Plod's Lycian Log: Day 6: Xanthos to Uzumlu

Monday 7th April

Today was hard.....

I missed the path leading out of Xanthos and ended up walking 7kms on the road to Cavdir. Darn! Not a good start to the day. I knew the path was not far to my right and tried to find it a few times, but there was such a jumble of G1, G2 and G3 tracks and no waymarks that I could see, so I gave up. The last 2kms into Cavdir was on a busy, narrow road, littered with rubbish. Not fun!

Kate directed me out of Cavdir quite well, but lost me when the aqueduct became her reference point. I was quite flexible as to what the remains of an ancient aqueduct might look like, but it wasn't until much later, when I found myself actually walking in it, that I experienced my "Aha!" moment.

This section of the walk is not well maintained. The waymarks are faint and the path is often overgrown. Farmworks and roadworks have also disturbed the path in places. As I am totally waymark-dependent, I spent lots of time back-tracking and searching, particularly in places where the path is similar to many other goat tracks. Very slow going.

Not even half way into my day, my right knee started playing up. I stopped for a half-hour break and had a Mobic, and then hobbled on for another half hour. After that, it was ok - just as well, because there was some serious climbing in the rest of my day. I could have descended at a couple of points to a nearby village - I thought seriously about it, and decided to finish at Uzumlu rather than Akbel, to shorten my day.

I was well and truly over it, standing by a way mark and coming to terms with having to take my pack off yet again and go searching for the next one, when a shepherd appeared. Speaking only Turkish, he told me I was going the wrong way and had to go back up the hill ("NO!!!"), climb around a gully and cross another mountain side. Speaking only English, I told him I was following these waymarks and they had brought me here and I wanted to continue going down to Uzumlu. He said Uzumlu was not down there - it was over theeeeere! For five minutes, I jabbed insistently at the waymark with my walking pole and he yelled at me and jabbed at the uphill air with his shepherd's stick. It was so hard for me to accept that my waymarks could let me down, but I finally yielded and followed him back up the hill to where he jabbed his stick at another waymark and set me off, with a "Gule, gule" in my new direction around the gully. I was so unhappy about abandoning the other waymarks and so unsure that this was right, that I didn't even thank my trail angel for setting me straight.

So, I huffed and puffed the rest of my way to Uzumlu, soooooo over my day.

From there, I paid 40TL for a ride to Kalkan - a beachside, resort town, and here I am in such a nice hotel! I'm staying two nights (60TL/night) and tomorrow I'm going to a hair-dresser!

(1TL is currently worth 50 cents Oz, and a dolmus is a minivan bus, carrying about 16 people.)