Kuzuludere Göleti (pond) was quite the stunner for me. It is located at Yalıköy district, which is in Çatalca/İstanbul. This pond is great for spending some alone time (reading books, enjoying the view…) and picnicing.
I went to Yalıköy multiple times to visit it’s beach. But I am grateful, that one day, I decided to explore the district and not just sit next to the beach.
I suggest listening Blood Like Lemonade from Morcheeba, while reading this. This is the song that describes my vibe on this place.
There is a small dam nearby the pond. When I visited here in september, there was no running water through, though. So I took a quick walk on top of the dam. It wasn’t crazy high but still was a bit scary to walk on top of it. You could see the whole lake but not the whole place from there.
There were some people picnicing near the entrance. Because the place is quite far away from anything, the amount of people were very low for a place this. Also most of them were at the entrance, near the dam. But the road was looking quite long so I decided to ride more and rest on a place that is more seperated from people. On my way, I saw a cool tent. It looked like a futuristic base on an icelandic themed film/video game (First thought was Death Stranding). The moment I saw that tent defined this place for me honestly.
Road took me to the biggest plain part of this pond area. This plains felt like this place gets filled with more water on rainy seasons. Because there were a huge plain area and the borders were ~1 meter taller then the plain area, surrounded with trees. But when I got there, it wasn’t. So, I enjoyed this too big of an area to sit on my camp chair, drink my tea and read my book.
Terrain was not soft, nor muddy. Even though I have a street oriented motorcycle, I didn’t struggled to move around. Because this is a pond, there were quite amount of flies. But it was bearable for me to enjoy this beautiful place. Also more I spent my time here, more the flies lost interest in me. This was also nice.
By the time I decided to leave the place, I had visitors: Cows. Sheperds were using this place to graze them. Some of them got scared by me, most of them didn’t.
Where Is It
As I said before, it is in Yalıköy district, which is in Çatalca/İstanbul. You need to go, maybe 50 to 100 meters of offroad. Beware that terrain is bumpy for a standard car; Careful with the bottom of your car.
Coordinates: 41.487506396086815, 28.260770976224578
Google Maps: maps.app.goo.gl/XU2jK36CjawX6QS26
No real public transportation options are available, unfortunately.