Harmankaya has three waterfalls along one valley, and the valley is reached by a footpath down through the forest. Flat ground about ten metres wide runs along much of it.
The walk is worth describing because it is not level going. After roughly 1,100 metres inside the valley the first waterfall appears. Beside it the way up is a climb of ten metres at an 80 per cent gradient and fifteen metres at 60 per cent, then twenty metres along a path through scrub, which brings you down into the valley at the top of the first fall. Another 250 metres brings the second waterfall. Here again the climb beside the fall goes up into the forest for thirty metres at a 70 per cent gradient, followed by twenty metres of path, which puts you above the second fall. Two hundred metres further along the valley is the third.
Green cover runs the length of the route. In the wooded parts of the valley there is chestnut, oak, hornbeam, lime, box, cornelian cherry, alder, poplar, plane, cherry laurel, strawberry tree, wild apple, wild cherry, wild hazel, bay, medlar, tamarisk, bilberry, wild grape, wild pear, rhododendron, bramble and rosehip.
Among the smaller plants are flowering and non-flowering ivies, nettle, broom, dead-nettle, several kinds of daisy, cyclamen, violet, primrose, pitcher plant, wild strawberry and moss, including endemic species.
- Designated
- 1.10.2021
Getting there
- Access
- Take a Çaydamar minibus from beside the Ankara bridge to the last stop, behind the annexe of the provincial administration building; the picnic ground, a 1,500 m² clearing with forest around it and grass underfoot, begins right there.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Zonguldak as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 6.3 °C in January to 22.1 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in December (154 mm) and lightest in May (55 mm). Long-term means for 1938-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
