Çıralı Articles
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CIRALI, TURKEY’S TOTAL CHIILLOUT ZONE
Sunday Times, 8th February 2015
As you descend the only road into Cirali, a little lost lane which hairpins through citrus groves, pomegranate orchards and occasional farmsteads above a blissfully unspoiled beach, chances are peace is what you’ll feel. For as every Turkish resort has its own vibe – Kalkan being classy-brassy, Bodrum being one big party – so Cirali is all about a famously laid-back atmosphere that the eco-minded locals of this village resort in the secluded and lovely Bey Mountains near Antalya have fought teeth and nail to preserve. Had you been on this same road a few years back you would have found their cars, vans, tractors and even donkey carts combining here to prevent a group of high-rise developers getting through with their bulldozers and concrete mixers. The good news is that the developers eventually turned back, leaving Cirali to get on with the distinctive thing it’s been doing so discreetly for years: offering low-key but lovely holidaying in lush citrus groves and hammock-strung sub-tropical beachfront gardens set with simple garden eateries and timber chalets above a beach that numbers among the loveliest in all Turkey.
It’s that very prescription, not to mention the total absence of noisy bars, nightclubs and water sports, which has been attracting increasing numbers of visitors in recent years. Cirali certainly won’t be for everybody, but if you’ve a young family, or you’re into hiking, history or nature, it may just be the place you’ve been dreaming of, right down to the blissful lack of fencing. The vast beach and the shaded lanes behind are as free-range as the local chickens, making Cirali a great place to wander, either on foot or by one of the bikes that most properties throw in with their room deals.
Once you’ve settled in – expect comfy cabins with verandahs and traditional cushion-strewn kosks (timber platforms) set among mulberry trees – the first thing you’ll want to do is follow the beach all the way to the south. Beyond the headland a pristine river reaches the sea amidst the harbour ruins of Olympos, one of the most dramatically atmospheric of ancient Lycia’s classical cities. Be ready to wade the river before following its banks inland to pass the ticket booth (daily, £1.50). Keep an eye out for kingfishers as you discover the crumbling ruins of Roman-era villas, magnificent sarcophagae and ornamental streams in the process of being swallowed up by shaded thickets of laurels and fig trees.
You’ll find bikes useful for the two-mile ride across the plain to the foot of the hills where a stiff twenty-minute hike through pine forests will bring you to Yanartas (daily, £1.50) via a stretch of the Lycian Way, the magnificent waymarked coastal trail which runs all of 500 kilometres from Fethiye east to Antalya. Wishing trees, spectacularly covered in coloured rags and the turquoise labels of water bottles left by superstitious souls, will tell you you’re near to this revered natural phenomenon, a hillside covered in flaming vents of natural gas which the ancients thought were a fearsome fire-breathing dragon called the Chimaera letting off in his subterranean lair. Yanartas, which translates as Fire Stone, is popular with visitors at sunset, when the flames are said to be visible far out to sea. It also makes a good stop off on the three-hour forested hike up to Ulupinar, a riverside village famous for excellent trout restaurants like Kayalar (00 90 242 8250010).
Past Ulupinar the Lycian Way leads on up to the lower slopes of Tahtali Dag (ancient Mt Olympos), though climbing its 2365-metre summit is a seriously arduous proposition. You’re better off driving 40 minutes east to the cable car station (olymposteleferik.com, adults £25 return, under 16s half-price) which will get you to the summit with much less effort, but remember to pack extra layers on account of the altitude. The stupendous coastal views over classical Phaselis (daily, £3) should encourage you to take a closer look at this beautifully sited ancient harbour city, with its paved ways and crumbling waterside ruins, before heading back to Cirali.
You’ll no doubt have become a fan of Cirali’s sand and occasionally shingle beach, with its weathered wicker parasols and free-for-all loungers, but be sure to return once you’ve done with sunbathing; this is one of the very few places in Turkey where night time visitors are permitted to view loggerhead turtles, either as they lay their eggs (May and June) or when those eggs hatch (July and August). Rise before dawn to catch either phase of this natural wonder but be sure to heed the instructions of the local environmentalists who patrol the beach, taking particular care not to disturb the delicate hatchlings as they make for the sea. Leave them in peace, which is what brought their mothers – like you – to this enchanted spot in the first place.
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NEW TRACKS IN OLD HILLS
Sunday Times, 10th March 2002
Jeremy Seal finds a classic Turkey of limestone and lion’s milk on the Lycian Way I’ve included this piece only as it ends in Cirali.
‘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 sesame-tasting helva.
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 yomp 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 Bellerephon. 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.