Guide
The Independence Trail follows the old cart road between the port of İnebolu and Kastamonu, part of the supply line of Türkiye's War of Independence. For three years during the war, ships brought arms and ammunition from İstanbul and Russia to İnebolu, and oxcarts hauled them inland along an unsurfaced road to Ankara that volunteers and convicts had built in the late nineteenth century. Mustafa Kemal is remembered for saying that while his eyes were on the battlefields of Sakarya and Dumlupınar, his ears were turned to İnebolu.
The Governorship of Kastamonu brought the road back to life as a walking and cycling route, with work beginning in April 2007. The trail is 105 kilometres long: its first ten kilometres were built as a new footpath, and over the rest the old cart road was repaired, with one stretch between İnebolu and Kastamonu keeping the original oxcart road in good condition. It runs through Küre and past landscapes such as the Ersizler Gorge, the Karacehennem Pass and the Çuhadoruğu peak.
Walkers break the route at a series of overnight stops: a village house or campsite at Çuhadoruğu after leaving İnebolu, a camp at the Ayrancı picnic area near Küre, Ecevit Han after a section from Çatak Göleti through Belören, and a village house or camp at Ödemiş.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Kastamonu as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from -0.9 °C in January to 20.2 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in May (75 mm) and lightest in February (27 mm). Long-term means for 1930-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
