Intro

This is a blog about (hopefully) walking the Lycian Way.  The Lycian Way is a 500+ km walking route along the Mediterranean coast of Turkey.   It is supposed to take over 30 days to walk.  To do the whole thing we need to carry a tent etc, as there are stretches without any accommodation.  It gets snowy in winter, and into the high 40's in summer; so, like most people, we are aiming to do it in spring.

Istanbul

We arrived in Istanbul on 28 April 2015, fours years later than initially planned.  The aircraft had a tail wind on the flight over, but it wasn't enough to make up for everything else that had gone wrong.

While we were on the bus from the airport into the city, our driver had a disagreement with the driver of another bus.  Both stopped in the middle of the motorway, and exited their buses so as to be able to better make their respective cases.  Eventually another passenger got off the bus and adjudicated in favour of the queue of honking traffic that had built up behind us.

We spent four days in Istanbul; resting, obtaining the last few pieces of gear that we needed for the walk, and visiting historic sites. When we last visited Turkey, in 2004, we had noted the minimal attention paid to Occupational Safety and Health. There would be a 20m climb up the spiral stair case of a castle tower, culminating in a 90 degree left turn onto a battlement, with no railing in front of the upper exit to the tower. It seemed like it was designed to rid the world of excited children.  But how things have changed in 11 years.  On a tour of the ancient stone water cisterns below the city, we discovered a modern fire alarm button.

We had to change hotels after two days.  The route to the nearest metro station required crossing a busy motorway, and on the day before the move we spent some time looking at this and planning the best approach to it.  As it happened we need not have worried.  On the day of the move the Turkish police had closed the motorway to prevent people attending a protest.  We crossed the motorway unimpeded; only to discover that the police had also shut down the metro system.

Antalya 

We took a 13 hour bus trip from Istanbul to Antalya.  Antalya is at the end of the Lycian Way, but we wanted to visit the Cultural Routes Society; the organisation responsible for developing the walk.  We asked them about current conditions on the route, and left approximately 30kg of luggage with them.  We are now down to just our back packs.  We were clearly travelling with too much **** in general.  Curse airlines for their generous baggage allowances.  The plan is now to send some of our stuff home when we collect our luggage again at the end of the walk.  Actually, given the rate at which we were leaving things in hotels, the cosmos is rapidly solving this problem for us.

At breakfast we get our first look at part of the route.  The photo below shows Antalya in the foreground, and the hills/mountains through which the Lycian Way descends in the background.

Fethiye

From Antalya we hoped to catch a 9:30am bus for the eight hour trip to Fethiye.  Our taxi to the bus station was delayed for five minutes by a "frank exchange of views" between a motorcyclist and another taxi driver, who between them had blocked the road into the bus station.  After arriving, Fiona and I split up to look for the right bus.  I found it with one minute to spare.  The driver loaded my pack onto the bus while I phoned Fiona saying that she needed to be here now.  In the vast Turkish bus station, I didn't know where Fiona was, and she didn't know where I was; which made providing directions challenging.  While this intense phone conversation was underway, the bus drove off.  I had now lost my wife and my pack.  I went back to the bus company counter where they told me that I could catch the next bus, in one hours time, to be re-united with my pack; Insha'Allah.  I eventually found that the original bus had only driven around the corner, and at the same time Fiona re-appeared.  The bus journey proceeded normally. We had the obligatory stops for road-rage, and the normal quota of over taking on blind cliff-top corners.   En-route we deposited a re-supply package for ourselves at a left luggage depot in Kas, which is approximately the mid-way point of the Lycian Way.