Turkish Delights

Stormy skies over Karaöz

Great climbing at Olympos

For somewhere a little different we thought we would invite Colin out to Antalya for a couple of weeks climbing, being quite impressed with the area when visited it briefly 18 months ago. The chance to visit Sherri's mum in Marmaris and call in to Kalymnos once the 'silly season' was done made a decent job of a plan.

Always a kitten or two

Four hours with Jet2 Manchester to Antalya was easy, finding and collecting the hire car less so, a battle through cross-town traffic and we booked into our pad on the outskirts of Konyaalti just after dusk.
We had 10 days climbing at Geyikbayiri - a great spot, though much of the climbing is pretty hard and temperatures of up to 31C didn't help.
Then we move down the coast to the tiny village of Karaöz so we would have access to the climbing at Olympos.
The main crag of interest is the shady gorge of Dershane - quite a popular little spot with a great set of routes on lovely fluted limestone.  Most of the 50+ routes are sub-6b, well bolted and on high quality rock.
I once asked a travelling Yank what the climbing at Antalya was like - "just like Kalymnos" was his reply. I can confirm that apart from being sport routes on limestone, it is nothing like Kalymnos, quite a remote feeling area, friendly locals, and cheap too. Being 'different' isn't a bad thing, variety is the spice of life and this is certainly a very different part of the world, and one I would strongly recommend visiting.