Karaöz to Adrasan
Starting km: 310
Finishing km: 333
Distance walked: 23km
According to the official guide today's section is one of the remotest on the trail. It cautions against doing it alone. It seems many have heeded this warning, and it's now a very popular section for group tours to do, meaning that despite the fact that there are no towns, villages or even seasonal shepherd's huts along the way, you certainly won't lack for company.
Five kilometres of dirt road and 2km of hiking trail bring you to the Gelidonya loghthouse. We spent much of this section with a large German tour group, their guides and their guides' dog. The lighthouse and the chain of five islands to the south is quite pretty and is an iconic image of the Lycian Way. At Cape Gelidonya, our west-east journey along the Lycian Peninsula ends and we start heading north again towards Antalya.
At the lighthouse we also left the tour groups behind and spent most of the rest of the day on our own. The trail here really is remote. It's the only place we've been where there are no grazing goats, no stone walls, no wells or cisterns. Not even any Lycian tombs! Just us and (when the clouds cleared, it was a windy day that threatened rain for much of the time) fabulous views up and down the peninusla and out to the offshore islands.
Adrasan is a resort town popular with Turks in the summer, but come November (today was November 1) perhaps only 10% of the hotels, shops and restaurants are open to cater to the thin trade of Lycian Way walkers. I imagine on a calm, sunny day it would still be pretty nice, but on this one I understood the Turkish tourists' absence and definitely didn't feel like going for a swim.
As we walked through the town a (apparently) developmentally disabled man cheerfully waved hello and then, a while later after we'd done our but of food shopping, handed me a teaspoon. I tried to give it back, but he wouldn't hear of it. Later on, down the road, I smiled and pulled the spoon from my pocket to show him. He put his finger to his lips and made a shh-ing motion and a conspiratorial face.
A few km out of town we reached out snug little campsite, right next to an almost dry streambed. There had been some rain in the forecast, but with a bit of thought, scoping out the surroundings and map reading, we concluded we were quite unlikely to be at risk from a flash floods, even if the forecast millimetre or two turned out to arrive later and be much more than predicted.
No mosquitoes tonight. Hurrah!
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