Food and Resupply on the Lycian Way: Shops, Pensions, Stove Gas

Food is the part of Lycian Way planning that gets left out — this site's own planning guide lists water, navigation and cash among the things you cannot improvise and says nothing about lunch. In practice food is the least of your problems, because the trail was designed around villages: the Culture Routes Society's FAQ says the most you ever need to carry is two days' food, and on most stages it is one packed lunch. What trips people up is not scarcity but the rhythm — knowing which places have a shop, which have only a pension kitchen, and which have nothing at all.

This guide runs the resupply points west to east as the town pages and stage pages describe them, then covers the four questions walkers ask most: what half-board really is, what a bakkal actually sells, how vegetarians fare, and where to find stove gas and a beer.

The pattern

A Lycian Way day, fed: pension breakfast; a packed lunch or a bakkal bag eaten at a çeşme; tea at any pension you pass (it is free at almost every stop); pension dinner. In towns, replace any of those with a lokanta — a canteen where you point at stews and pay by weight — or a fish restaurant. Village shops keep short, irregular hours and take cash only, so carry small lira notes; change for a large note in a tiny bakkal is a real problem, as the money guide says.

Resupply points, west to east

Fethiye. The biggest town on the trail and the last big shop for several stages — the Fethiye → Ovacık stage page tells you to stock up here. Decathlon and outdoor shops, the Tuesday market (one of the largest on the coast — fruit, vegetables, cheese, honey, spices), the fish market where a surrounding restaurant cooks what you pick, and lokantas such as Mod Yemek. The Fethiye page suggests spending the afternoon buying a gas canister, snacks and last-minute kit before the dolmuş up to Ovacık.

Ovacık, Hisarönü, Ölüdeniz. Resort supply — hotels, bars, restaurants; Ovacık's pensions do breakfast. Nothing here that Fethiye does not do better.

Faralya and Kabak. Pensions and eco-lodges with their own kitchens and restaurants (Mama's Restaurant & Camp at Kabak is named on the accommodation page); the water guide lists a village supply at Faralya and a fountain at Kabak. Eat where you sleep.

Alınca, Gey, Bel. Hamlets. Alınca has two pensions and terrace dinners; Gey's dinner, in the words of the 7-day itinerary, is whatever the family cooked that night. The Alınca → Bel stage page carries the first hard warning of the trail: no resupply, carry food and 3 litres. Between Alınca and Gavurağılı there is one seasonal spring and otherwise nothing.

Letoon, Xanthos, Patara. Village fountains in every village; Gelemiş village behind Patara beach has pensions, gözleme stops and restaurants (the Patara page names Sergeant's Place for gözleme and Turkish breakfasts).

Kalkan. Over a hundred restaurants in a town of four thousand, including a traditional lokanta (Çat Lokantası) for a cheap lunch by weight. Villas, pensions and hotels; plenty of shops.

Kaş. The Kalkan → Kaş stage page calls it the best resupply point on the entire trail: outdoor shops selling gas canisters, the Friday morning market ten minutes from the centre for fruit, cheese and honey, ATMs at TEB, İşbank and Garanti, lokantas (Bahçe Lokanta) and fish restaurants. Fill everything here before the eastern stages.

Limanağzı, Aperlae, Üçağız. A beach café at Limanağzı from April to October, then nothing: Limanağzı → Aperlae says carry all food and water, and the water guide notes that boat skippers at Aperlae sell water only when boats are running. Üçağız has a handful of pensions and restaurants on the harbour.

Demre and Finike. Real towns with shops and ATMs — the money guide calls Demre the last good ATM stop before the east.

Karaöz, Adrasan, Olympos, Çıralı. Karaöz is a camping night; Adrasan has pensions; Olympos treehouses run on half-board with breakfast and dinner included; Çıralı pensions do half-board by default, and one of them is a vegetarian-friendly yoga retreat. ATMs are limited here, so bring cash in.

Beycik, Gedelme, Hisarçandır, Geyikbayırı. Village pensions and, per the eastern-route page, a café at Beycik and fountains at Gedelme and Hisarçandır. The Society's FAQ advice for exactly these villages: if there is no shop, knock on a door and ask for yufka (flatbread) and peynir (cheese), and insist on paying.

Antalya. Everything, including Decathlon.

What half-board really means

The pansiyon model is the reason the trail needs so little carried food. The accommodation guide describes the breakfast — olives, white cheese, eggs, simit or bread, honey, tomatoes and cucumber, sometimes menemen — and the dinner, which it calls often the best meal of your week: fresh fish, slow-cooked stews, garden vegetables, lamb, sometimes a glass of village wine. The guided-tours page adds the fine print: on the Lycian Way half-board usually means breakfast and dinner plus a packed lunch. Two rules follow. Order the packed lunch the night before — bread, cheese, tomato, olives, fruit — and confirm when booking that the quoted rate includes dinner, because some pensions quote breakfast only. Tea comes with everything.

The bakkal reality

A bakkal is the village corner shop, and the cost guide is honest about its shelves: tinned tuna, sucuk sausage, biscuits, instant coffee. Add bread, white cheese, tomatoes, fruit in season and 1.5-litre bottles of water, which every village shop sells (the water guide asks you to return the empty when you take a new one — eskiyi geri ver, yenisini al). Do not expect trail bars, dried meals, oat milk or anything from home; if you want it, buy it in Fethiye or Antalya. Hours are the owner's. Cash only.

Between the bakkal and the pension kitchen sits the gözleme stop — a trailside stand or café making stuffed flatbread to order, usually with ayran. They appear at village junctions and beaches and are cash-only; the money guide counts them among the reasons to carry small notes.

Vegetarian and vegan

Turkish cooking is friendly to vegetarians without anyone trying: breakfast is essentially meat-free, meze are mostly vegetables, pulses and yoghurt, and a lokanta lets you see every dish before you choose. The guided-tours page states the position for organised trips — vegetarian is standard, vegan available on request — and it applies to independent walkers too, with one caveat. In the hamlets, dinner is a single family meal, so say what you do not eat when you book, not when you sit down, and put allergies in writing. Town pages name a few explicitly vegetarian-friendly places: Hidden Garden in Antalya's old town and Myland Nature at Çıralı.

Stove gas

You cannot fly with fuel, so stove choice depends on what Turkey sells. The Society's 2015 note lists three cartridge types — pierceable, valve-top and screw-top — with the pierceable Camping Gaz type easiest to find and the screw-top type rarer and dearer; its FAQ adds that screw-top cylinders are found only in large towns, that meths (ispirto) is sold at hardware and kitchen-equipment shops, and that unleaded petrol comes from any filling station. This site's wild-camping guide gives the trail's own map of it: screw-thread canisters at Decathlon and the outdoor shops in Fethiye, two camping shops near the marina in Kaş, Decathlon in Antalya, and limited stock at Olympos and Çıralı pension receptions. Buy in Fethiye or Kaş; do not count on finding gas anywhere between them. Open fires are banned in forest from 1 June to 31 October, and the Society's rule outside that window is to light fires only where there is an existing fireplace.

Alcohol

The Society's FAQ is the clearest published statement: very few village stores or cafés sell beer or rakı, almost none sell wine or any other alcohol, small towns usually stock beer, tourist areas have more, shops are not allowed to sell alcohol after 10 pm, and drinking in the open is increasingly discouraged. On the ground that means a beer in Fethiye, Kalkan, Kaş, Olympos, Çıralı and Antalya without difficulty; in the villages, whatever the pension offers with dinner, which the accommodation guide says is sometimes a glass of village wine. The solo-female guide adds the etiquette that matters more in the inland villages: cover shoulders and knees when you stop at the shop.

Water is the real constraint

Food is easy; water is not. Village fountains and pension taps are safe to drink; springs and cisterns should be treated; four stretches have nothing for five or six hours. That is a separate guide — read water on the Lycian Way before you decide what to carry, because the litre you save on lunch goes straight into the bottle.