Kalkan in the Sunday Times

[Mags]

Did people see the reference to Kalkan in yesterday's Sunday Times - Travel Section? It was in a feature on "undiscovered coastal areas" where there are "almost no tourists". Errr, shurely shome mishtake: you do sometimes wonder if these journalists have ever actually BEEN to the places they write about!

Linkback: https://www.enjoykalkan.com/forum/index.php?topic=8960.0

[Kalkan Magic]

I thought it was a very good description of Kalkan and far more accurate than other articles in the past, though the headline was a little ill-thought out. It was meant to be positive not negative and that's exactly what it came across as.

[Bdancer]

I thought it was really okay, it was positive and portrayed the town in a good light
Isis

[onelove]

Does anyone have a link so I can read it please

[sally]

Sadly you can't link to Times or Sunday Times as they are subscription only.  I thought they were accurate in their facts about Kalkan, but to describe it as 'somewhere all to yourself' was stretching things a little!

[BevJam]

I've managed to cut and paste the article for you to read.

Kalkan

Even with the smooth new road infrastructure, the drive to Kalkan from the airport at Dalaman takes getting on for two hours. Good. That’s plenty enough to repel the beer-and-burgers brigade, leaving Turkey’s most likeable harbour town to connoisseurs such as yourself. Caught between the tumbling Taurus Mountains and the very bluest bit of the Med, Kalkan (more of a resort than a region, if we’re being picky) has a bougainvillea-draped old quarter full of cubbyhole craft shops, a raft of restaurants that teeter on roof terraces for maximum sunset impact, and a host of sweet wooden sailing boats swaying in the bay. There’s nothing high-rise here, unless you count minarets.

It all makes for a super-buzzy seaside holiday, with assorted beach clubs offering sunbathing on rocks overhanging the sea; family-friendly floating aboard pedalos, kayaks, motorboats, even white-water rafts; and serene glides out to island strands on those pretty gulets. Ready for some spadework? The swimming cove beside the harbour is pebbly, but for absolute exhilaration, you need Patara beach, buffered by its own 15-minute drive from town (or 30 minutes if you rollercoaster out there in a dolmus, a shared minibus). Patara is sensational, eight straight miles of galloping white grains — one of the longest surges of undeveloped sand in all Europe — with Turkey’s second-biggest turtle population and Lycian and Roman ruins spiking out of the scrubby hinterland behind. Before its estuary silted up a few centuries ago, this was the most important trading post in Lycia: St Nicholas was born here, and legend has it that the god Apollo used to turn up regularly for his winter holidays. Today, archeologists spend their summers poking among the shifting sands to reveal columns, statues and sarcophaguses, and a 15-minute amble through the dunes brings you to a spooky half-buried universe of 2,300-year-old buildings. Inquisitive kids might like to dig really deep when sandcastle-building, in hopes of unearthing the Temple of Apollo, as yet undiscovered.

Alternatively, just chill out in the shelving shallows. There’s a surprisingly good feet-in-the-sand cafe on the entrance boardwalk, which rents brollies and beach loungers, but beyond that, blankness — if you hit a touch of high-season congestion, just keep walking to find your own private acre of sunbathing space.

The plan

Airlines flying to Dalaman include Monarch (            0871 940 5040      , monarch.co.uk) and Jet2 (            0871 226 1737      , jet2.com). Stay at the smart and simple Pasha Apart Hotel (            00 90 531 724 4131      , pasha-apartments.co.uk), where an Anglo-Irish couple, Mark and Imelda, offer nine one-bedroom apartments with sofa beds for the kids from £385 a week — and are a fount of knowledge on the region.

For something a little posher, Exclusive Escapes (            020 8605 3500      , exclusiveescapes.co.uk) has several villas in town, including some with private waterfronts. A week at Gogen Evi, which sleeps up to eight, starts at £900pp, including flights from London, transfers and a pass for the Mahal Beach Club.

[onelove]

Thanks Bev.    Peter.

[Bob & Jayne]

Thanks for that Bev. Great report.