First time at Sapadere Canyon: the mistakes we watch every week

Start with the shoes

If you take one thing off this page, take this: footwear decides how the whole day feels. The deck is timber and steel, it runs damp along the stretch near the falls, and the limestone on either side of the pools has been rubbed smooth by a river that has never once stopped working on it. Polished stone under a film of water is the most slippery surface most holidaymakers meet in a fortnight on this coast.

Anything with a sole that grips and a heel that stays put does the job — trainers, closed sandals with a strap behind the ankle, water shoes if you happen to own a pair. The sandal you wore to breakfast does not. Beach flip-flops turn up at the gate, and the guest wearing them spends the walk watching their own feet instead of the gorge. They simply have a thinner day than the person beside them, for want of a decision made in a hotel room.

What the walkway actually is

People picture a path. It is a structure: roughly 750 m of decking carried over the river on steel posts, with a rail and wire mesh closing the gap beneath it. Parts of it are a cage, mesh at the sides and overhead. There are steps, some of them wet, and lengths where the planking has gone out of true enough to feel through a sole.

It is easy walking and asks for no hiking experience whatsoever. It is also narrow. Two people pass with a little care, and a group travels at the pace of whoever is slowest in it, who on any given morning is not somebody you chose. The habits that matter are dull ones: a hand near the rail on the steps, the phone in a zipped pocket rather than a hand, and no leaning out over the water for a better frame. The walls climb to something like 400 m. That keeps one flank of the gorge in deep shade and puts hard light on the opposite one, and your eyes spend the whole walk adjusting between them.

It is also out and back along the same boards. The gorge gives you no loop to walk.

Swimwear goes on at the hotel

There is nowhere to change in a canyon, and dry clothes are the one thing a first-timer cannot improvise on the spot. So swimwear goes on underneath what you are wearing, before you leave your room. A towel goes in the bag with something dry to put on afterwards — the floor of the gorge sits in shade, the air in there is cooler than the beach you left, and that is delightful right up until you are wet.

Otherwise, pack light. Whatever you bring you carry up the steps and back down them, and it stays with you at the pools, because nobody is watching a bag left on a rock. Valuables belong in the hotel safe. A small waterproof pouch is worth its space if the phone is going anywhere near the water with you.

Cold is the thing people refuse to believe

Guests who have had a week on a warm coast arrive with a coastal notion of what a river feels like. This one leaves the rock already cold and arrives in the pools that way in August as reliably as in April. No temperature is printed anywhere on this site. There is no thermometer on the tour, and a figure borrowed off another company's page is one we would have no way of defending when a guest quoted it back at us.

In practice that means getting in is a decision rather than a drift. You go in near the edge, where the guide says the group may that day, and you come out earlier than you had planned to. Getting in is optional, and what it turns on is the state of the river: after heavy rain the water runs high and the guide keeps the group clear of it altogether. Plenty of people never get in and go home perfectly content. And the polished rock in and around the basins is where the right shoes earn their keep a second time.

Cash, in euros, and more of it than you think

Nothing is taken when you reserve — no card, no deposit — and the tour is settled with the operator on the morning itself, in euros. That alone catches out people who expected a payment page. What catches them out further is everything the fare does not carry.

Drinks at lunch are separate. On the canyon days the Cüceler (Dwarfs') Cave stop is optional and its ticket is in none of our prices; whoever goes in buys it at the cave. And on the departure from Side, the canyon's own gate ticket is not inside the €35 either — it is handed over at the gate, with the guide telling you the amount there, because a fee somebody else sets is not ours to print months ahead.

So: euros, in notes, in a pocket you can open with wet hands.

What is not up there, however much you hoped

Five expectations travel up the mountain with first-timers, and the place disposes of all five. Better to lose them here than at the gate.

• A canyon to yourself. Every operator along this coast gathers its guests across one morning and arrives at the boards in much the same stretch of the day, so you share them. Other people are left in most of the photographs published here, because that is what the walkway honestly looks like.
• A swim you can count on. It turns on the state of the water and the guide's reading of the day; after heavy rain it does not happen at all, and the honest version of this page says so rather than selling you a picture.
• A changing room. There is none, which is the entire reason the swimwear goes on before you leave the hotel.
• A picnic you carried from the buffet. Outside food and drink do not come into the canyon or onto the vehicle — it is a litter rule and it is not negotiated at the door. Whatever you drink is bought at the rest stop or at the table.
• A pushchair route. It cannot be pushed the length of the boards. A baby travels in a carrier and a toddler gets lifted over the steps, which is fine, and worth knowing before you are standing there holding one.

The day is mostly road, and the road is the trade

The gorge is the small end of this day. Collection along the Alanya belt falls, usually, inside the 08:30–09:30 window. After that comes the climb inland, east and upward, to a canyon lying roughly 40–45 km out of Alanya — and further still from the hotels at the western end of the belt, which is why no Alanya-belt collection time is printed on a web page. It reaches you the evening beforehand, once that morning's route exists. Door to door, the Alanya day runs about 7 hours, and an adult pays €33 against €23 for a child of 4 to 10.

Be at the hotel entrance at the time you were given rather than in a lift on the way down to it; the vehicle has a list and a mountain ahead of it. Take a seat near the front if bends bother you, and say so to the guide. And anything the team ought to know — a knee that dislikes steps, a child who will not be going near the water, a plate that has to be vegetarian — belongs in the booking notes where a person reads it, not announced at the canyon gate where nothing can be done with it.

One last thing, for anyone circling a forecast. Reserving costs nothing and commits nothing, and a place is released free of charge up to 24 hours before departure. If the canyon cannot be reached on your date, the departure does not run at all: your date moves or the booking is cancelled at no cost. That is also why no daily open sign is published here. A tour that is running is a canyon that is open, and the two are not separate questions.

The pattern never changes. The guests who enjoy this one are the guests who packed for a shaded, wet, cold-water gorge instead of for a beach with a view of it. Shoes, towel, swimwear underneath, euros in a pocket — that is the whole of the preparation, and holding a date costs nothing while you go and find the right pair of shoes.