Trip Summary
What: thru-hike of the Saint Paul Trail.
Where: southwest Turkey.
When: April 26 – May 8, 2011 (13 days).
Distance: about 208 miles.
Highlights: rural area away from any tourists; habitat and landscape diversity; numerous archaeological sites; friendly people; good scenery.
Resources
Kate Clow’s 2013 edition of The St Paul Trail: Turkey’s Second Long Distance Walk is the only guidebook we know of. We used an earlier version of the book. Instructions for downloading gpx data are available inside the book.
The website CultureRoutesInTurkey has extensive information, including route updates, information about an iPhone app for the route, and a list of accommodations.
As for all our trips, we used our two favorite mapping tools: CalTopo.com to prepare gpx data and printed maps, and Gaia GPS while hiking. We used WeatherSpark.com‘s excellent climate summaries to choose the best months to visit the region.
Why we went
Our initial motivation to travel to Turkey was to hike the Lycian Way. We added this trail to our itinerary in order to see more of the country. Logistics were quite easy as the Lycian Way ended quite close to where the Saint Paul trail began.
Click map to open an interactive CalTopo map in a new browser tab. Instructions for using CalTopo.
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- The pass at the end of the watercourse we had been following for hours. We will drop into the next valley and camp for the night. Barla Dag (2800 meters) is the high peak in the distance
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- The first 2/3’s of the first SPT day was spent walking through mostly flat argicultural land along roads. The area is infested with nasty junkyard dogs and this portion of the SPT has nothing to recommend it. Fortunately, after we completed this section, the SPT became well worth walking.
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- Aksu is near the ruins at Perge, one of many scattered throughout Turkey. Nearby was the remains of an aqueduct which fed water to Perge. The SPT was laid out by the same woman who developed the Lycian Way; she published a guidebook and map for this route as well.
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- We roughly paralleled the Aksu River as it meandered through the fields and greenhouses.
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- In the distance, snow covered peaks tantalized.
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- Lunch #1. We ate lunch next to an old cemetery.
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- Fortunately, the fields of blooming flowers made up a bit for the rather uninteresting countryside.
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- A strange alley lined with palm trees led to the regulator, a small dam across the Aksu River which must be crossed.
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- A mosque in the small village of Aksaz on the far side of the dam. Like the rest of Turkey, calls to prayer are broadcast five times a day from the loudspeakers mounted on the mosque. We never saw anyone pay any attention to these very loud public invitations.
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- Camp #1, alongside a small tributary of the Aksu. The scenery was improving as we moved out of the agricultural areas and into the foothills of the Toros Mountains.
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- Next morning, just upstream, we came to the Ucan Waterfall, a popular tourist attraction. The travertine deposits and bright blue water are reminiscent of Mooney Falls in Havasu Canyon.
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- The cafe at Ucan Waterfall. The teepees added an interesting touch.
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- Looking back over the rolling terrain we were now traveling through.
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- Old ruins dot the route; most of these are just left as they are and have no signs explaining what you are seeing. These are at Pednelissos.
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- Really nice stonework.
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- Throughout our walks in Turkey, we found numerous developed springs providing good drinking water.
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- A typical small village; no stores or cafes, so we had to carry food, often for several consecutive meals.
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- Bozdogan; we saw no people about when we walked through the village.
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- Lunch #2 sitting outside a cottage, most likely only seasonally used, after the snow has melted.
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- The talus pile comes from a stone quarry on top of the mountain. There was active blasting and the dumping of debris was constant. One wonders what the locals living below this thought about the quarry. Jobs versus their peaceful way of life being disrupted.
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- Approaching the hillside village of Haskiziloren.
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- Dinner #2, a picnic dinner on a small terrace outside of the Haskiziloren mosque. We were welcomed by the iman’s children.
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- View from Camp #2. We were entertained that night by quite a few calling Tawny and Scops Owls, as well as by the local Nightingales who had a lot of territorial issues to talk discuss.
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- Leaving the road, we passed some old shepherd’s cabins.
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- The fruit trees were blooming at lower altitudes.
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- The upper end of the lake near Candir, a small town with a couple of shops.
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- Camp #3. We camped a couple of kilometers out of town on a bluff overlooking the Gok River in Yazili Canyon Nature Park.
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- The river has cut a deep gorge. We will soon leave the water to climb up the steep east side to the canyon rim.
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- Climbing up through a beautiful pine forest.
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- Out of the forest and onto the rocks.
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- The route was convoluted, but not particularly difficult.
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- The view from the top was terrific.
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- Leaving the canyon on an intricate path that leads to the market town of Sutcular.
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- Looking back as we walk out of Sütçülar. It was a lively, scenic and friendly town. It is one of our favourite places we visited.
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- Dinner #4. It had poured on us starting a hour before we reached town. A friendly passerby led us to this local cafe where we had one of the best meals on the trip.
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- Resupply.
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- Boğazköy, a tiny hamlet nestled in a pretty valley.
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- A fantastic old paved Roman road leading to the ruins of Adada.
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- Adada
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- Like many of the other ancient ruined cities we visited, this one had no other visitors. There were a couple shepherds and goats though.
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- Adada
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- We had to cross the stream many times and often climb around obstacles. After transiting most of the canyon, we reached a waterfall which was not safely passible under the conditions we had, so we were forced to find a way to climb out to the rim.
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- Trail signs: 5s 55dk means 5 hours 55 minutes to Yukari Gokdere. We found the timings on the occasional sign to be rather meaningless.
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- Davraz Dag. There is a ski resort on the other side of this mountain. The SPT skirts the far right side of the massif.
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- Crossing an Ova. These are large flat treeless plains which we speculated may have been ancient lake bottoms.
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- Yukari Gokdere: a resupply point for the next stretch.
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- A typical small town store: big on crackers, candy bars, and sodas. Not so good for nutrition.
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- The next morning we opted to follow one of the many SPT alternate routes (why are there so many?) through the beautiful Kasnak Forest Park rather than walk to the Davraz Dag ski lodge.
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- Another ova.
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- Davraz Dag from our lunch spot. The alternate route we didn’t follow is at the base of snow covered slopes of Davraz Dag.
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- Washing feet. It feels darn good.
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- An active stone quarry above Akpinar.
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- Lake Egirdir. This is the fourth largest natural lake in Turkey and we will be near it for several days, eventually crossing the water from west to east via fishing boat.
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- The town of Egirdir, which we liked a lot.
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- Egirdir town waterfront. This is a popular tourist town in the summer as it is only a few hours from Antalya and is cooler than the coastal areas.
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- Egirdir mosque. The gangs of Common Swifts were wheeling about the minaret making a racket while playing games of tag.
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- Night #7. We stayed in this quiet, friendly pension overlooking the lake. The first hot showers since leaving Antalya a week earlier.
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- The SPT follows abandoned railroad tracks for a while and crosses the old trestle.
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- Lake Eğirdir.
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- North of town, the lake is bordered with marshes which have rich birdlife.
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- Into the mountains, following this creek up its source at a high pass just below 2000 meters.
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- We camped just beyond the cluster of willows. Following morning we’ll head over the next pass.
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- Camp #8. Life doesn’t get much better than this.
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- Barla Dag is up there somewhere.
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- A high farmstead.
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- We frequently saw pollared trees, an effective pruning technique for producing fodder and firewood. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollarding
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- The old village of Barla, rich in history. Drop down into the gorge and climb up the other side to town.
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- Lunch #9. Picnic at a bench opposite the store. Two grocery stores in Barla are immediate neighbors: each one has a different owner, but essentially the same stuff for sale. Next to the store was a bench full of extremely welcoming and friendly old fellows.
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- A minaret made from corrugated metal. The only one we ever saw constructed this way.
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- Barla and Lake Egirdir.
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- Climbing back up into the mountains north of Barla.
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- Rain coming.
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- The SPT is obscure in this area.
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- A old pollarded willow. We saw a lot of trees like this in the region.
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- Misty morning; heading for Dikmen Ciftligi, the crossing point on the lake.
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- Finally ready to leave.
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- An absolutely beautiful lakeshore.
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- The next morning was overcast as we headed north up the east shore of the lake.
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- The trail climbed over a coastal ridge from which we would drop down to the rocky beach.
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- We followed the shoreline for many kilometers, often having to climb over rock outcrop obstacles.
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- The route then climbed much higher above the water on a really fine piece of trail with expansive views.
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- Finally back down to the beach, where it started to rain.
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- Stone walls and natural arches.
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- Ruins of an old christian church that had been carved into the rock.
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- In Yukari Tırtar, two things were going on, a political rally for a candidate for the Turkish legislature was breaking up, and some of the local people were having a post Friday prayers dinner in the basement of the mosque. As we walked by in the rain, they invited us in to join them.
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- The grandmother of the fellow who brought us in off the street to eat. He teaches computer science at a nearby university and spoke some English!
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- Leaving town, the route followed a beautiful ancient Roman roadbed through the agricultural lands.
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- We passed through some oak forest just leafing out.
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- Farmhouses glowed in the morning sun.
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- Big snow-covered peaks were visible to the north and east.
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- Many of the fields had been recently prepared for planting.
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- The guidebook said this town is “not very friendly”; not our experience at all. There were a couple dozen men at the tea shop and they welcomed us with open arms. Tea shops generally don’t serve food, but are often located next to the village mosque and shop; we occasionally purchased food at a shop and ate a picnic at a tea shop like this.
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- We studied google satellite images of the route prior to the trip, and we thought it was going to be parched desert.
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- Lunch #12 was on the shore of a reservoir, enjoying views of Common and White-winged Terns.
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- Finally, we reached the town of Sucullu, our last re-supply stop before completing the SPT.
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- The final leg of the walk was from Sucullu to Yalvac via the ruins at Antioch in Pisidia. Again the route looped through the hills.
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- Camp #12, a nice site below the ruins.
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- We then walked on to Yalvac, completing the SPT in 12 days. From here we took a bus to Isparta and another to Antalya. We then flew to Trabzon and the Kackar Mountains in north-east Turkey for the last leg of our trip. Overall, we found the SPT to be a grand route, with only the first day from Aksu to the regulator dissappointing. The terraine is interesting and varied; the people we met were uniformly friendly and welcoming. The SPT is physically demanding in a few places and requires reasonably competent navigation skills. We recommend the route to anyone who might enjoy trying something quite different from the popular routes in other parts of Europe.
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- Early the next day, we stopped at the Antioch ruins for a quick look, but didn’t find them any more interesting than other sites we had seen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antioch_In_Pisidia There is so much of historical interest in the ruins we visited, as we could learn from the wiki pages. But to our untrained eyes they all seemed like handsome piles of old rocks. I suppose archaeologists feel the same way about birds – just flying collections of feathers.
Amy’s Assessment
I thoroughly enjoyed everything about the SPT. Turkish hospitality as described in the Lycian Way trip report was a major factor in my positive experience.
Unlike the Lycian Way, which passes through numerous areas frequented by tourists, this route travels entirely through Turkish countryside. During our hike we saw only two pairs of tourists, both hiking on the Saint Paul Trail. We met only one Turk who spoke any English, a computer science teacher who had invited us to join the post-prayer potluck at the mosque. We were able to communicate with a few people in rudimentary French.
When we started on the SPT we had already spent 18 days thru-hiking the Lycian Way, and I felt completely at ease with hiking in Turkey. For other hikers considering combining the Lycian Way with the Saint Paul Trail for a month long hike in Turkey, I would recommend doing them in the order we did, leaving the more remote Saint Paul Trail for the end of the trip.
James’ Assessment
My overall assessment is mostly the same as for the Lycian Way. The Saint Paul Trail was a fine walk through interesting terrain and habitats. I thought it much wilder than the Lycian Way and for that reason, even though it lacked walking on a coast, it was equally satisfying. I would be hard pressed to decide which route I enjoyed more. For those of us who enjoy hiking without a lot of other people around, the Saint Paul trail is the better option.
Be aware that since much of this walk is much more isolated than the Lycian Way, you should not depend on other people providing timely assistance in the event of problems. However, for those with the right skills and experience, the STP is well worth doing. Other than having to deal with a few overly aggressive dogs, the entire walk was a pleasure.
Notes for Potential Hikers
Our Lycian Way trip report includes some general information about hiking in Turkey. Since the Lycian Way and the Saint Paul Trail (SPT) have a number of commonalities, that report also includes information about guidebooks, maps and gpx files, waymarks, and when to go that are applicable to this walk as well.
The SPT starts east of Antalya in Aksu and runs north to Yalvaç. Along the way, it passes through the western reaches of the Taurus (Toros) Mountains and alongside Lake Eğirdir, the fourth largest lake in Turkey. Very close to the end of the route are the notable ruins of Antioch of Pisidia.
The SPT was designed and developed by Kate Clow, a British ex-pat living in Turkey. She had previously created the Lycian Way. The SPT was completed by 2004.
The SPT is a quite interesting route traveling through mostly rural and semi-wild country. Since humans have lived in and modified the region thousands of years, there are no true wilderness areas on the route, but on long stretches we encountered few to no other people. The route passes a significant number of ancient ruins, utilizes old Roman roads, and travels through some small villages and a couple of mid-sized towns. The majority of the SPT is high-quality walking with lots of visual interest and includes a wide variety of habitats and geological features.
The SPT leads through agricultural areas, with both grazing and cultivation taking place. There are some nice coniferous forests, open meadows and even a few wetlands. The trail crosses high rocky ridges and descends into river gorges. It also follows the shingle beach along the shoreline of Lake Eğirdir. A good bit of the first 15 miles, from Aksu to a small dam called the regulator, is not particularly rewarding: much of it is on paved roads through flat agricultural areas infested with aggressive dogs. Persevere however, because the rest of the route is quite fine.
Unlike the Lycian Way, the SPT does not pass through any tourist towns except Eğirdir, and we met very few non-Turks on this walk. Some of the towns had shops and cafes and we had no problems finding supplies. Yalvaç, the endpoint, has lots of services and facilities useful to hikers, including transportation options to other parts of the country.
Route
For some reason, the trail has two southern legs, one starting at Aksu and the other further east near Aspendos. The legs are routed northward roughly parallel to each other and join near the ruins at Adada. From Adada, a single course continues on to Yalvaç. There are several other variants described in the guidebook and the updates published on the website include additional route changes.
We walked the western and northern branches: Aksu to Adada to Yalvaç. We chose this routing since Aksu was just a short bus ride from Antalya, where we had stayed overnight after completing the Lycian Way. It is not practical to walk all three legs in an uninterrupted thru-hike since they all radiate out from Adada: one leg goes north, one goes SSW and one goes SSE. A walker could hike all three legs by taking a bus or walking back to Adada and starting the third leg from there.
Technical Difficulty
There were no significant technical difficulties on the SPT. The route is isolated with long stretches between populated areas. In many places, there was rough walking over loose and rocky surfaces and very occasionally, there was a bit of easy scrambling. The route includes over 12,400 meters of altitude gain. Overall, we found the walking to be a bit more challenging than on the Lycian Way. The trails had seen much less use and in general were not as well maintained and in many places were quite indistinct.
In a number of places, the route required fording streams or small rivers. None of these crossings were difficult, but we did get wet feet. Water levels will vary depending on rainfall and the time of year.
There is one section on the SPT a few miles south of Sipahiler where the route followed the bottom of a rocky stream canyon with numerous obstacles. The difficulty of this stretch depends on the water level; if the water level is too high, it will not be passable. This section can be avoided by following an alternate route described in the guidebook.
In our opinion, a reasonably fit walker with basic cross-country navigation and route-finding skills who is prepared to be completely self-sufficient for a couple of days at a time should be able to complete the SPT. Note that due to the isolated nature of parts of the STP, if problems occur, assistance from other people may not be immediately available. There may not be cell phone coverage on portions of the trail as well.
Crossing Lake Eğirdir
The SPT is routed to cross Lake Eğirdir via fishing boat. We found only one person willing to do this, a gentleman named Mustafa. He was not home when we arrived at his house, so we had to wait five or six hours for him to return. We negotiated a fee for passage, which ended up significantly higher than what was described in the guidebook. Including a hot lunch for the two of us, we paid 90 Turkish Lira (about $60.00 at the exchange rate in 2011) for the boat crossing. You may be able to do better at bargaining. The only other option we are aware of is to leave the route and either walk or hitchhike around the north side of the lake and rejoin the SPT where you can.
Other People
We met only two other hiking parties on the SPT, and neither group was thru-hiking the entire route. We encountered no recreational day-hikers. We saw a few Turks out in the hills tending animals or crops, although it was not unusual to hike for several hours or most a day without seeing anybody.
Birds
We birdwatch on our walks. We identified a total of 196 species of birds while in Turkey. While on the SPT, we observed 139 species including 13 new life birds. Among the new birds were the beautiful Eurasian Golden Oriole and the wonderful White-throated Robin. On one day towards the end of the walk we saw four new raptors.
Thanks very much for this. Much appreciated.
After reading this I am giving serious thought to doing this (in 2020) in late March/early April. Hopefully that is not too early in the season.
I did the Lycian Way last year 2018 (mid March to mid April) and, like you, enjoyed it enormously. After the summer in Georgia (highly recommended) I did a circuit of the Kaçkar massif in mid August which was also wonderful with almost no other hikers.
Thanks for your note. We’re glad to hear that you enjoyed the Lycian Way so much and that you plan to hike the Saint Paul Trail too. And thank you for mentioning that you had a good trip in Georgia.
Path and you guys just amazing! Planing part of the Lycian way with my wife in March. Hope to walk St. Paul trail someday too.
Planning our SPT trip – get so much useful information from people like you. Thank you so much for sharing. This trip is after walking several parts of the Lycian Way over the Covid years.