The lure of the Lycian Way

Jeremy Seal samples a four-day stretch of the magnificent 500-kilometre waymarked walk through southwest Turkey We’re walking west, following a line of red and white paint daubs on trees and rocks, ancient walls and cisterns that pass among the rearing limestone crags of the Bey Mountains in southwest Turkey. The daubs, which stretch 500 kilometres between Antalya and Fethiye, are waymarks along Lykia Yolu, or the Lycian Way. This walkers’ path was created as recently as 1999 but nevertheless combines historical resonance, scenic beauty and local lore perhaps more captivatingly than any other walking trail on earth. It takes the best part of a month to complete Turkey’s first long-distance trail. We are contenting ourselves with a sample section, tackling a four-day stretch at the trail’s eastern end where the contours are closely packed and the fresh water stops are limited. It’s October (autumn and spring being the seasons for the Lycian Way) when we set out from Kemer, a scruffy conglomeration of half-finished holiday villages, and we’re happy to retreat into a rising forest landscape of pine and smokebush, myrtle and wild pistachio. Pink cyclamens grow among fallen pine needles, and the open slopes have been slow-basted all summer in sage and thyme. Spearmint grows along the streams and where a river steps down a steep gorge, gathering in chilly pools, we cool off among egg-smooth boulders. We lunch on the picnic of classic Turkish staples we are carrying in our daysacks; bread and beyaz peynir (Turkish feta), beef tomatoes and black olives, followed by dried apricots and mulberries, and slabs of sesame-tasting helva. continue