Side → Fethiye Transfer

Side to Fethiye private transfer

Hardly anyone takes this road for the sake of the road. It is booked when a holiday has two halves: a week on the Side strip, then the Lycian coast for the second, with a different hotel and a very different kind of water. The next most common reason is a boat, since gulet cruises cast off from Fethiye harbour early in the morning and passengers travel the day before to sleep in the town. A third group landed at Antalya and fly home out of Dalaman, and this leg is simply how the two ends of the ticket are joined. Fethiye repays the effort: the Tuesday market, rock tombs cut above the rooftops, empty Kayaköy over the hill.

The 295 km are not what makes this three hours fifty; the middle third is. The D400 goes west past Belek, Aksu and the airport turnings and around Antalya, and then the route abandons the sea for the D350 — up through Korkuteli onto the Elmalı plateau, apple orchards and cedar forest on both sides, a pass at around 1,100 metres, and a long drop through Seydikemer into the Eşen valley. That crossing is where the clock actually goes, together with the city ring if you set off mid-morning. The coastal alternative through Kumluca, Finike, Kaş and Kalkan is far slower and belongs to sightseeing rather than to transfers.

• If a gulet is the reason for the journey, travel the day before boarding rather than on the morning of it — four hours of road makes a poor start to a week on the water.
• The plateau in the middle stands a thousand metres above the beach you left and can be ten degrees cooler, so keep a layer out of the suitcase rather than under it.
• Mention a comfort stop or a child seat when you book and not at the roadside, because between Korkuteli and Seydikemer there is very little choice of where to pull in.
• Out and back in one day is close to eight hours in the car, so this leg is normally booked one way and the journey home left to whichever airport the tickets use.