Lycian Way Day 4

Çirali to Adrasan 17kms 6hrs

No coastal scenery today and although most of the walking was in trees it was very pleasant. 

Firstly for those of you who haven't enjoyed a Turkish breakfast a quick introduction. The basic approach is to give you so much 'stuff' that it's impossible to eat more than a fraction of what's provided. Today was typical. There were two sorts of bread, eggs, three sorts of cheese (hard, medium and soft), three sorts of olive, three sorts of jam, honey, tomatoes and cucumber, quince jelly (manzinella I think), fresh orange juice and coffee. It was all very nice but there was so much of it that I barely left an impression.

Lovely Turkish breakfast

The highlight of the walk was near the start. At the western end of Çirali's beach a stream emerges from a gorge and inside the gorge sits the ruins of another Graeco-Roman port. Although Olympos is not quite as monumental as Phaselis, the port I visited 2 days ago, it comes a close second. Again much of the street pattern is visible as well as the harbour walls, the remains of the theatre, the huge temple gate and hundreds of tombs. As at Phaselis I had it all to myself.

Scenes from Olympos

The walk itself starts properly after leaving the ruins and involved a steady 600m climb up to a pass. Nearly all of it was in trees, pleasant enough but not many views. At the top, slabs of stone mark the ancient city of Pheonikos much of which is apparently still to excavated. The trees on the pass itself had all been snapped by some recent storm.



The scenery improved on the other side of the pass where a upland meadow was still being used by goat herders. After selling me a very expensive glass of fresh orange juice I was invited to look round their accommodation. The two men, one tall, one short, claimed to have been living in what was a large plastic box for the last 2 years. You can just see their shotgun on their bed in the corner.

The goat herder's house

Choose your wooden spoon

After a huge but pleasant descent I arrived in Adrasan to find that the hotel (generous description) I had booked was closed. I was despatched to another one just up the road. They were more than happy to see me and after hacking through the rose bush which covered the door to my room I'm now ensconced in some comfort. For the fourth night in a row I'm the only one here.

If you interested in the seeing the gpx, file follow this link to my Viewranger page.