I like Turkey best when it's done slowly

In a country that appears anything but quiet, Adrian Hamilton finds a truly peaceful spot - on board a gulet

The eastern part of Turkey's Mediterranean coast was always a wild place. Cicero chafed terribly as the governor of Rough Cilicia (as it was called), fretful at what he was missing back in the capital. It took Pompey the Great to clear out the pirates in 67BC. With the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, it was to this area that the Byzantines turned to provide the toughest soldiers.

And yet it was a province of considerable prosperity in its day, and there now remains a surprising wealth of late-Roman and early-Byzantine monuments, with fine churches and some spectacular medieval castles set in the mountains that clench the coast, their ruins irresistibly romantic in the setting sun.

To date, this part of the Turkish coast has been left relatively undeveloped. The wind makes it harder to sail and the sheltered anchorages are less plentiful than the more intensely, and in parts more ruinously travelled, coast further west. But Westminster Classic Tours is pioneering the watery trail with accompanied gulet trips in both directions.

I must admit to having had some nerves (and my wife had even more) at the thought of joining a guided tour complete with lecturer and out-of-the-way site visits. Would they all be fearfully brainy and speak to each other in Latin or Greek? Would we have a moment's respite to sunbathe and swim, or a time to ourselves?

We needn't have worried. The Turkish gulets, two-masted, shallow-draught boats that can sail or power their way in and out of the coastal inlets, are a truly remarkable means of touring. Why no one else along the Mediterranean has tried them for this, I cannot think. What makes them special is not just the comfort of the boats but the crew of Turks, the friendliest of people, with a huge desire that you should be happy and, blessedly, an inbred understanding of food and the pleasures of fresh local fish and vegetables done simply and imaginatively.

Once aboard, it's off with your shoes and out with your book, to lounge in the back or lie on the sunbeds in the front, while a short ladder's distance over the side lie the welcoming waters of the eastern Mediterranean.

We started at the furthest point east, in a small harbour, close to Tarsus, where St Paul was born and was entitled to citizenship. While the boat pushed westward, its journey punctuated by stops for a swim or for lunch, it was followed along the coast road by a minibus that would take us up into the hills to visit the sites - the theocratic city of Olba dedicated to Zeus, the Byzantine monastery of Alahan perched on the rim of a ravine, the hidden site of Aphrodisias in Cilicia, the coastal castles of Mamure Kalesi and Kizkalesi and Antiocheia ad Cragum.

Usually we were the only ones at the sites, except for the odd archaeologist and farmers selling fresh honey and the ballooning baggy pants that they still wear, despite Ataturk's efforts to stamp out attire he regarded as too Oriental.

Even for those who know little of classical culture or history (and we were among them), there is a pleasure in ruins: the tumble of columns and pediments, the cast-down altars with their Greek inscriptions or the apse of an early Byzantine church, which too many feet and too much cheap restoration is destroying.

Turkey too has succumbed to the rape of the beaches. At Side and Alanya, where our boat ended its tour, only the scale and the richness of the remains protect them from the deprivations of the present, the tatty T-shirt boutiques and the booze cruises that nightly leave the harbours for a "good time" of unlimited drinking and unrestrained disco music. If Antalya still retains an old quarter, and something of its past atmosphere, it is only because the local authorities have kept the new building at a distance.

East of the port of Side they are building as if they wanted to develop all along the Cilician coast. Mercifully, the mountains protect the sites from careless crowding and limit the places where high-rise hotels and nightclubs can be built. What piracy did in olden times, tourism does today - driving the civilised to build, out of reach of the hordes, in the fastness of the hills above.

For me, the Taurus are greater than any mountain range in Europe, high, immovable and sharp edged, covered with pine, juniper and oak. And nestled on the mountain peaks, commanding the roads from the sea to the inland caravan routes from the east, are towns, fortresses and pilgrim centres untouched since they were abandoned in the times of the Arab and then Turkish conquests.

A warm day, the breeze in the mountains carrying the smell of mountain pine and thyme, some ruins underfoot and the thought of a swim and a fine meal of freshly caught fish to go back to - it is near to life out of time. So what if the lecturer and one of the guests are arguing over whether we should read Pliny or The Iliad after dinner? I think for the next trip I'll book for a voyage along the Carian shore on Turkey's south-west. The Taurus have prevented over-development there, too. And there's the chance of having the same cook.

The Facts

Getting there

Adrian Hamilton travelled on Westminster Classic Tours' (01225-835 488; www.wct99.com) two-week voyage "East of Antalya". Two more tours will be taking place this year, one running from 31 August until 13 September and another from 14-27 September. The trip costs £1,725, which includes full board accommodation, but excludes flights. Westminster Classic Tours also offers different itineraries along other sections of the Turkish coast and the Greek islands.