The Lycian Way by Jeremy Seal

‘See you in camp,’ says Kate Clow, issuing last-stretch directions. ‘And make sure you pick some wild oregano on the way.’ It is October among the limestone crags of Southern Turkey’s Bey Mountains and we are approaching the end of another magical day’s walking on the Lykia Yolu, or Lycian Way, which runs 500 kilometres between Fethiye and Antalya. Kate is very much the guide of choice to Turkey’s first long-distance walking trail and not only because she can suggest the herbs to accompany that evening’s campsite dinner. She is also the trail’s creator.

A resident of Antalya since 1989, the indefatigable Clow has organized teams of volunteers to clear the scrub from ancient routes including Roman roads and the mule tracks of pilgrims and miners, explorers and invaders and the pathways of local shepherds and nomads droving their livestock between summer pastures in the mountains and their wintering quarters on the coastal plain. The Lycian Way switches alluringly between uplands and coast to include high pastures and shoreside villages, historical ruins, magnificent turtle-nesting beaches and even a mountain summit. It’s a testament to the sheer extent of the country’s walking potential - one which Clow has continued to tap with the opening of the St Paul’s Trail, which heads inland along the saint’s missionary route from east of Antalya to the ruins at Antioch in Pisidia.

We are to tackle a stretch of the Lycian Way close to Antalya. Not far from Kemer, an unappealing resort town, we retreat into the hinterland through a rising forest of pine and smokebush, myrtle and wild pistachio. Pink cyclamen grow amongst the fallen pine needles and the open slopes have been slow-basted all summer in sage and thyme, while spearmint grows along the streams. A river steps down a steep gorge, gathering in chilly pools where we swim among egg-smooth boulders. We picnic on classic Turkish staples, bread and beyaz peynir (Turkish feta), beef tomatoes and black olives, followed by dried apricots and mulberries, and slabs of halva.

We trail into camp, obediently clutching handfuls of wild oregano. The tents have been pitched on a bare plateau fringed by neglected fruit trees, abandoned stone and timber cottages and an incomplete house. The owner sits on his partially constructed verandah, drinking raki, the ferociously disabling liqueur that the Turks know as lion’s milk, and offering his shower to all-comers. It’s typically Turkish generosity as much as the wealth of scenery and culture which makes the country a walker’s paradise.

In the morning, we leave early and walk through abandoned landscapes. A farm building has fallen to its timber knees, spilling the gourds formerly used as water carriers from their attic storage space; the design-conscious among us nab a couple of them as lamp bases. The raised wooden platforms or divans, convivial al fresco meeting places, are now decrepit, and overgrown with scrub oak. We stop to swim with dayglo-green frogs in a convenient water tank, property of the forestry department, before descending to Gedelme, where a convoy of tourist jeeps roars past. But in the quiet of the village beyond the main road, where the air smells of hay and the swept track is given over to carpets of cracked wheat and sliced apples drying in the sun, unchanged rural Turkey is hunkering down for winter.

We are billeted that evening at Yayla Kuzdere, the last village before the mountain, in a farmstead surrounded by plots of maize and beans, tomatoes and marrows. The orchards are laden with apples, quinces and pomegranates and only a makeshift barricade keeps the goats, sheep and chickens from our simple dormitory quarters. From the stone walls of the house an exquisite scrap of classical capitol featuring a palm frond motif casually protrudes. Elderly Ayse, her hands stained dark with the juice of a thousand walnuts, bustles about swatting moths as we fall upon her excellent taze fasulye, a stew of garden beans.

We breakfast on black tea and sigara borek, crumbly cheese and chives deep-fried in rolls of filo pastry, before climbing through stands of vedigris-coloured cedars where chaffinches flock. The following morning, after camping high on the slopes of 2300-metre Tahtali Mountain, also known as Mount Olympos, we reach the summit where the Turkish star and crescent flies and the world lies below us. Far inland to the northwest, the trees give way to dust as a green tideline on the Taurus Mountains, while the sea below us laps at the antique harbours of Phaselis.

We descend to Ulupinar, where we lunch on trout – farmed, but not that our altitude-stoked appetites have noticed – in a simple riverside restaurant. Then we head down the valley to the Chimaera. Vents of flaming gas issue from the hillside here as they have done since ancient times. Legend has it as the home of the fire-breathing dragon slain by Bellepheron. Then we continue to the soporific coastal village of Cirali where the treat of a night in a simple Turkish pansiyon awaits us.

We cool off in the Mediterranean. At the end of the beach a river leads inland, the path lit by azure flashes of kingfishers. The sun is obscured by a canopy of figs and laurels shedding brown leaves with a dry crackle, and I am soon among the ancient city of Olympos’ half-lit ruins of temples and theatres, tombs and aqueducts, classical Turkey’s most creepily evocative site. I come across trail markers which show the trail’s continued route westwards. I’m tired and it’s time to rest up. But I’m impatient to be off.