutes and took us over an hour. And for good measure there are no blazes for at least 500m. The English blokes spent quite a while walking back and forth trying to find where they’d gone wrong and were sure they discerned a clear trail much higher up the cliff.

When we got to the dry creekbed described in the guide, however, I felt pretty confident we were on the right track and it was about then that the blazes reappeared. We never saw the cemetery mentioned in the book, although clearly David Carter found it last year, but when we finally arrived at the right turnoff, it was pretty clear we were there and Joyce was relieved. From there, I don’t recollect any further dramas as the trail ascends to Alınca at about 750m.

As you enter Alınca, there is a sign pointing to the Dervish Lodge on the left. A few metres further on, a guy accosted us, now five in number, and offered us tea, which we were all happy to accept. He also made us ayran, which is watered yoghurt, much like lassi. Then another two English guys arrived. We had passed them trying to make a fire for their lunch earlier in the day. We went on to Bayram’ın Yeri, Bayram’s place. He has three little bungalows with two matresses and a candle in each. He was asking YTL30 for bed, breakfast, and dinner. A couple of girls I met at George House told me that he had asked them for YTL25 and that they actually paid 20, as his wife wasn’t there and they had to cook their own dinner, and his. I went looking for a cheaper option, but it soon became apparent that there was none. I had heard that the Dervish Lodge was posh, so it never occurred to me to check. I think it was Dave who mentioned that the Millhouse people had recommended it, which also suggested it would be out of my league. By the time I got back, two Belgian sisters, Nicole and Marleen, had checked in and I got the last cabin. There are two squatter toilets in a separate structure and a shower room with a handheld showerhead. The water is too hot, but with a basin of cold water, we all managed to get clean.

Anyway, once we were settled in, Joyce and I wandered over to the Dervish Lodge to see how the Pommies were getting on. They were all lounging on sofas and beanbags on an open deck with a great view of Yediburun, drinking beer and rakı and munching on snacks. Two aging hippies run the place. It also has a few bungalows and some new ones seem to be under construction. The lounge room is full of drums and a tenor saxophone and I gather they like to jam. When the English dudes decided they would like to clean up, it turned out that the posh Dervish Lodge doesn’t have a shower at all. There is a kind of small hamam about the size of an ordinary shower cubicle. Actually, as there is no pool, I think it’s really more of a sauna. It took one of the guys quite a while to get the fire going and I’m not sure what they all did to clean up in there. Somebody said they were charging YTL40, so not that much more than anyone else.

I had mentioned to Bayram, who is the muhtar of Alınca, that I was a vegetarian, so I guess he thought that meant everybody was. Dinner was quite satisfactory. Not up to George House standard, but a lot better than I’d expected. They seemed surprised that we wanted tea after dinner and it took about half an hour to prepare. Bayram’s wife was not that thrilled when we asked for breakfast at 7:30, but she did comply.

Alınca to Kalkan

On investigation, it looked like there was no reliable accommodation in Bel. Marleen and Nicole had no camping gear and I was only planning to camp in emergencies. So we kind of decided to bail out at Boğaziçi (the map has Boğazıcı) and hitch or catch a dolmuş to Kalkan, with a view to walking to Patara the next day.

One leaf of the Lycian Trail sign has fallen off, so it’s not obvious which way to go, but the book said downhill. The trail is not well blazed with the standard red and white marks at this point and it’s hard to stay on if you look for them. But there are blue arrows that actually mark the right trail up to a point. The trail descends through switchbacks for a fair way, with lots of great views of Yediburun and the turquoise Mediterranean, until you get to the terraces around Üçkeçi Tepesi ‘Three goats Hill’. The book says to say to the right of the terraces, but we didn’t know what that meant and wandered around for some time trying to find the trail. We ended up just following a big road just above the terraces. With the benefit of hindsight, I think Üçkeçi Tepesi is just a little rise. The trail probably just skirts around between it and the terraces. When we got to the intersection, it was cetainly obvious where the trail was, going the other way.

As I recollect, not far past this, we had to scramble up a short steep washout and came to the tank mentioned in the book. This is not a good place to stop for water. It is better to follow the black hose about 20 or 30 metres further and get it directly from the spring that feeds the tank.

In April 2007, there was a lot of water. Many more springs are running than the book mentions. On the whole I tend to trust spring water, but wouldn’t drink cistern or well or creek water without treatment. On this particular trek, most of the time I was carrying tap water from the previous night’s hotel. But I did have a bit of spring water here and there with no ill effects. If there was anything to fear from those springs, I almost certainly would have got it.

From there, you follow the road to the turnoff for Gey. David Carter took the route via Boğaziçi and said he liked it. He mentions that he met someone who had taken the Gey route and didn’t like it, but couldn’t remember why they didn’t like it. When we got there, Joyce headed off for Bel, while Marleen and Nicole and I continued on into Boğaziçi. We met a woman who invited us for tea. The tea was actually quite refreshing, but it was a bad idea. We planned to hitch out to the main road at Eşen. While we had our tea, three utes went past. There was absolutely no other traffic on that road until we actually reached Eşen, exactly as I predicted on the basis of Murphy’s Law. So we ended up slogging about eight kilometres along a boring road in full sun. Just as we were coming up to Eşen, a car stopped for us and drove us straight past Eşen, where I was keen to stop and have a cold drink and possibly a meal. He dropped us at his house. We weren’t sure what to do, but it was a fair way back to Eşen, so we walked on and soon came to the main road. We didn’t get far before two guys picked us up. They were going to Kaş, but had to stop and meet someone in Kınık. Nicole was sure they were drug dealers. But they had a pansiyon in Kaş and gave us brochures. They asked us why we wanted to go to Kalkan. It was too expensive and we should come to Kaş. I was ready to take them at their word and go all the way to Kaş – it’s only about 25km further – and catch a dolmuş back in the morning. But Nicole and Marleen were determined to stop in Kalkan, so I decided to stick with them. We stopped for about five minutes at the turnoff for Kınık, but the guy they were execting never showed up, and they took us on to Kalkan and dropped us at the bazaar, as it was market day. They said they were going back to Kınık to see if their guy showed up.

As we were walking through the market, I got a call from Esin saying that Nur was frantic because she couldn’t get through to me the previous day when I was out of range. So I rang Nur and it turned out that she had rung the Dervish Lodge and Bayram and called out the Jandarma to look for me! Anyway, we stopped at a gözleme stall. The guy tried to overcharge us. A woman had come up while we were eating and asked how much they were and they told her YTL2, so I was pretty pissed off when the guy gave me YTL5 change from my 10. But he soon rectified his error. Then we went off looking for a place to stay. We stopped at the very first pansiyon we saw, the Moonlight, and I managed to bargain them down to a total of YTL50 for a double room and a single room, without breakfast, which suited me fine.

Nicole and Marleen are much fitter than me and ready to go out and do things after a day of walking. So after we’d all showered and rinsed out stuff, we went in search of a bank, as they were short of Turkish currency. There was an ATM nearby, so that was no problem. I had noticed in the Lonely Planet that there was supposed to be a lighthouse, so we went looking for that. It didn’t take long to find, just wandering through some side streets. But it was not very exciting. We stopped at a restaurant and they had beers and I had a rakı while a stray cat purred in my lap. Then we went down to the beach. Marleen had a swim and Nicole lay in the sun, while I retreated to the shade of an umbrella at the beachside bar.

While I was sitting there, two German guys came up with rucksacks. They were doing part of the Lycian Way backwards from Olympos. I said I found it hard enough following the directions going forwards, it must be a hell of a job going the other way, but they said the blazes were easier to follow going west.

When Marleen and Nicole were done on the beach, they came up and talked to the Germans for a little while, then we went off looking for dinner. We couldn’t agree on a place and decided to split up. Then a guy came up to me and tempted me with a free drink if I ate at his restaurant which was just there. I was actually planned to go to the Istanbul restaurant, which looked very good, but Marleen and Nicole had rejected on the grounds that the tables were in the middle of the street and the traffic and exhaust would disturb them. This place had a nice balcony. I ordered a vegetable omelette and some chips. The chef peeled a tomato in one piece and curled the skin into the shape of a rose. He substituted mushrooms for zucchini, but otherwise it was quite a nice omelette and the chips were good. I thought YTL15 was a bit steep, particularly as the free glass of rakı turned out to be less than half a glass.

After dinner, I found an internet cafe and checked my mail. Then I returned to the pansiyon and went to bed. The rooms are nice, the proprietors friendly, the water pressure is good, there’s a view of the harbour and a roof bar, but I can’t recommend the Moonlight, as the mattress was horrible.

Akbel to Patara

In the morning, we learned to our dismay that there actually was no dolmuş to Akbel, so we started hitching and got a ride to the turnoff. We stopped at the çay bahçesi there for a glass of tea and set off for Patara. The book says to keep the mosque on your right and take a ‘G3’ trail on the left. In fact, it’s about two km from the mosque, after taking a number of right forks in the road that you ultimately come to that trail. There is a great deal of roadwork and construction going on around there. I happened to notice that a lot of the trees have metal number plates nailed to them. This is something I’ve seen before and I surmise that they mark out house blocks. So I think it might be reasonable to anticipate more dramatic changes to the trail in this area over the coming period.

For the first couple of hours, you are never out of earshot of bulldozers and traffic and never out of sight of the hothouses that carpet the valley. It is mainly on dirt road, although fairly shady much of the way. Eventually, however, you come to Delikkemel. (Note that there are two ‘k’s – ‘belt with holes’, not delikemel ‘crazy belt’!) That is worth seeing. I don’t know how it actually works. They call it a siphon. Anyway, somehow, by constructing this pipe, the Roman engineers got water to flow uphill. The pipe comprises scores of stone blocks each with a large hole in the centre that fit together. There were some mechanisms for clearing blockages and even removing individual blocks for repair or replacement. They say each block weighs 800kg. I didn’t try to lift them to check.

After that, the route is mainly on dirt road, sometimes on trail, until you get to the three arched gate of Patara, where you turn right to get to the village of Gelemiş, left for the ruins and the beach. We wanted to find accommodation and shed our packs, so we turned right, after checking with a schoolgirl who was passing by. Several of the hotels and pansiyons we passed were closed, but we stopped at the first one that was open, St Nicholas Pansiyon, and we got the same deal – YTL50 for two rooms, with breakfast.

This time, I stayed behind and rested while Nicole and Marleen went off to explore the ruins and check out the beach. According to the Lonely Planet guidebook, it costs €6.25 or something for a week’s pass to the ruins and beach. It now costs YTL2 for a pass of unspecified duration. Coming from the trail, however, you do not go through the entrance gate on the way to the beach – it’s between there and the village. So if you’re brimming with energy after the 16km from Akbel, you can explore the ruins and have a dip for free.

Although there are a number of restaurants and bars and stuff in Patara, we decided to eat at the hotel. The meal was fine and not too expensive.

Patara to Kaş

After breakfast, we set out together. Nicole and Marleen were going to head back to Akbel the long way, around Yalıburun, then hitch back to Kınık and try to get to Pydnai, Letoon, and Xanthos. I decided that it was becoming too much of a slog and I had stopped enjoying the walking. As for those other ruins, I’m not an archaeology buff and for the most part one pile of stones looks about the same as another to me. If there are inscriptions, it can be kind of fun trying to remember enough Greek to figure out what they’re on about, but this, too, has its limits, particularly after a day in the sun.

So my plan was to explore the Patara ruins, have a quick dip at the beach, go back to the pansiyon for a shower, and hitch on to Kaş. We stopped off in the village to pick up some stuff for Marleen and Nicole’s lunch, then set off out of town. Although the sign says the park opens at 7:30 from May, there was nobody at the gate house, although there was a drunk soliciting cigarettes not far from there. They were relieved, as they feared getting hit up for another entrance fee just to get back to the trail. Anyway, when we got to the turnoff, I bade them a fond farewell.

First I went to the obtrusive ruin that I believe was the baths and had a look around. Since it is only about 100 metres from there over to the main amphitheatre, I decided to walk across, rather than all the way back out to the road and then in again. That turned out to be a mistake. I did find a comparatively uninteresting ruin that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise, but it was very hard going through scrub that was not quite impenetrable until I found myself surrounded by blackberry brambles that I didn’t want to deal with. I couldn’t find a way around and ended up bashing through scrub all the way back to where I’d started. In the course of all this, something must have pried my camera case loose. The belt loop is secured with a double Velcro closure that’s usually quite robust, but clearly not for this type of scrub. I had the camera in my pocket, so that wasn’t at issue, but there was a SD card with some photos on it in the case that I didn’t want to part with, so back I went to find it. Fortunately, it did turn up before too long.

Before I got to the main amphitheatre, I followed a side road and found some kind of avenue flanked by columns and a smaller amphitheatre that was worth looking around. It’s gated off from the front, but it’s open from the back.

The main amphitheatre is quite large and impressive. The main thing I’ve learnt from wandering around all these amphitheatres is that amphitheatre design doesn’t appear to have progressed a great deal in the last two and a half millennia.

There were a few other stones lying around, but I didn’t notice any other actual structures, so went down to the beach for a quick dip. I hoped the sea water would ease the new scratches I’d acquired in the scrub. It did, a bit, actually, but seemed to bring out a nasty rash on my arms, presumably from some horrible plant I’d brushed up against.

It took less than half an hour to get back to the pansiyon. I had a quick shower and headed for the road. A guy with a truckload of tomatoes dropped me on the main road and a few minutes later a guy with a kayak paddle in the back picked me up. Burcin had been a white water rafting guide and such. He had moved to Istanbul, where he was marketing artwork or something, but the big city life didn’t suit him and a friend had offered him work leading sea kayaking expeditions, so he was on his way to look into it. I told him my idea for a rafting expedition down the Neelam River. I thought an enterprising person could market it to crazy Americans or Europeans who might be keen to have the distinction of being the first ever to navigate the river in any kind of watercraft. To my completely naïve eye, it looked exciting, but doable. There are no actual falls, but the water is fast, without the real wildness of the Upper Indus or the Hunza.

He dropped me at the harbour in Kaş, after stopping by the Kaş campground, where they offered me the special friend of a friend price of YTL30 for a bungalow without toilet or shower. I offered them YTL10, and off we went. As I wandered through the Meydan, I came across a pide place, the Marina restaurant, I think, and couldn’t resist the lunch special – pide, salad, and coke for YTL5. It was nice. The salad was quite impressive, much more elaborate than I had expected.

After I ate, I set off to find a pansiyon. I was planning to check out the Anı Pansiyon, but along came one of the guys who had picked us up hitching a couple of days earlier on a motorscooter. He rang his mate, who came to pick me up in his ute. After the big song and dance he had given me about how much cheaper it was in Kaş than in Kalkan, he tried to charge me YTL30 for a single room. We eventually settled on YTL20, including breakfast. The Ateş Motel is a strange place comprising two three storey structures connected by a bridge from one roof to the other. There was a young Australian kid there and we had a nice yarn before he headed off to the eczane to find a pumice and some antibiotic ointment for his cracked heel. I had a shower and went off to explore the area of Kaş closed to traffic. It’s quite touristy. A woman invited me to have a tea at her restaurant.

I was looking for the Hi-Jazz bar I’d read about in Lonely Planet. It took a while. I think the scale on the LP map must be wrong as all the distances seemed a lot shorter than I expected. It seems to show the bar on a street parallel to the street that intersects the street with the Chez Evy restaurant. It may have moved, of course, but in any case, it’s now on the street the intersects the street with Chez Evy, and indeed, the entrances of the two places are not more than five metres apart. When I walked in, it sure wasn’t jazz they were playing, but I started talking to the guy behind the bar. He complained that after midnight none of the customers would tolerate jazz and he had to play Turkish music. Tunc had returned fairly recently from 32 years in Vienna and taken over management of the bar with a woman named Nana, who turned up much later. I was the only customer. The staff came in one by one to announce they’d be late, as they had to go somewhere to watch the soccer match. So Tunc turned me on to some of his 5000 cds. Unfortunately, he discovered that he couldn’t find any of his Sidney Bechet or Monty Alexander cds and he got quite upset about it and went off at the bartender when he came around. I was pretty sloshed by then and tried to counsel him to let it go, it was just stuff, and in any case, not to blame the staff. I don’t think it helped.

It must have been after 10 when I stumbled back to the pansiyon and went pretty well straight to bed. Asher, the kid I’d met earlier, was watching the match on tv. In the morning, he told me that there had been quite a lot of noise when whoever it was who won had won. I never heard a thing.

Kaş to Antalya and Ankara

The next morning, I got up reasonably early to try and capture the sunrise over the amphitheatre a couple of hundred metres from the pansiyon. It was not spectacular, but I did get to see it. The amphitheatre itself is very well preserved, but not as impressive as the ones in Fethiye or Patara. Then I wandered around looking for the Doric grave. Then I walked across to the other side of the valley to check out the Lycian rock tombs. From the map they gave me at the tourist office, it looked like they would be accessible from a street intersecting Likya Caddesi. So I walked up a bunch of switchbacks all the way to the main road, where I found the intersection with the Lycian Way, but not the tombs. So I walked all the way back down and started to walk along Likya Caddesi. I could see one rock tomb in the cliff above the street behind the houses on that side. Just as I was about to give up and head back, I saw a sign for the tombs pointing to a staircase. So up I went. There are two tombs up that way. A little further down the street, opposite the primary school, there’s another one, also accessible from the street by stairs.

As I was heading across the square on my way back to the hotel, I passed a fresh orange juice place, which was just what I needed. Indeed, I woke up with a craving for precisely that, but made do with a carton of apple raspberry juice. At least it was cold.

Anyway, I caught the 11:00 bus to Antalya, arriving just in time to grab the last seat on the KamilKoç bus to Ankara, arriving just before midnight. I should have just got a taxi from AŞTİ, the Ankara bus terminal, as I knew there was no way the buses would still be running by the time I got to Kızılay, but I ended up taking the Metro, anyway. It turned out to be a silly idea as there was a long wait for the train to arrive and an even longer wait before it left.

So, having set off with the intention of walking over 500km and coming back 15kg lighter, I ended up walking about 75km, about 20 of them not part of those 500, and 1kg heavier. A couple of days after I got back, my feet and lower legs swelled up like I’ve never seen before. Gave me quite a scare. They’re just about back to normal. I assume this must have been a reaction to some plant or something that scratched me.

On the whole, the walk was kind of disappointing. This is largely because I was disappointed with myself – both my physical performance and my apparent inability to follow the trail. I found it tiring and ultimately decided to stop when it was just slog much of the time. Another important factor was loneliness. I’d have much preferred to do it with a companion. It was also starting to get expensive, which was also my own fault for not wanting to camp. Another result of not wanting to camp is that I may have missed more interesting sections. A lot of my walking was actually on road, which I find particularly boring and draining.

Remarks on waymarking, maps, and guidebooks

A lot of the red and white blazes marking the trail have faded. I found it difficult to follow. I was disappointed, as I often am, that not all intersections are clearly marked. This may be because I’m used to considering goat tracks and footpads as trails and think there’s an intersection when any sane person wouldn’t consider it. Or just my bad eyesight. Or my colour blindness, combined with lots of lichen close enough in colour to the red and white blazes to confuse me.

As I mentioned in the trip description, Hasan from George House, who said he had never walked the route before, refreshed some of the blazes and painted some new ones, which may have been erroneous. He also painted a number of unconventional red arrows. Other locals who are being helpful by refreshing or adding blazes or marking the trail as they see fit. Something to be aware of.

I also found the Lycian Way book less helpful than I had hoped. It seems very detailed, but pretty consistently omits the information I would find most useful. Many of the directions are in terms of particular landmarks, some of which may no longer exist. Often it directs you to keep such and such on your right or left, which is a lot more helpful than a direction to walk to the right or left of something without specifying which direction you are looking at it from. I find it particularly strange when directions are couched in terms of making a turn before you reach such and such a place. It’s all very well knowing when you’ve gone too far, of course, but it would be a lot better if there were a landmark at or before the turn so you wouldn’t actually have to overshoot the intersection to know you were there.

The absence of indications of distance caused me and those I was walking with a lot of confusion. Even if distances don’t provide a good indication of how much time it will take or how strenuous it will be, it would be helpful to know that the ‘G3 track’ you are looking for on the left is 3km from the mosque, and not 10m.

The kind of directions that would help me go something like, ‘Walk 500m on a goat track climbing from 200m to 275m until you come to a dirt road, where you turn right…’

The book divides the route into 20 Sections and only gives distances for a whole Section. The sections themselves appear to be more or less arbitrary. They begin and end at villages or sites and conform to a kind of suggested itinerary. But since most walkers will move at a slower or faster pace than the author, avoid camping or staying in villages, and so forth, I think it would make more sense to provide directions from one village, site, or intersection to the next and dispense with the Sections altogether.

Lengths of parts of Sections are expressed as times. It’s acknowledged that most people will walk at a different pace from the author. Of course it’s true that distances are not necessarily good guides to the time it will take or how strenuous it is. But a kilometre is still a kilometre, whoever walks it. The times vary so wildly from the time I was taking and those I met were taking, and not always longer, that they really turned out to be deceptive. It’s not that I’m not interested in how long Kate Clow took to cover the distance – I am. It’s just that I like to know how far it is and how much of an ascent and descent there is. And some indication of steepness, the nature of the surface – loose rock, sand, mud, etc. – and so forth helps you to know what to expect and how to plan.

Furthermore, the system of grading tracks did not seem helpful. At least for the part of the trail that I walked, trail conditions have changed and with all the construction and bulldozing, look likely to continue to do so. But even without interference of that kind, what looked like a tractor road in 2005 could easily be a footpad in 2007, and vice versa. I’d have preferred a three way distinction among footpads, groomed trails, and roads. If there is anything special to note about the nature of the track, it would probably be better to spell it out, as indeed the guide does from time to time.

The format of the book is also problematical. It is much too long to fit into an ordinary bum bag or the like and is quite heavy (486g). Since it needs regular updating, contains a section of glossy photos, and sections on equipment and history and so forth that there is no need to carry, and many will not walk the trail all in one go, the obvious format would be in some kind of loose leaf binder, allowing people to take just the sections they require and to replace them with updates as they appear on the internet. Furthermore, in my view, there should be at least some kind of map on the page facing the associated trail description, apart from the overall map. Ideally, this would indicate distances, elevations, and GPS coordinates of significant points, especially tricky intersections.

The associated map tears out, and is very difficult to use. It is divided into four sections, two on each side. This is conservative of paper, but means it takes a while to orient to the right section. It only took a few hours for the creases to start cracking on my copy when folded as it came. Refolding to keep the relevant part out would lead to rapid deterioration. Apart from the format, there are places missing (e.g. Gey), place names misspelled (‘Boğazıcı’ for Boğaziçi), and other errors. Everyone complains about the map. David Carter recommended the Map of ancient Lycia, but I couldn’t find a copy in Fethiye. There are, however, many copies in the bookshop in Kaş, which also has multiple copies of the Lycian Way book in English, German, and Turkish. Presumably the Map of ancient Lycia is available overseas and anyone coming from abroad would probably be well advised to bring it with them. That said, I couldn’t find it listed on Amazon.com. I did, however, find this, which may actually be the same map. There is more than one map at that site and other maps and information will come up if you google ‘Map of ancient Lycia’.

I met a group just walking from Faralya to Kabak whose leader had a different book. I believe it must have been the Sunflower Plus Series Turkish Coast: Kas to Dalyan. It was a smaller and slimmer format than the official guide and covered trails from Dalyan to Kaş, which includes about half of the Lycian Way. There is another volume in the same series Turkish Coast: Antalya to Demre that covers the rest of it. While I didn’t examine it closely, it did have the small maps on pages facing the trail description format that I prefer.

On investigation, the Kas to Dalyan volume includes descriptions of 15 walks covering that part of the Lycian way. Some of it definitely coincides with the Lycian Way, but I can’t be sure about the rest. So it is no probably no substitute for the official guide if the intention is to walk all or part of the standard Lycian Way. I certainly wouldn’t carry both if walking alone. But it would probably be a good idea for a party to bring the Sunflower guides along.