The captain's tomb is in the ancient city of Olympos, on the bulge of Turkey's Mediterranean coast between Marmaris and Antalya. Olympos was one of the principal cities of the kingdom of Lycia, pronounced Lick-ia, and today its old stones lie on the route of a long-distance footpath: the Lycian Way.
My partner and I were in the midst of walking parts of the footpath, but today was a day off and we were dragging our pleasantly aching limbs around these poignant monuments to the vanity of human wishes. Olympos has that air of stillness that is unique to sites of long-extinct civilisations, as if the ghosts died long ago.
This was strangely relaxing after the exertions of the route. For the truth was, it had been more of a slog than we had anticipated. The Lycian Way, despite sounding the part, is no ancient thoroughfare, once tramped by Roman legions or the soldiers of Alexander the Great. Barely 15 years old, it is a stitched-together route of old roads, goat tracks, village paths and so on that runs for about 310 miles along and near the coastline, from Oludeniz in the west to Antalya in the east.
The Lycian Way is the brainchild of an Englishwoman, Kate Clow, who is a passionate walker and conservationist. In the mid-Nineties she submitted the idea of creating a long-distance footpath (Turkey didn't have one) to a competition run by a Turkish bank. Her proposal duly won and she spent the next five years walking and waymarking the route into being.
"It doesn't fit in with any bit of ancient history or anything like that," Kate told me when we met in her house in Antalya after I had walked about 36 miles of the Lycian Way in four days. "What it's supposed to do is give people an insight into how Lycia was a couple of thousand years ago."
This it does. As well as old Olympos, the Lycian Way took us through the flames of the Chimera that flicker from a hillside of bare rock. This is the natural phenomenon that gave rise to the Greek myth of the fire-breathing monster slain by Bellerophon. My partner, who was captivated by the tale as a small child, was reduced to childlike wonder by these eternal flames.
Further west, we crossed hilltop necropoli covered in scores of limestone tombs shaped like upturned boats, and viewed the semi-submerged ruins of old Simena, displaced by an earthquake in the second century BC.
The communities, too, seemed throwbacks to another age. We stayed in a combination of boutique hotels and simple pansiyons along the way, some accessible only by foot or sea. There were no cash machines, no fast-food outlets, the meze and grilled fish were fresh and delicious, and people had an old-world courtesy and charm about them, pressing their last pieces of fruit into our hands as we walked, and making gifts of picked flowers.
"I hope one thing that rubs off on walkers is that they realise you don't have to be the way everyone lives in the west: grab grab grab," Kate told me later.
It was partly the time of year, but everywhere seemed impossibly fecund, bursting with growth and vividly green new life. Towering mountains and headlands, forested with pines and cedars, and wild strawberry with their smooth, strangely burnished red trunks, plunged to valleys of lemon groves and pomegranate orchards, and then on to serried ranks of white plastic polytunnels and to misty-calm seas.
But if it all looked beautiful – polytunnels excepted – it was a beggar to walk. The elevations are tough – 700m up and down on the most difficult day – and the path is often boulder-strewn and punishing on the feet. Add to that the heat, even in early May, and the mosquitoes, and you will appreciate that this was no stroll in the park, even for a fairly experienced walker who has done several high-altitude treks.
There was an added, complicating element to the walk: the need to follow waymarks painted on rocks and tree trunks. These parallel red-and-white flashes – the same insignia as on Europe's
grandes randonnées – have been repainted twice since they were first done in 1999, most recently last year.
Nevertheless, landslips, tree falls and bulldozing by the forestry services have obscured or destroyed some, and there were occasional hold-ups while we retraced our steps and scoured the mountain "furniture" for fugitive waymarks.
We weren't without backup, however. The trip had been organised by Inntravel, the doyen of walking holiday companies, which is including the Lycian Way in its programme for the first time this year. It books the hotels, arranges for your luggage to be transported to the next hotel while you walk, and provides a ring binder of information and walking directions – the latter vital when no detailed maps exist and the waymarks are unreliable (though I should say that their own directions are occasionally confusing and I have since suggested where they could be clarified).
Inntravel inspires a loyal following, and one of the incidental pleasures of the walk was running into other Inntravel clients along the way. We seemed a like-minded bunch, fiftysomethings as keen on food, culture and time to read as we were on setting one booted foot in front of the other. One thing we agreed on was that the walk was tough and the estimated timings given in the route directions were on the optimistic side.
Was the slog worth it?
"Time is a great healer," said Malcolm from Reigate in Surrey, meaning that the places the walk gets you to, and the days off built into the itinerary, are compensation for the exertion. No gain without pain, you might say, which for me is the beauty and merit of walking holidays.
This trade-off was perfectly exemplified by our final destination, the seaside hamlet of Simena, which is one of the most dreamily lovely spots I have stayed in. Built on a hillside sloping steeply into the sea, its old stone houses and wooden balconies are dotted among Lycian tombs; one was casually incorporated into a wall of our pansiyon.
Lying among the dead we had never felt more alive. Tired, though.
- Inntravel (01653 617001; www.inntravel.co.uk) offers nine nights on the Lycian Way from £798 per person half-board based on two sharing, including four picnic lunches, airport transfers, luggage transported between hotels and information pack. The £10 entry visa is payable on arrival in Turkey. Flights into Antalya are extra but bookable through Inntravel.
- Time to go Autumn walking, from late September to the end of November, is best. Avoid late spring and summer: by the end of May it is already too hot.
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