Pamucak beach

The single best thing you can do after three hours on hot marble is swim, and the sea is closer than most visitors realise.

Where it is, and why

Pamucak sits at the mouth of the Küçük Menderes — the river the Greeks called the Cayster, the river that filled in the harbour of Ephesus and ended the city. The beach exists because of the same silt.

Stand on the sand and look inland: that flat ground running east towards the hills is the plain the sea retreated across. The story is here.

What it is like

Long, wide, grey-gold sand, and by the standards of the Turkish Aegean remarkably undeveloped — no strip of hotels, no promenade. There is a large resort at the northern end, a couple of beach clubs with sunbeds and a restaurant, some horse riding, and then several kilometres of nothing.

The sea shelves gently and is calm most days, which makes it good for children and dull for anyone who wants waves. Water temperature is comfortable from about June to October.

It is not a picture-postcard cove. It is a big honest working beach with room on it, which on an August afternoon is worth more.

Practical

• 7 km from Selçuk, about fifteen minutes by road from the Ephesus Lower Gate.
• Dolmuş from Selçuk otogar in season, roughly hourly; taxis any time.
• Free to use the public stretches. The beach clubs charge for a sunbed and umbrella.
• Facilities are thin away from the clubs: bring water, and shade if you want it.
• Windy in the afternoon more often than not, which is a mercy in August.

Fitting it in

After Ephesus, not before — walking the site with sand in your shoes is its own punishment. Site in the morning, lunch in Selçuk, swim at three, and you have had a better day than the coach tours.

On a cruise call it needs ten hours ashore to be sensible.