The underground lake and cascade
Sixty metres into the long branch, a small lake and a cascade lit in colour that plays on the water.
A small river runs under your feet inside a mountain at roughly 1,100 metres, and a ruined castle sits over the cave mouth: that is Çal Cave, one of the less famous day trips out of Trabzon and the coolest place to be in August. It lies in the Düzköy district about 50 km south-west of the city on the Akçaabat–Düzköy road, an hour or so of winding but well-surfaced mountain driving. Without a car, dolmuş minibuses run from Akçaabat to Düzköy, with less frequent onward services towards Çalköy, though counting on one for the return outside summer is a gamble. The cave has been open to visitors since 2003, after works completed in 2000, and belongs to Trabzon's metropolitan municipality. Two hundred metres in, it forks: a long branch of about 400 metres and a short one of about 150. Walkways hang above a stream that shrinks to about 25 centimetres in summer and rises to a metre and a half in the rainy months; some 60 metres into the long branch you meet a small lake and an underground cascade lit in colour, with stalactites and stalagmites in every corner. The full system is said to run for eight kilometres, but what you visit is under a kilometre, and that is enough. Honesty is owed here: Çal Cave is no wonder of the earth and does not compete with the great show caves near Antalya. What earns it the drive is the cool, damp air inside, which local sources put at around 10 degrees all year, and the sensation of walking above running water in the belly of a mountain. Bring a light layer even in July and wear shoes with grip, because the floor is always wet. The walkways are mostly level but narrow and damp, so a pushchair is no use; children over four or five usually love it. Foreigners pay double the resident rate under the metropolitan municipality's tariff: 240 lira per adult, 120 for Turkish visitors, 45 for students. The visit itself takes 45 minutes to an hour and a half, so treat it as one stop in a full day: the Hıdırnebi and Kayabaşı plateaus are close by, and the small restaurants in the nearby town serve simple mountain food. In winter the road can close with snow, so check before setting out.
Sixty metres into the long branch, a small lake and a cascade lit in colour that plays on the water.
The walkways hang over a stream that runs through the mountain, about 25 centimetres deep in summer and a metre and a half in the rains.
A constant damp chill of roughly 10 degrees by local accounts, whatever the heat outside, which is the best reason to come at the height of summer.
Çalköy, Düzköy district, Trabzon
Not a full day on its own. Uzungöl and the Sumela Monastery matter far more if your time is short. Make Çal an hour-long stop in a day on the Düzköy plateaus: Hıdırnebi and Kayabaşı are next door, and combining them is what makes the drive pay off.
Children from about four up usually enjoy it, but there is no room for a pushchair on the narrow wet walkways. The route is mostly level with few steps, but the floor is slippery and the cold bites if you are sensitive to it, so proper shoes and a jacket are essential.
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