The cave known as Yedi Değirmenli, the cave of seven mills, lies between the villages of Avluca and Yeniko in the Espiye district of Giresun. Its name comes from what it does rather than what it looks like: the karst spring emerging here once drove seven mills, and it was later established that the spring is the mouth of a cave. Water still runs strongly through it, and that is its defining feature.
The passage is 207 metres long and its height varies between half a metre and ten metres. It is well decorated with stalactites, stalagmites and related formations; the provincial directorate puts the growth rate at one centimetre every fifty to eighty years, which would make the 1.5 to 2 metre stalactites here very old indeed. The site is about thirty kilometres from Espiye and 62 from Giresun. Access is not difficult; the site falls within the boundaries of the villages of Yeniko, Akkaya and Avluca.
Getting there
- Access
- The nature park lies within the bounds of Yeniköy, Akkaya and Avluca villages in the Espiye district, sixty-two kilometres from Giresun and twenty-eight from Espiye, and is easily reached.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Giresun as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 7.2 °C in February to 23.4 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in October (163 mm) and lightest in May (69 mm). Long-term means for 1929-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
