Seated at a candlelit dinner table on the terrace of the Regency, in Kalkan, you can see why it’s one of the most popular luxury hotels on the Med. The service is impeccable, the classic Ottoman cuisine fit for a sultan and the view of the bay and its necklace of lights as perfect as you could wish.

How times change. When I first came to Kalkan a quarter of a century ago, the tarmac stopped at Fethiye and such upmarket comforts simply did not exist. But Turkey’s gorgeous Lycian coast was too rich a secret to hide for ever. Soon, the summer visitors began to arrive in ever-increasing numbers, from Marmaris to Dalyan, from Gocek beyond the Seven Capes to Patara, and all the way to Kekova, transforming the sleepy harbour at Kalkan into an oasis of sophistication.

Yet it is still possible to recapture the solitude and tranquillity of yesteryear. Cruising is the way to go, on board a gulet, one of the traditional, twin-masted ketches that will take you on what the Turks call a “Blue Voyage” along the shores of the long-vanished Lycians.

Gulet cruising is a uniquely Turkish experience that cannot be repeated elsewhere, and it happens here because only the south-facing Lycian coast offers the right winds, the right depths and an abundance of safe and sheltered anchorages. It’s pure serendipity and, as a result, the number of gulets plying these waters has mushroomed in recent years.

The 89ft Aleyna is such a vessel. Built in Fethiye and launched in May last year, she is among the latest examples of her kind, with a crew of three and a maximum of just eight passengers in four deluxe master cabins.

I joined her in Kalkan for a cruise to Olympos, putting out to sea on a glorious October morning, the sun scorching hot on the scrubbed wooden deck and the water as blue as a kingfisher’s back.

Like all gulets, Aleyna is absurdly romantic, with her rakish lines and piratical poop deck, blue canvas awnings and gleaming varnish thick as barley sugar. My first act on coming aboard was to kick off my shoes, and that is how we lived for the next three days, barefoot sea gypsies adrift in a world of pine-scented coves and turquoise bays.

Ahmet, our captain, had been a sailor for most of his life. “I started as a fisherman when I was nine years old,” he told me. “I learnt fast,” he continued. “And this,” he said, with a sweep of his arm that took in the stark capes and headlands, the fleets of islands and the sea around us, “this was my school room.”

On our port side, limestone mountains, faintly rusted and specked with scrub, slid into the sea. At one point, we seemed to be steering for a head-on collision with a brutal wall of savage rock that opened up at the last moment to reveal a narrow passage between two islands, and on we went, gliding across yet another dreamy bay with flying fish skimming beneath our bows.

At midday, we hove to in a secret cove. The anchor dropped through 20ft of limpid water and we slipped over the side to swim and snorkel before lunch.

Afterwards, as we motored on past Kekova, the coast became wilder, with huge, pine-clad mountains tumbling into the sea and the uninhabited Devecitasi islands away to starboard. The air was warm, as if the mountains were a living body, and the scent of the pines flew out to us across the water.

That night, we anchored in Geneviz Limani — the Bay of the Genoese — and dined on the poop deck as the moon rose and the sound of the lapping tide echoed against the towering cliffs.

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