Lycian Way maps, GPX and apps: the guidebook, OsmAnd, the free Kaş GPX and what not to trust

The guidebook and the official maps

Kate Clow, The Lycian Way, revised edition October 2022, published by Upcountry and the Culture Routes Society, 208 pages with fifteen double-page maps, about €26. Three separate 1:70,000 sheets cover the western, central and eastern trail. The 2022 edition matters because it contains the reroutes of 2017 around Üçağız and Demre, the 2020 reroute near Çitdibi, and about 170 km of new and alternative routes; older editions and older maps do not. The Society sends its GPX and KML tracks to people who have bought the book, which is why you will not find an official free download.

Which app

The Culture Routes Society maintains the route on OpenStreetMap and recommends OsmAnd, which reads that data offline; it describes Hiiker as almost correct and explicitly does not recommend AllTrails, Outdooractive, Wikiloc, Mapy.cz or Trailsmart for this trail, because their tracks are user uploads of varying age. The App Store app called Lycian Way, released in 2025, is a third-party product, not the Society’s. Turkish walkers use Wikiloc for direction and Maps.me for camp spots, which works until it does not; the reroutes are the problem.

Our practice: OsmAnd with the offline map of Antalya and Muğla provinces, the OpenStreetMap route layer, and a GPX of the section we are walking as a backup. Screenshots of the guidebook map for the day. A power bank.

The free Kaş section GPX, and what it is

OpenStreetMap data is open under the ODbL licence, so we have extracted the Lycian Way relation for the stretch between Kalkan and Demre and published it as a free GPX: six tracks covering the inland route via Bezirgan and Phellos, the peninsula coast from Kaş to Kapaklı, the Kaş to Çukurbağ approach, and both variants from Kaleköy to Demre. It is geometry only; the water, beds and warnings are on the stage pages. It is not the Society’s file and we do not pretend it is. If you find a divergence between it and the waymarks, tell us.

How the waymarks work, and where they lie

Red and white stripes in the French GR style, painted on rocks and trees roughly every fifty to a hundred metres, closer on open ground. Yellow boards with distances at junctions. A red cross means wrong way. Side trails to ruins use yellow and red. Turkish walkers report the marks are worst where land has been developed and at a few junctions on the western stages.

The Society warns of fake waymarks near Kaş, Boğazcık and Beycik: stripes painted to lead walkers to particular pensions or restaurants. They are convincing. The rule is that a waymark that disagrees with the OpenStreetMap line is the one that is wrong, and the way to know is to have the line on your phone.