Mother Nature’s most beautiful work: trekking in the Turkish Riviera

The Turkish Riviera is a perfect example of Mother Nature’s most beautiful work, with its turquoise waters, wonderful beaches and unspoiled nature.

And in the Teke peninsula in southwestern Türkiye there’s a breathtaking long-distance trek to explore: The Lycian Way.

The 500km trail (760 kilometres if you take into account the variations) links the gulfs of Antalya and Fethiye. And it takes its name from the ancient Lycian civilisation that once ruled the region.

Who better to tell us more about it than the person who created it in the 1990s? Kate Clow is a British ex-pat in Türkiye, passionate about hiking and history. Why did she decide to create this trek?

“When I first came here, I sat in the harbour in Antalya and I looked at the mountains and I thought: there must be so many paths up there, but nobody knows. So I had to discover them,” she says.

The Lycian Way has earnt a reputation as one of the most beautiful long-distance treks in the world.

“The Lycian Way is quite special because it's between the mountains and the sea”, says Clow, who is the author of the book The Lycian Way - Turkey's First Long Distance Walking Route (now in its 5th edition). “It goes up into the mountains, up as high as to see the forest at 1800 metres high. And it goes down to the coast where you can swim and paddle and see the coastal villages and so on. But also all the way along the coast are the ports, the towns, the settlements that the Lycians built and which the Romans later took over and which formed a very important point on the trading route from Egypt to Rome”.

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It’s no surprise that you can find incredible places on the path. Such as Kayaköy, a village that has existed since