Introduction

The Lycian Way is a 430km* walk in southern Turkey from Fethiye to Geyikbayiri  (near Antalya) or the reverse. It follows an approximately semi-circular curve along the Mediterranean coastline. It is well documented online (please see the Useful Links section). The definitive guidebook is the one by Kate Clow# who devised the walk about 17 years ago. 

The trail is quite varied, rising from sea level to over 1800m on paths ranging from broad streets to narrow rocky mountain tracks. There is also a delightful mix of Ancient Greek Ruins and modern day Turkish rural living and hospitality. It is a good place if you like goats or tortoises. And of course everyone rightly raves about the food. It is worth going deliberately slowly for that reason alone.

The trail is well way marked (with some variations in quality) and there are signposts at key points. It supports a wide variety of styles of hiking and accommodation, though camping is necessary in the mountain sections. I wild camped using only two hostels and one campsite (Kalkan, Kaş and Çırali). But weather and circumstances will dictate how this works out for each individual. I had the luxury of no overall timetable and no daily schedule.

This blog is primarily intended to be a concise resource for people who are thinking about doing it as a single hike. For those who may need a little inspiration, I have added a few photos. 

Some parts of this blog were initially written while preparing for the hike. I have since updated it with the benefit of experience. 

* As measured by the track I followed from Fethiye to Geyikbayırı. This followed the mountain sections from Demre to Finike and from Çirali to Hisarçandir. But it doesn’t include the extra loop around Patara from Delikkemer.

# I had the considerable pleasure to meet Kate in Antalya after the walk. She is full of knowledge and enthusiasm.

Lessons from the Trail

My campsites

Keep your distance... down

While walking at one's own pace is obviously critical, a separate question is “How far per day should I plan for?”. In this terrain and with the rough uneven track surface 15km per day is a very comfortable distance. At this average the trail length (let’s call it 435km) makes this 29 days. In fact I did it in 27. My two pairs of rest days (at Kaş and Çirali) broke it comfortably into three slightly unequal sections.

The trick is to avoid being overly ambitious at the start and work up to a sustainable pace. There was only one long flat day (after Finike) which many people skip. However it was strangely restful to be on a flat smooth surface for  a few hours, though I was glad to get back onto more interesting terrain afterwards.

Tarptent Contrail

Do you have Perfect Pitch?
Once again I used my Tarptent Contrail (about 800g including 8 pegs). It is not a freestanding tent, and uses one trekking pole. It requires a minimum of four good pegs securely in the ground. As it happened I had no difficulty finding good camping spots. And there’s certainly no shortage of rocks for hammers.

From long experience I already knew to put up my tent properly every time, which includes all the 5-6 extra guys and pegs. And generally I do do this. However one particular night (just past Demre) This lesson was really hammered home.

I pitched the tent on a lovely flat dry area, shielded from the wind, under seemingly clear skies. Just after I’d finished the rain started and did not let up for 9 hours. Not only was I dry and comfortable within, but able to fill up my water supply from the runoff.

Each tent will have its pitching quirks, but the key thing is to know what these are and practice pitching it consistently well. 

There was one beach where I decided that I couldn’t camp simply because it was too sandy (and I wasn’t carrying my wide stakes). So I relocated higher up on firmer ground.

Time for Tea

I find it good to avoid too strict an adherence to a plan or schedule. Especially when it comes to food. Basically I took every opportunity that came my way to have meals or tea breaks whenever they presented themselves. 

Sometimes I was invited to share a picnic with a family or drink tea with a group of men by the roadside. Sometimes small markets appeared where I could get a drink of Ayran (a delicious non-sweet yogurt drink - a salt lassi in effect) and maybe top up something I needed. 

And while it was good to be well prepared with information (locations for water, camping spots and shops) it was really only necessary to think about where to stop for the night in the early afternoon and based on that to pick where to get water for the night. 

This way unexpected and delightful encounters have the space to happen. And with a people as welcoming and generous as the Turks it’s good to be open to that.

Walk the dog 
This was a new and entirely unexpected aspect of this walk. Ten days is a good length of time to get to know a dog and see how they operate and interact with yourself, other people and other dogs. It was fascinating. And while I don’t own a dog myself, I do now really understand why people hike with them. It felt quite a privilege to be brought under the protection of such a loyal and fierce guardian.

One tip
You can’t force dogs to drink when they don’t want to. And you can’t successfully tell them “Hey, there’s no water for the next four hours”. However with just a spare plastic bag and a few small rocks I could fashion a dog bowl. But it means on a hot day you need to carry a half litre water bottle extra for them.

Echo... echo... echo
If you are lucky you may be in just the right place to hear the Muezzin's Adhan (Call to Prayer) passing from one mosque to another in the hills. And what was so magic were the carefully timed pauses to allow for the echo off the cliffs. Haunting and beautiful.

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.