Explore The North Aegean
From Ayvacık, the E87/550 Çanakkale–İzmir road descends in curves through pine-forested hills, allowing occasional glimpses over the Gulf of Edremit. The highway straightens out at Küçükkuyu, the only real coastal town and gateway to the two traditional villages of Yeşilyurt and Adatepe in the foothills of the Kazdağı range (the ancient Mount Ida). Beyond here, the road leads past a dreary succession of Turkish-dominated resorts and second-home complexes to the inland county town of Edremit, where there’s a faint chance you might have to change buses. At Burhaniye, 18km south of Edremit, a side road leads 5km west to the old-fashioned resort of Ören, with an excellent, long, west-facing sandy beach.
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Küçükkuyu
Küçükkuyu
The small fishing and olive-oil town of KÜÇÜKKUYU, 29km southeast of Ayvacık, still has a fleet at anchor, though the local organic olive-oil production is threatened by proposed highly polluting gold prospecting on the slopes of Kazdağ. There are some atmospheric backstreets to wander, though you’re unlikely to stay longer than it takes to have a seafood meal on the port quay.
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Yesilyurt
Yesilyurt
For a more characterful base, head inland to YEŞİLYURT, 3km west on the E87/550 and then 1km inland. The houses here are built in yellowish stone and straggle down a slope amidst lush vegetation, peeking at the sea from their pirate-proof location.
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Adatepe
Adatepe
Exquisitely preserved ADATEPE lies just over 4km northeast of Küçükkuyu; look carefully on the main highway for the small sign indicating the village and its “Zeus Altarı”, a fifteen-minute marked walk from the approach road. This is merely a carved rock platform with a cistern, though the views from the top of the steps are superb. Adatepe has appeared in TV serials and (unlike Yeşilyurt) enjoys statutory protection for its architecture, with some stone houses all but sprouting from volcanic boulders. Again unlike Yeşilyurt, it was ethnically mixed from the 1850s, when in the wake of a killing frost, cash-strapped olive-oil magnates paid their Greek workers with a grant of fields and building plots in the lower quarter, though the Orthodox church on the plane-tree plaza was destroyed after 1923.
