Why I keep returning to Kas, Turkey’s unspoilt seaside hideaway

A lovely tangle of mellow bars, markets and beach clubs, Kaş is the jewel of the Turquoise Coast but still a working town that retains its ‘undiluted Tukishness’

If there was ever a tale of two cities it has to be Kaş and Kalkan. Both picturebook pretty, with cobbled streets and bougainvillea-draped old stone houses, the two became hugely popular with holidaying Britons in Antalya when mainstream tourism began to gather pace there in the early 1990s.

When I first visited in 1994, Kalkan was still small, and Kaş – half an hour’s drive away along the vertiginously beautiful coastal road – was the bigger, livelier sibling. In those days, Kaş was where you went for a proper night out – inevitably ending in a knuckle-whitening taxi journey back in the early hours.