New D400 Road, Alanya to Gazipasa UPDATE

ALANYA ARCHIVE POSTS 2019

NEW D400 Road ALANYA to GAZIPASA BYPASS

What is happening to the new D400 road, the Alanya Bypass Road? I am sure you have wondered as much as we have.

Whenever we are in Alanya we usually drive in and out on the first phase bypass road. That first stage was built so fast yet there appears to have been very little activity on the next section.

At the moment the road ends at abruptly Oba/Tosmur. From there the site just looks abandoned and there is no sign of any activity.

As I am sure you have noticed Gray and I like driving around to find out what’s new.

One day last week we had a spare hour or two. So we decided to check on Dim Cay and see if there was any progress around the tunnels.

The journey begins

We drove up over the Oba / Tosmur hillside until we found a gap overlooking the Dim Valley. There we got a bird’s eye view of the road and the tunnels.

We could see that all the scaffolding had been removed from the sides of the road. There were no work vehicles around it.

As you can see from the photo here, the flyover over the river is in place.

Now the new D400 road road from Tosmur needs to join up with the road crossing the river bed. It’s not a huge distance as the crow flies so once they start this I am sure they won’t be long.

BUT what about the Dim Cay Tunnels?

Standing there on the hillside looking over the valley I found myself staring at the tunnels. I had more questions than when I started. Were they just big dark holes with rock still behind them? How far had they been excavated?

Then I asked myself the big question – was there a hole the other end? Did the tunnel go right through and come out in the Mahmutlar hillside?

As soon as we were back in the car we decided to investigate further.

Our spare hour or two became an afternoon mystery tour.

Back on the coastal D400 we took a sharp left turn when we reached the Kestel and Mahmutlar boarder. That was where we instinctively guessed the exit of the tunnels would be given the height of the tunnels in Dim Cay and the undulating hills above them.

This was our new mission – to find out if there was any evidence of tunnels on the Mahmutlar side of the mountain/hillside.

And so we continued ….

We wandered up the hillside on a quite narrow, winding road with pretty terraces on the sides of the road. This was in a part of Mahmutlar we had never driven through before. It was so pretty, so rural and completely unspoiled we almost forgot about the tunnels. Just minutes from the centre of a busy town like Mahmutlar and you were in another world.

After some considerable twisting and turning we were thinking we were on a complete wild goose chase.

Then, out of the blue, we turned a corner and there it was, a large deep dip in the land revealing ……TUNNELS

We were shocked! We really were not expecting to find anything. But we had found them.

Gray, of course, went off with his camera to take a closer look and I looked from above.

What happened then was bizarre. You could have knocked us both down with a feather!! All of a sudden there was the sound of an engine and trundling out of the tunnel from Dim Cay direction was a bus full of workmen.

So there must be an underground team of workmen, deep inside the mountain. Work us continuing on this bypass road – its just that at the moment the work is continuing underground and out of sight!

The bus came out of that tunnel and continued on its journey into the entrance of the next tunnel. It disappeared from view but to coin a phrase, we realised you could see light at the end of that tunnel!!

Now the trouble with tunnels is once you have found one entrance you have to look for the exit. Then you find another tunnel …….. Having seen the bus come out of one tunnel only to drive into the next we had to search for the exit for the second tunnel!

It took some doing but we found it.

It is hard to actually pinpoint where these tunnels are. The easiest way to explain is to say is that it took about 6/7 minutes to drop down to the town again. When we got to the bottom of the hill we came out at the junction at the start of Ataturk Cd which is pinpointed on the map below.

So the moral of this story is – just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

There is a whole team of engineers burrowing under the hillsides of Mahmutlar.

Unseen heroes working to make our journeys faster and safer!

WE WILL CONTINUING UPDATING YOU ON THE NEW ROAD AND TUNNELS WE HAVE MORE INFORMATION

For those who wanted more information about our location when finding the tunnels here are the live locations taken from my phone that afternoon.

DIM CAY VALLEY – A STUNNING PLACE TO LIVE or OWN A HOLIDAY HOME

Large Family Villa for sale in Dim Cay €145,500

We have a beautiful large 5 bedroom family villa for sale in Dim Cay at a terrific price. Just 5 minutes from the beach, the new D400 bypass and tunnel junction. Price is negotiable for a quick sale. A villa of this size is rarely available at this price and would make a superb permanent home as well we a large holiday villa.

Follow the link for more information