A walk along the glorious Lycian Way

Southwest Turkey is now one of Europe’s “package holiday heartlands”, but the huge Teke Peninsula remains relatively wild, said Oliver Smith in the Financial Times.

In ancient times, it was known as Lycia, and the 2nd century BC saw the creation of the Lycian League, a “democratic association” of cities that James Madison later cited as a “guiding inspiration” in drafting the US constitution. The modern coast road around it was completed only in 1988, and forests of black pine still cloak the mountains that plunge steeply into its turquoise seas. Also skirting their flanks, and occasionally looping inland, are ancient paths now known collectively as the Lycian Way – one of the world’s most beautiful long-distance hiking routes.

The travel writer Freya Stark sailed this coast in the mid-1950s, and later described it as the most “magical” she knew. Conceived by another British woman, Kate Clow, in 1999, the Lycian Way extends for roughly 320 miles (excluding looping detours) from Antalya (in the east) to Fethiye (in the west), but many walkers tackle only sections of it. I chose a six-day, self-guided itinerary with Inntravel, which provides daily luggage transfers between “comfortable” guesthouses, and “detailed” maps and notes on the route. Passing ancient tombs and temples, and wandering the remains of ruined cities, I felt I was travelling in time. And the trip was shot through with “yearning”, too – for the glittering coves far below me each time I reached another high, lonely ridge, and for the great peaks far above as I floated on my back in the “sunset sea” at the end of each day.

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The loveliest of my lodgings was Hoyran Wedre, a cluster of stone mansions with “creaking” wooden floors and a swimming pool fed by spring water. During my walks, I came across nowhere more “magnificent” than the cedar forest high on Mount Tahtalı, where the air was thick with the “resinous” scent of towering, ancient trees like “Chinese pagodas”, their tops “snagging the clouds”.