In March 2015 I decided that I needed to pay the Softa Kalesi near Bozyazı, some 20 kilometers from Anamur, another visit. I remembered the ascent as hard, but doable. However, it turned out to be more difficult than expected. People later told me I should have attacked it from the other side, which is less forested. I took a number of paths that led me nowhere (at the end of some struggle I'd find a tree had been felled, and taken out, end of the trail) and was about to give up and descend through some fields. But the farmers had blocked my intended route so badly, using thorny shrubs to block anyone, that I had to return to an earlier point, where to my delight I suddenly saw a decently wide and obviously regularly used trail. It indeed first led to some rocks on which the walls of the castle stood. Following the footsteps of earlier visitors I made it to a hole in the wall, and the inner castle. I took many pictures that I show here, as well of some of the first visit. However, passing by bus next day I not only saw that the descent on the other side would have been easier, but would also have given me some views of the outer castle. I add some pictures from my visit some 11 years before. I re-edited them a bit (they were scanned from slides and badly edited), you can see that I then visited in a season when the vegetation was less lush and dense. If you intend to visit keep in mind that to the best of my knowledge it is not a matter of driving up there by car, you must be prepared to climb, much of it on rough trails for over a hundred meters.
On a Zaman site I found " Little is known about the castle, although its history seems to have paralleled that of Mamure, with a Byzantine castle built on the site of a much older fortification which was then rebuilt by the Armenians and strengthened by the Ottomans. Although there is a path up to Softa, it’s for the agile and energetic only."
The weather was overcast (of course the sun broke through when I was downhill about to enter the village again). My apologies for not climbing up again.