I had an email this week from Wanderlust magazine.

They’re updating the profiles of contributors on their website and collecting their stories together in one place.

After adding my own profile, I uncovered a link to an old story. It was the first of a trio of adventure-travel narratives for the magazine that took me from Turkey to Portugal via Croatia.

This was also the toughest: a serious, long-distance hike through a remote region with little infrastructure.

Thankfully we had the jovial Dennis (pictured above) to accompany us. He smiled throughout the trip – despite not having a change of underpants in the 40-degree heat.

Here’s an extract:

He led me through the spring-flowering village, all tulips and wild tortoises, to a traditional timber house.

Animal quarters downstairs, living room on stilts above, with rugged floors, wood-burning stove, and his 86-year-old mother hiding from the mid-afternoon sun under a patterned headscarf.

“Any stranger can still come to a village like this, knock on a door and have a place to stay and eat,” said Murtha Mustafa Acar as we sipped tea more saccharine than a Turkish love song.

“Ten years from now, when the trail is established, I hope villages like ours will be alive again.”

After we finished the hike, we headed to the airport at Antalya to find ourselves stuck in volcanic ash-cloud chaos.

But that’s a story for another time.

Read the full story, The St Paul Trail.

And check out my profile at Wanderlust.

Any comments on hiking in Turkey?

Please post them below.