Greek Island Odyssey by Maureen Barry

The Greeks invented hedonism, so maybe that’s why the quest to find the island of one’s dreams is about as random and elusive as finding the ideal man or woman: each has an individual character, charisma and emotional climate that might appeal to one but not to another. Island connoisseurs plan their itinerary according to the local chemistry, never being hampered by anything as banal as the logic of route schedules. Each of the 170 or so inhabited Greek islands has its intimate persona and has responded to the cash tills of tourism in a different way. Some have all the mod cons of home, sports facilities and dancing till dawn, others have ancient sites, Byzantine frescoes and secluded shores, or gracefully manage to combine a dazzling mix of everything.

Reputed to be Paradise, Thassos, the greenest and northernmost of the Aegean islands, is a small but perfect microcosm of luscious escapism. It’s the ideal island for the visitor who wants to wander at will, savouring what chance and the gods have to offer. I circled the island in a car in a single day, but if you have any sense you’ll go back and hike the cool green mountains and stop in some of the prettiest villages in the Aegean for a glass of Egnatio, a northern wine named after the Roman road that began over the way in Macedonia. Here on Thassos you can swim and dream on perfect beaches or kick your heels up at night in Lirnenas or Panagia; Thassos’ small scale and the denseness of its variety means that the visitor can appreciate everything in perfect detail.

Paradise can also attract some pretty nasty characters, among them Mehmet Ali, a renowned decapitator and founder of the last Egyptian royal dynasty, who made the gift of Cleopatra’s Needle to London. Like Mehmet, I took the ferry across from the mainland city of Kavalla, with the steering room hung with pots of basil to keep away the evil eye. >From my hotel in Limenas, an impressive former Thassian mansion, I set out to explore the handkerchief-sized port. If you want wool here’s the place to buy it, mittens, hats, sweaters, rugs, you name your article. They sure need them because it’s devilish cold in winter on Thassos and the houses are structured accordingly, with small windows, vast fireplaces and slanting roofs to shrug off the snow. But now it’s the sort of peerless day you ache for in January, just the smell of the stifado from the local koutouki sets the taste buds tingling and like any sensible Greek you ignore the menu and head straight for the kitchen to see what Spiros or Yannis has conjured up for the day’s “special”.

Don’t listen to the people who subscribe to the “had one Greek meal, had them all” school of thought, there’s much, much more than moussaka if you’re game enough to find out. A koutouki is strictly for the adventurous and is even more laid back than the average taverna. Koutoukis seem to have happened almost by accident, probably because the owner’s wife was a good cook and friends started hanging around waiting to be invited in. . .one thing led to another and the husband reckoned he could make some money out of it. What I found in my koutouki was the very best of home cooking — meat casseroles, charcoal grills, fresh salads and fruit and a decor which made no concession to what normally constitutes a restaurant. There was no cutlery and it was hard to find a plate, but I remember a comforting barrel or two of retsina to lean against, quite replete. Greek fondness for resinated wine originated in antiquity when goatskin wine bags and later wooden barrels were sealed with resin to prevent leakage. Nowadays the resin is often artificially introduced in the form of tablets and the amount varies from brand to brand, so it’s worth experimenting to find a retsina that suits your taste.

After a rich, wine-dark stifado with those delectable tiny sweet Greek onions it was definitely time to climb the path to the theatre of Dionysus, an elegant oval with its circle of seats echoing the line of cliffs beyond, the work of man in perfect sympathy with the work of nature.

Thassos is ringed by superb beaches, like beads around the neck of a deity, but it’s hard to beat Alyki for sublime beauty. On one side it has a temple site with waves lashing like the furies at the rocks beneath, on the other side of the cape the sea is beatific, barely rippling, ringed with pine trees. There is something intimate, homely about Thassos; locals press you to fill your empty water bottle with oil from their own olive trees, or accept a jar of pine honey from the family orchards. Olive oil and honey husbandry is as earnest a business as the wine cult is in France.

I drove to one of the interior mountain villages of Thassos, all homespun and icing-sugar symmetrical, where an old woman beckoned me into her house for coffee, water and crystal dishes of walnuts. The visitor to Greece rarely leaves without experiencing Greek hospitality. Xenos is the Greek word for “stranger” but also “guest” and as a Greek regards all Greece as an extension of his living room, you might find yourself sooner or later being strong-armed by a Greek man or woman into accepting a gift of fruit, flowers, a sprig of basil or an invitation to dinner. There is no need to beware — the seeds of the Greeks’ iron rule of hospitality were sown in antiquity and they simply don’t understand a refusal.

If Thassos is gentle and homely the island of Naxos in the Cyclades is sturdy, set solidly in its encircling azure sea, a honey-coloured island with many attractions to suit many tastes. Naxos was Byron’s favourite island; it suited his aristocratic and romantic inclination. Legend abounds here; Naxos was Dionysus’ island and he made the vineyards flourish as well as marrying Ariadne after she was abandoned by her fiancé Theseus. He also made her “deathless and unageing” — what a perfect catch of a husband. This is an island built on the grand scale, with terraced vineyards and olive groves that sweep down to the interior valleys like a giant amphitheatre.

Naxos boasts one of the finest views in the Cyclades, the breathtaking panorama of the Potamia valley. This is unsurpassed walking country, and maps showing the routes to small villages and churches can be bought at the newsagents’ on the harbour of Naxos town. The western coast of Naxos has beaches finely graded from the more sensitive to the most robust of beach-lovers, starting with Agia Anna, a mecca for nudists, all the way to Alyko beach with it’s stunning views of the island of Porus.

The Venetians captured the island in 1204 and Chora, the main town on Naxos, has a distinctly Venetian design. The streets are a maze of twists and turns and sudden dead-ends that bring you face to face with a mossy fountain or the carving of an angel. I got lost only to find my way again with these sudden revelations to help me get my bearings. The waterfront with its white Cycladic houses is very grand and the splendid harbour looks out at the Portara, a vast gateway of marble shaped like the Greek letter pi. I was glad to escape the claustrophobia of these small streets to drive to the interior of Naxos through the cascading terraces of vineyards. It’s tempting not to stop on the road, leap a wall and bring down a handful of sweet figs. At Apollonas, the fishing village where there’s a great taverna I had earmarked for lunch, I made the obligatory pilgrimage to the enormous kouros lying on his back since the seventh century on a cliff near the sea. Whether his maker judged him a failure or not and left him there, who knows, it has now become a triumphant success and treasured possession for the islanders.

Aegina, the artist’s island, is only a short commute away from Piraeus by taxi and then you can cross the Saronic Gulf by ferry or hydrofoil, and before you’ve time to savour the heady briny air you’ll be stepping off in Aegina’s waterfront with its cafés, horse-drawn carriages and market boats selling a whole cornucopia of vegetables that you might salivate over in a gastronomic dream. A painter informed me that Aegina is the only place in Greece whose light has the same quality as Attica’s and it boasts a fair sprinkling of painters, ceramists and sculptors. Pistachios are a famed crop here on Aegina and the painter and the pistachio farmer could turn out to be one and the same, and trotting home from the cosmopolitan life of the waterfront you are soon in rural peace, in stark contrast to the teeming life of Athens. I climbed onto a bus on the waterfront, with a huge pair of protective eyes painted over the in-side of the windshield, to make the trip to the renowned fifth-century Doric temple of the nymph Aphaia, which forms an equilateral triangle with the Parthenon and the Poseidon temple in Sounion.

At Aphaia, the occupants, mostly black-dressed housewives with their baskets of goodies from the town market, trooped off the bus and the driver carefully handed a schoolgirl a box of eggs to carry to his wife. The monastery crowns its hilltop, with stunning views of the island itself, the Saronic Gulf, moving into the hazy distance to destinations you can only guess at. With that peculiar Greek ability to move through centuries with the curve of a road I left the 5th century and arrived in Portes, a tiny fishing village perched dramatically over the sea; I dined in a tiny taverna perched like an eagle’s eyrie in the cliff edge on fish and crisp potatoes that were the essence of freshness and simplicity.

The variety of Greek islands may hold the key to finding the island of your dreams, for in spite of the incursion of the 20th century they have still retained the enchantment that inspired the great poets Homer and Byron — the scent of frangipani at night, the wine-dark sea, and skies burning with more stars than you thought you’d ever see. The Greeks dedicated the islands to the gods and the gods have mercifully kept alive something pure and otherworldly for us mere mortals to enjoy.