Uzungöl, Trabzon: lake, village and access guide

A lake, a village, one visited place

Uzungöl is a lake, identified on Wikidata as Q1095336, and a resort village that grew up around it, in Çaykara district, Trabzon Province. The standalone Uzungöl municipality was abolished in 2014 and folded into Çaykara Belediyesi as a mahalle, so Çaykara Belediyesi is the local governing authority today, with Trabzon Büyükşehir Belediyesi (the metropolitan municipality) handling regional roads.[1]

This guide covers the lake and the surrounding village together as one place — the lakeside boardwalk, mountain and forest scenery, trout restaurants and wood-chalet hotels — a deliberate editorial scope decision, even though Wikidata separately catalogues the lake and the settlement as two distinct entities.

Access and fees: likely free, not fully settled

The 12th Regional Directorate of Nature Conservation and National Parks' own page for Uzungöl Tabiat Parkı describes visitor facilities — a visitor information centre, an observation terrace, food and product concessions — with no entry fee mentioned. A secondary source separately states, in explicit FAQ-style wording, that no per-person or vehicle fee is charged for the town-centre and lake-surrounds area.[2]

Against this, aggregator tariff tables cite the nature park in a 2024 fee schedule at either ₺25/₺15 or ₺30/₺15 — the two aggregators disagree with each other, which itself weakens confidence in either figure, and the primary tariff document could not be read as text to check the row directly. The honest summary: the weight of evidence favours free access to the open lakeside/village area, but this is a probable finding, not a fully closed question. Duration-based parking charges are reported by a secondary source, with no amount confirmed.

Winter weather is a real, sourced access risk

A February 2026 report described snow depth exceeding 1 m at Uzungöl, with continuous road-clearing and effectively required winter tires. A separate 2026 report described a landslide/flood event cutting off road access to tourist facilities elsewhere in the wider area. This is a genuine, sourced pattern of winter/weather access disruption, not an assumption — plan a winter visit around current conditions, not around the calendar alone. A winter festival has also run in recent years, so winter is not purely a deterrent, but real access risk should not be planned away.

Pairing with Sümela Monastery

Uzungöl and Sümela Monastery are sometimes visited together. XTOUR has no routing provider and does not derive drive times from straight-line distance or aggregator estimates, so this guide states no figure between them. Treat any specific figure you find elsewhere as unverified, and check current road and weather conditions locally before travelling, especially in winter in this mountainous region.