When I first met Jean-François walking the Camino, I assumed our conversation would follow the usual pattern of hello-where-are-you-from-why-are-you-walking-have-a-nice-day. But we started talking travel, and before long he was telling me about sailing in Greenland, backcountry skiing between alpine refuges, and medical missions in Afghanistan. I don't usually read articles or books with titles like "Top 100 Places to Go" but when he told me he'd read about a hike in Turkey that's supposedly one of the most beautiful in the world, I thought, "Well, maybe he's onto something."
The Lycean Way winds around cliffy-mountain fingers that reach into the Mediterranean from Turkey's southwest coast. There are Bronze Age ruins, Ancient Greek ruins, villages abandoned a hundred years ago after forced relocation, family farms perched on hilltops, luxury hotels with infinity pools, traditional guesthouses, terraced olive orchards currently dotted with red poppies and dandelions and various purple flowers, and the platonic ideal of beach tucked into every cove.
The route was pieced together by a British woman (enthusiastic hiker and Turkophile), linking old donkey trails with remains of Roman and medieval roads, and forging some rough connectors. From Fethiye to Antalya is 540 km. We're here for five weeks; the first week we've averaged 12 km per day -- because even when the gain is reasonable, the grade is often very steep, with scree and rocks of all sorts to navigate.
