A 2,000 year old Roman aqueduct makes its way across the mountains from Xanthos to Akbel. It looks a bit like Hadrian’s wall from a distance and some of it is as high.
Other sections are terraced across the hills (a bit like the conduit under Castle Rock at Thirlmere) and the walking route actually travels along the top of it.
From Akbel the route continues to Patara where excavations are taking place of the old city. There were no “keep off” or “hazard” signs even though some pretty heavy-duty works were going on involving, surprisingly, a large digger.
Today ended with a visit to nearby beach (not as nice as yesterday’s, I should have spent more time with the ruins).
To find out more about this walk you can consult the only guidebook/website: www.lycianway.com
I can only presume that the start point of the aqueduct was a lot high than the finish, otherwise the water would have had trouble flowing up hill, as appears to be the case from the pic. Fascinating the way the Romans made a pipe from stone blocks – looks a bit like Lego!
Wrong. They used a siphonic system. Those Romans were jolly clever!
I didn’t know that! How did they create the vacuum to start it, I wonder?
They didn’t, they filled (primed) it from both ends manually with the entrance dammed until the flow was ready to start…
Did you get a picture of the digger ❓ :geek:
Actually, yes – but I can’t work out how to drop a pic into a “Reply” (perhaps we need an un-geek emoticon???