Ten years on The Lycian Way

It’s no exaggeration to say that over the last decade the walking scene in Turkey has been transformed thanks to the Lycian Way. Although it possesses a wealth of beautiful mountains, valleys and upland areas ideal for walking, an absence of adequate large-scale maps meant that prior to the opening of the trail, only the most adventurous foreigners came to Turkey to walk or trek. Now some 12,000 walkers visit each year just to enjoy the Lycian Way, which is waymarked to French Grande Randonnee standards, with red and white flashes painted at regular intervals onto rocks and trees.

It’s not difficult to see why the trail has become so popular so quickly, as southwest Turkey is arguably the most beautiful stretch of coastline in the entire Mediterranean. Here improbably sculpted limestone peaks, snow-capped from December to April, run in serried ranks behind a glimmering turquoise sea. Vast swathes of pristine Mediterranean pine forest cloak slopes and valleys, stands of cedar still cling to the upper reaches of some peaks and wild flowers run riot in the spring snowmelt

It’s not difficult to see why the trail has become so popular so quickly, as southwest Turkey is arguably the most beautiful stretch of coastline in the entire Mediterranean. Here improbably sculpted limestone peaks, snow-capped from December to April, run in serried ranks behind a glimmering turquoise sea. Vast swathes of pristine Mediterranean pine forest cloak slopes and valleys, stands of cedar still cling to the upper reaches of some peaks and wild flowers run riot in the spring snowmelt. Then, of course, there are the ancient sites littering this spectacular landscape, relics of the distinctive Lycian peoples who inhabited the region in the first millennia B.C. You can add to this already formidable array of attractions secluded coves where hot walkers can enjoy a refreshing dip, upland pastures where Yörük shepherds graze vast herds of goats, bucolic villages slumbering beneath tangled canopies of vines, characterful coastal resorts such as Kalkan and the captivating hospitality of rural Turks.

I first met Kate in the late 1990s. She’d already spent several years researching the line of the trail, which links together sections of Roman road, Ottoman-era paved mule-track, forest paths and Yörük trails to make a continuous route, and frequently returned to her Antalya home after days in the great Lycian outdoors worn out, grubby, scratched and stung -- but undaunted. The whole concept of a marked walking trail was unheard of in Turkey at the time, so she was battling not only against the elements but also against a mindset. What, the Turkish authorities mused, was the use of a walking trail? Attitudes began to change, albeit slowly, when her route won a prestigious environmental prize sponsored by Turkey’s Garanti Bank. Now there was a little money available to make the trail a reality on the ground, and waymarking began in the spring of 2000.

1) Walkers in Üçağız, 2) Mount Olympos, 3) Ruins, Myra, 4) Üçağız/Simena, 5) Lighthouse, Adrasan

My own involvement in the process got off to an ignominious start. On the evening of the first day of the waymarking schedule, I was camped in a terraced olive grove a six-hour walk out from the starting point of Ölüdeniz. Everything had gone swimmingly that day, and the spectacular path that runs across the cliffs plunging down from 1,989-meter Mount Topçambaba (Baba Dağı) straight down into the deep blue of the sea below was resplendent with the red and white painted flashes which would guide future walkers on Day 1 of the Lycian Way. Then, needing to answer what’s euphemistically termed a “call of nature,” I emerged from my tent into an inky black night and stepped straight off the retaining wall of the olive terrace. The drop was only a couple of meters, but in falling, I twisted my knee and ruptured the medial ligament. I tried walking the next day, but it was hopeless, and for the next month was consigned to driving the project jeep, ferrying paint, food and waymarkers along the line of Kate’s hard-won route (followed by three months’ painful rehabilitation of said knee in the UK).

My involvement with the Lycian Way now is confined to the odd weekend walk for my own pleasure, but if you suspect me of any bias in its favor because of my very small part in helping make it a reality, it’s worth reading just a few examples of what the press around the world have had to say about it over the last few years. “What really distinguishes this route is its intimate, almost careless, relationship with history,” wrote Tim Salmon for Britain’s respected Sunday Times, and then included it in his “World’s Ten Best Walks.” Pelin Turgut of Time Magazine praised the route in 2006: “Famed British explorer Freya Stark once wrote: ‘There are not so many places left where magic reigns without interruption, of all those I know, the coast of Lycia was the most magical.’

Capture that charm -- and follow the same path that Alexander the Great once traveled -- by walking Turkey’s first long-distance trail.” The route is described glowingly in the coffee table tome “Top Treks of the World” and was chosen by Britain’s Country Walking Magazine as the 15th greatest walk in the world -- quite an accolade. A whole host of positive articles have been written about the Lycian Way in respected newspapers and journals from Norway to Australia and the US to Israel (and, of course, in Turkey itself) and the route is a firmly established feature in most travelers’ guidebooks to Turkey, including Lonely Planet and Rough Guide.

If you haven’t already walked the Lycian Way, you may be wondering how to go about it. First off, even if you intend going on an organized trip with a guide, it’s mandatory to get hold of Kate’s guide to the route, as it is full of interesting information on the flora, fauna and history of Lycia, as well as containing detailed route descriptions, planning and equipment advice -- plus an indispensable and attractive sketch map of the trail. Unless you have over a month to spare, i.e., the time it would take to walk the entire 500-plus kilometer trail (although the record is, apparently, just 22 days), it’s likely that you’ll opt to hike a few of the most appealing sections. The best places to base yourself unless you’re a hardened camper are probably Patara, Kalkan, Kaş, Üçağız/Simena, Finike, Adrasan and Çıralı/Olympos, as all these places are large enough to offer a choice of accommodation and eating places. A sure sign of the route’s success, though, is that some quite remote places now offer top-notch accommodation to walkers (for example, Bezirgan village, above Kalkan, and Faralya near Ölüdeniz). Indeed, there’s now accommodation for walkers every night on the trail except for the two-night, three-day stretch between Myra and Finike.

More than 100 agencies’s services

There are more than a hundred travel and trekking agencies offering guided tours on the route, which may appeal to the less experienced walkers. The more experienced will probably be quite happy to set off, pack on back and guide in hand, to walk the trail, but for something between a guided and independent experience, it’s worth considering a self-guided walk. Here a company will make all the accommodation and travel arrangements on your behalf and provide you with a detailed information pack. You then simply walk from one hotel or pension to the next carrying only a daypack containing a packed lunch, while your main luggage is taxied from your previous to your next night’s accommodation. In remoter places where there is no formal accommodation, villagers have opened their homes to walkers and will feed you and put you up for the night for a modest fee -- and using these places is a great way to help put something back into a rural economy reeling from the migration of the younger generation to urban centers such as Antalya.

Not everything comes up smelling of roses (or, more aptly for the Lycian Way, grape hyacinth, styrax or thyme) on the trail. Turkey has, as yet, no legislation to protect footpaths and trails, so despite Kate’s lobbying and the support of the Turkish Ministry of Tourism, parts of the Lycian Way are sometimes damaged and access made difficult, ironically enough, by the Forestry Ministry, as well as land developers. Mount Olympos (Tahtalı Dağı), at 2,365 meters, was once the literal and (for me and many others) metaphorical highlight of the entire trail, with its unparalleled bird’s eye view of the dramatic Lycian coastline. The summit is now disfigured by a concrete restaurant visible from miles around, and the massive pylons of the cable car which brings streams of sightseers a day up to it stand out like a row of very sore thumbs on this finest of peaks.

Still, Turkey’s first long-distance walk has more than enough delights for the most discerning walker. With daytime temperatures in Antalya as I conclude this piece (Saturday, March 6) hovering around 20 degrees Celsius and the cyclamen blooming in all their spring glory, there’s no better time to walk the trail that has opened up Turkey for walkers from around the globe. Ten years on from its official year 2000 opening, here’s a very happy birthday to the Lycian Way.