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It was going to be another beautiful Cretan day. Sunshine, pouring out of a cloudless sky over the White Mountains, lay in thick golden slabs on the whitewashed walls of the houses on the road to Chora Sfakion. ‘Chérete, be joyful,’ called the old man over his prickly pear fence as I went down the path into the cool shadows in the top of the Imbros gorge.

The White Mountains of south-west Crete swoop to a roadless coast along the Libyan Sea between Chora Sfakion, ferry port and capital of the sparsely populated region of Sfakia, and the little seaside resort of Sougia. Their great pale grey slopes are breached all along the coast by a number of steep, rocky gorges with towering vertical walls. By far the most famous is the Samaria gorge, target of tens of thousands of visitors every year thanks to its enormous dimensions and the narrowness of its walls. But there are others far less crowded and just as spectacularly beautiful.

A walker with plenty of stamina and a fair sense of balance can make a memorable week’s hike westward along the Sfakiot coastlands by way of the footpaths through these great canyons. They form part of the E4 European Path which traverses Crete from end to end. Like the curate’s egg, this path is good in parts. In Sfakia the locals have enjoyed using the little black and yellow tin waymarks for rifle practice. The red dots of paint with which Cretan walkers have marked the way are not always easy to spot. But though I pulled up in bafflement at least two dozen times in the five days it took me to thread the gorges and the intervening coast paths and mountain tracks, I was never in danger of getting seriously lost.

The path through the Imbros gorge is one of the old cobbled kalderimi or pack trails that criss-cross the Cretan interior. Down under prinos and pine trees I went, stumbling on loose stones, until the lips of the gorge seemed about to close a hundred feet over my head. Soon the canyon sides began to approach one another, forming a narrows which twisted in rocky s-bends banded in black and cream, so close together that at one point I could touch both walls with arms outstretched.

Down this gorge in May 1941 stumbled the exhausted soldiers of the Allied armies, on a desperate retreat to Chora Sfakion. The lucky ones were evacuated by Royal Navy ships; many others were captured and endured years of prison camp. Crete was taken by German paratroops and reinforcements in ten days of bitter battle, during which the islanders displayed fantastic daring and bravery – qualities they were to draw on to great effect, during the following four years of occupation, as a guerrilla army of andartes or partisan fighters.

The gorge widened, and there was a whiff of salt on the breeze. Soon the Libyan Sea lay glistering in the vee of the gorge, and as the sides fell away I came into the village of Komitades. A nectarous glass of iced coffee on the terrace of the Taverna Dionysus, and I took the road to Chora Sfakion.

‘Sir, are you from England?’ wheedled the waiters at the waterfront restaurants. ‘Sir, you look tired. We have cold beer, Greek salad, you will like very much.’ But I had another bit between my teeth now, and went on along the crumbly, stumbly coast path, across the beach at Sweetwater – naked sun-worshippers on a curve of grey pebbles under huge yellow synclined cliffs – and on to the delectable port village of Loutro. Here I idled all evening, resting the feet for next day.

I woke at six and looked out of my hotel window to see blue shadow on the mountain behind Loutro. By 7.00 I was high above the village on a zigzag path that rose in the cool of the morning to the high mountain village of Anopolis. The snow-capped White Mountains lumped away inland, a breathtaking sight from my café breakfast table.

In the hamlet of Aradena I climbed down another zigzag cobbled path into the depths of the Aradena gorge. Giant rocks and whole trees, fallen from the rim of the gorge, littered its floor. The sides closed in until there seemed no way through, and huge boulder falls blocked the way. But the red splodges of painted waymarks led unerringly down the rock slides by slip and scramble, by iron ladders and – at one point – a knotted rope. At last the way eased, and the lower half of the walk became a delightful saunter through a forest of pink-flowered oleander bushes, down to Marmara Beach and an hour’s shore walk back to Loutro.

The following day was a coast day, following the undulating E4 path beside the ink-blue sea to Agia Roumeli. The little village lies under immense cliffs at the foot of the Samaria gorge, and is the port of embarkation to the waiting buses in Chora Sfakion for the vast majority of walkers who trek the gorge downwards to the sea. But I was set to do it in reverse, an 11-mile upward climb of over 3,000 feet through one of Europe’s most spectacular landscapes.

I got away in the cool of early morning once more, and was through the Sideroportes before I gave my first ‘Hello’ to a descending walker. The Sideroportes or Iron Doors appear on every second postcard in Crete – deservedly so, for this is the place at which the walls of the Samaria gorge, some thousand feet high, narrow until they are no more than ten feet apart. Like just about everyone else I stretched out my arms at the critical point to see if I could touch both walls at once, but only exceptionally well-endowed gorillas could manage that feat. Or a Sfakiot hero, of course.

The rest of the climb was a hot old slog, particularly the last couple of thousand feet up the steps of the xiloskala, and I was all but done in when I finally reached the Hotel Gingilos on the Omalos plain, three miles beyond the head of the gorge. But a good supper of goat and village wine, along with a ten-hour sleep, put me to rights by morning.

Next day was the last of the gorge adventure. I had quite a job finding the top of the Agia Irini gorge, well to the west of the Omalos plain, but once in the canyon itself I went down easily enough. Oleanders in full flower, scented pine trees loud with birdsong and sunny glades full of sulphur-coloured butterflies; fallen trees to scramble over, boulder chokes to ngotiate. I passed an old stone bridge and came to the valley road. Three more miles, and I was sitting under a tamarisk tree on the grey sand beach at Sougia with a cold bottle of Mythos beer, an ache in both feet, and a grin of self-congratulation from ear to ear.

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