Antalya Airport to Kumköy Beach transfer
Kumköy Beach is the long sandy run west of Side: wide enough to leave room to walk behind the rows of loungers, and shallow enough that children can wade a long way out. Behind it stands an unbroken line of all-inclusive hotels, and on the sand the beach bars, jet skis, parasail boats and banana rides work right through the season. This is the lively end of the coast rather than the quiet one — music by day, people still along the waterline at dusk. It is the beach people come to for something to do, not only for a towel.
Nobody staying on this strip needs a car for it — the sand is at the end of the garden. The trip runs the other way: from Belek, Kadriye or Boğazkent, where the hotel beaches are quieter and more enclosed, it is 40 to 45 km and 40 to 45 minutes, and families with teenagers come for the watersports rather than the sand. From Side it is about 15 minutes west, from Antalya a little over an hour, and from Alanya too far to bother. A car lets you swim until the light goes and stop in Side on the way back; a coach decides both for you.
From the airport it is 62 km and about 55 minutes, and of the beaches near Side this is the easiest to take in on the way in: the beach road runs past the hotel doors, so an hour in the sea before check-in costs no detour. Landing at dawn, that hour is the difference between a wasted morning and a holiday that starts at once.
Visiting Kumköy Beach
This is a beach with a timetable rather than a route. The mornings are the flat hours, which is when the parascending boats and the towed rides go out and when small children get the shallow water to themselves; by mid-afternoon there is a ripple on the surface, more engine noise and a wait for anything with a throttle. A full day is the normal stay and very little of it is spent sitting still. The sand is wide enough to walk behind the rows, and the further you get from the gates in either direction the fewer people there are, which is the only quiet on offer.
Underfoot it is fine pale sand, firm and easy at the waterline and deep enough at the back of the beach to make walking hard work. The bottom goes out almost level, so a child can stand a long way from the shore and an adult has to keep wading to find water worth swimming in. Shade is the thing that is missing. Nothing grows on this strip and the buildings stand shoulder to shoulder behind it, so a day visitor has no inland to retreat into, and the hours between noon and three decide whether the day was a good one.
For the hours in between, the car is better released than kept. This is a road of hotel gates and turning circles with nowhere for a driver to stand for six hours, and a day that starts with watersports does not end early enough to make waiting worth paying for. Set the evening hour before you get out and hold to it. What folds in without a second booking is the walk east: the quieter sand beyond the last gates first, then the columns and the harbour at the end of the strip, which is where most people finish a day that began on a towed banana.
- The mornings are the flat hours and the afternoons the choppy ones, which matters more on this strip than on any quieter beach.
- The bottom runs out almost level, so an adult has to wade a long way before the water is deep enough to swim in properly.
- The back of the sand is deep and soft, so keep to the firm strip near the water when you are walking any distance.
- The watersports concentrate in front of the biggest gates, and two hundred metres along the sand is the difference between noise and none.