My Top Tips

#1 Timing - Pick your season with care. I strongly recommend mid March to mid April. Your weather may vary of course. Mine was almost perfect for the entire trail. And there was the added benefit that mostly there were very few people around. 

#2 Footwear - Boots were a very good choice for this trail. Despite it being generally warm (and entirely snow free) my misgivings over swapping out my regular hiking shoes (Salomon X-Ultra 2 non-Goretex) in favour of my new boots were very quickly overcome. And the longer the trail went on the more I appreciated my footwear combination. 

I used Scarpa R-Evolution Pro GTX boots* with two pairs of wool socks and my normal footbed combination of Superfeet Green (with several thousands of km of use) above a thin Noene shock absorbing layer. 

The slight dampness by the end of the day was more than offset but the comfort, control, support, grip and protection.  It’s an uneven, rocky, sharp and often loose trail surface. For camp and on the beach a light pair of flip flops were a nice change. I carried five pairs of wool socks.

*Update on the boots
Only a couple of months later in the Caucasus mountains in Georgia, one of the Scarpa boots failed completely. The sole split clean across the widest part of the foot, rendering them almost useless. They had done barely 750km and were less than six months old. Very disappointing. 

So I am having them replaced. Due to the range available locally to me and the excellent fit, I am going for a different model of Scarpa that uses a different sole. The Marmolada Pro OD. We will see how these fare. It's Scarpa's last chance as far as I'm concerned, but they do feel very comfortable and secure and the reviews (based in Scotland) were excellent.

#3 Water - One of the key steps in the chain of events that lead to you having enough water in your body is Accessibility. There are times you will need a light cord of about 5-6m and (of course) a wide mouth Nalgene bottle. Other bottles may do fine for providing capacity to carry water but for rapid filling the good old Nalgene cannot be beaten. Additionally it works well as a hot water bottle where no others will. Flat plastic pouches are worthless in  both these applications. I strongly recommend clipping the free end onto something robust so it doesn’t accidentally fall down the cistern. By the same token remove hats and sunglasses before peering down into the depths.

#4 Direction - Section hikers can more or less do any part equally well in either direction though I’d argue that Demre to Finike is much better than the reverse (and probably some parts of the last six days too). However through hikers (which is the intended audience here) would be well advised to go West to East, as a quick look at the trail profile will make plain. However it’s worth mentioning that the first 5 days from Fethiye are actually more difficult from a trail surface point of view than the last five days from Cirali. It’s just that the scales of the ups and down are so much greater in the East than the West. Plus it’s nicer to walk away from a hot afternoon sun than towards it (in general). However if you are already trail hardened and wish to encounter more people (albeit en passant) then West to East is certainly doable.

#5 Food - It’s Turkey so the food is wonderful and where your budget permits it’s very enjoyable to pick up what meals and refreshments present themselves along the way. However early in the season some places will be closed up (Kabak being one such example). I was glad I had been cautious and planned for five days food at the start. I certainly needed it. Until the last stage of six days that was the longest stretch with little en route additions. There are plenty of small markets in some areas and not so much in others. I suppose that on average I had three days food with me, though I tended to go light on lunch or skip it altogether if it was warm. I also tended where practical to camp some distance before the next village so that I could enjoy something around mid morning as I passed through. Kekova provided a particularly memorable “second breakfast” in this way.

#6 Fuel - It would certainly be possible to use firewood for much of the trail if conditions permit. At times they seemed to me to be too dry and too windy for this to be responsible. You do see stone fireplaces at most camping spots. In summer it would be dangerous, but then you’d already be mad to hike this in summer in the first place. But for sheer convenience you can’t beat gas. And while it’s certainly not available in every village it can be found in sufficient places even for a profligate user. I picked up gas in Antalya (before the start), Kas and Cirali. I suspect it would be available in Demre and Finike but can not confirm this. I did see bottles of what looked like meths but didn’t bother to confirm this. It’s a much less satisfactory and controllable fuel than gas. For what it’s worth I’ll repeat my advice to use an MSR Superfly stove. It does away with the question of which canister type is available (answer: mostly screw type) though I did see some of the loathsome puncture type cans. The sooner those are banned the better.