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.