Fethiye and the start of the Lycian coast

Fethiye is a safe natural harbour and beautifully ringed by mountains

Our friend here turned up every day to line fish ALL day for few very small fish, each of which he landed delightedly!

Downtown, a really superb fish market surrounded by small restaurants which cook what you buy for a couple of quid – we shared one of those huge John Doreys

A lively sail onwards around the Lycian coast

St. Nicholas’ Island (Gemiler Adasi) off, at our next lumpy anchorage ...

... where we were visited by a very official contingent from the coastguard – our Turkish courtesy flag is too small and not red enough!! (Sorry Eva and David!)

The Byzantine settlement on Gemiler Adasi must have been a few thousand strong, with 4 sizeable churches  – abandoned more than 1000 years ago.

This cool tunnel linked two of the churches on the island

From this anchorage we walked to see the much more recently (1923) forcibly abandoned ‘ghost town’(Karmylassos, or Kyak Köyü in Turkish), featured in Louis de Berniere’s ‘Birds without wings’...

... the large, orthodox church was only finished in 1888

We did not meet Ayşe, but she is the only surviving inhabitant, now in her 90’s.

The cafe made pancakes the traditional way.

This gorgeous anchorage down the other side of Karmylassos was much less rolly for 2 nights.

We took the tenders over to the far headland to see Ölü Deniz (Dead Sea)

Great fun!

 We met up with the giant Lola K again in Kalkan, where we stayed for 2 nights (for free!).

Sunday night, there was a folk festival by the harbour – much enjoyment!

Kalkan is a great base to explore ancient Lycian sites ; first to semi-sunken Letoon, with frogs (appropriately, see mythology of Leto)  and terrapins much in evidence.

NOT the comfy chair!

Next on to the large, ancient capital of Lycia at Xanthos – a town then city, probably more than 3000 years old.

It’s a big deal being dead for the Lycians – the modern, vast tomato growing poly houses stretch out where the sea once was...

This pillar, inscribed with both Greek and Lycian versions of the same text, has been vital to help decode the ancient language

Then on to Patara, the port which served Xanthos. Successive waves of Greek, then Romans built it up, before eventually 1000 years ago the shifting sand dunes finally won.

The bloodthirsty Romans clearly liked serving up Christians for the 10,000 strong crowds here.