Ovacık: A village green in the Taurus

Wrapped around it was a late afternoon sky of the purest blue imaginable. Above the summit, to the east, a generous slice of silvered moon shone bright. Striding out from beneath the dappled shade of aged, twisted pines and cedars peppered with delightfully symmetrical cones, onto the great sweep of pasture thrown in front of the mountain like some giant green blanket, my son exclaimed brightly, “Hey dad, this would make a great place to play cricket.”

At first sight my 16-year-old son was right. For the yayla (summer pasture) we were heading across seemed indeed flat enough to be the kind of English village green where this most incomprehensible of sports (to non-cricketers, that is) is traditionally played. And what a dramatic cricket pitch it would make, this impossibly flat plain of green grassland hemmed in on two sides by bony spurs of pine-clad limestone, to the north by the densely forested valley through which we had just walked, and to the south by the imperious bulk of the mountain which shared its name with the yayla at its feet, Ovacık.

Pastures and a pavilion of sorts

Of course it would be a fair walk in for players and spectators (it took us an hour and a half from the village of Etler, on the main road in the valley around 500 meters below), and in place of the village pub there were just a few hollowed-out tree trunks serving as drinking troughs, filled with sweet, cool water gushing forth from some hidden source in the rocks. Goats grazing nonchalantly on the rich, purple flower spangled pasture beneath our feet stared at us with the evil gaze only they amongst the ruminants possess and would likely try to eat the cricket ball and wickets if they got the chance (as they were to do the next day with our tents, stoves and packs). And as Jake pointed out with the perspicacity of the young, the verdant layer of pasture carpeting the yayla concealed a plethora of problems for the grand cricketing scheme, from ankle-breaking hollows to “trip me up” scatterings of fist-sized boulders.

“Oh well,” shrugged Jake, quickly resigning himself to the fact cricket was unlikely to catch on in the Taurus range, “It'd be good as a high-altitude football training camp.” At a little over 1,200 meters above sea level, he had a point. If clubs from all over Europe could escape their mid winter and come to train at the facilities at Belek, on the Mediterranean coast just 30 kilometers or so from Ovacık, why not engage in some lung-enhancing late spring or early autumn training in the Taurus? Our musings were cut short when we reached our destination, a ramshackle wooden hut in the southwest corner of the yayla. As a cricket pavilion it left much to be desired, with its gaping roof and twisted boards, but would come in useful the next morning to protect our gear from marauding goats and rampaging horses whilst we tackled the peak.

Who needs a map?

By the time our tent was pitched and the kettle put on the camping gas stove, our walking companions Cemalettin and Ahmet arrived. Together we gazed up at the north face of the peak, Ahmet trying, without much success, to remember the route he'd followed 15 years previously. A quick foray to a ridge-top -- half an hour's walk shy of the yayla in February aside -- neither Cemalettin nor I had much of a clue as to how to reach the summit. Still, we'd sort it out in the morning. With cloud building up and encroaching from the north and the sun setting behind the ridge, we ate a sparse evening meal in companionable silence before turning in at 8 o'clock. Thunder rolled and a flash of lightning lit up the side of the tent. That apart, the odd snort from my dog curled up against a rocky outcrop outside excepted, nothing disturbed our slumber.

Heavy dew clung to the fly sheet as we roused ourselves a little after 5 a.m. A couple of hundred meters away smoke coiled into the sky from outside a second hut, where a shepherd nursed his first cigarette of the day. Cemalettin asked him for directions and, with the sun slowly lighting up the north face of the peak, he pointed out a sloping ramp leading up through the pines to a narrow gully. The shepherd told us to exit the gully, bear right across a the scree slope and then left up another steep gully before bearing left again, this time onto the summit ridge. “There's a path the whole way,” he said in guttural village Turkish, much to our delight. Who needs a map when there's a shepherd about? Shouldering our daypacks, well-filled with water for there was none above the yayla, we set off around 6:30 a.m., with just Fıstık (my dog) and the cawing of Alpine choughs for company.

A shepherd's life is not for me

The initial stretch, cutting diagonally across the face of the peak, was easy, with just a few fallen trees lying awkwardly across the faint line of the path to slow our progress. After the heat of the climb up from the road to the yayla in the previous day's mid-afternoon heat, it felt deliciously cool, too. Songbirds chirruped in the pine and juniper trees and stands of wildflowers punctured the rocky forest floor. The trees thinned dramatically as we turned and headed straight up the first gully and we were forced to use hands as well as feet as we negotiated the narrow passage, sending loose rocks tumbling down below us.

We emerged from the gully onto a massive scree slope. The odd stunted and sun beaten juniper apart, it was just us and a vast expanse of loose, slippery rock. The path was faint, confused by the crisscrossing paths worn by the goats who bleated on the crags above us, and only the shouted directions of the shepherd, who was coming up behind us to round up his charges, kept us on track. “Don't think I'd want to be a shepherd,” mused Jake as we picked our way carefully across the treacherous scree. My son saw clearly the pitfalls of a lifetime of nights sleeping in a rude wooden hut with no electric or water, TV or computer, and days spent roaming trackless mountainsides in pursuit of evil-eyed ruminants.

A 360-degree panorama

The second gully was steeper and longer the first than the first, but we were making rapid progress, despite stopping every 200 meters or so to make cairns so we could retrace our steps with ease. We stopped to admire a cave just off the track, a shaft burrowing its way tens of meters down into the heart of the mountain, a patch of winter snow still preserved in its icy depths. Then we were up onto a spur formed by a collapse of the top of the mountain, and made our way in suitably dramatic fashion along an airy ridge to the summit, marked by an iron pole and, tucked away in a galvanized steel canister beneath some rocks, the summit register. The register was old and mildewed, with entries going back to the year 2000. The last one was for August 2010. “There's some French people here (2004 and 2005) but no English,” said Jake, who was strangely pleased to become the first recorded Englishman on the summit of Ovacık.

The views were grand, the Mediterranean a blur of blue to the south, the Köprülü River, famed for its white water rafting, coiled its way through a valley to the east, whilst to the north the jagged profile of Mount Bozburun dominated the scene. West lay the great plain behind Antalya (the city itself was clearly visible too) and its multitude of greenhouses and scattered settlements. It was only 9 o'clock, and we sat and ate a well-earned breakfast and enjoyed a panorama İstanbul's trendy rooftop restaurants (like 360) would kill for. The way down was tough, as every footstep had to be thought about before making it on the steep, slippery trail, but the cairns had been worthwhile -- at least we knew we were on the right track.

Back at the yayla whilst waiting for Cemalettin and Ahmet, who perhaps wisely were rather less hurried than my son and I, we chatted again to the shepherd. He told us he had some 300 sheep, and that each one was worth about TL 500. “Whoa, that's a lot,” said Jake, “That means there's about four thousand quid [British pounds] on that rock,” pointing at a limestone outcrop next to our tent, where a cluster of goats were gazing impassively at us. Perhaps the life of a wandering goatherd was beginning to have a little more appeal than previously. I was surprised to learn that the goats were not milked and no cheese produced. Instead the shepherd sold on the kids, either for meat or to other villagers who would use them for dairy produce.

On his return Ahmet, the only one of us not to take down his tent, was disgusted to see that one of the band of horses that grazed here had torn a great gash in it. Still, it was a small price to pay for a short but thoroughly enjoyable expedition into the Taurus. Ovacık yayla may not quite be ready for cricket, but it makes a beautiful campsite at the foot of a small but challenging peak.

Facts

Ovacık is around 75 kilometers from Antalya. Head east to Serik/Alanya and some eight kilometers past the turn for the ancient site of Siliyon turn left/north to Çandır. Pass through Çandır, still heading north, to the villages of Alacami and Gökçepınar. Just beyond the next village, Etler, a track runs down/right from the asphalt road to a small river and parking place next to a beekeepers köşk. The walk starts here.