Andros

ΑThe one with water

Andros is the second largest of the Cyclades and the least Cycladic of them. It has springs, streams, plane trees and terraced valleys that stay green into July, and the villages are built of slate and schist rather than whitewash. Two hours from Rafina, and the ferry carries on to Tinos and Mykonos with most of the passengers still on board.

What it does not have is a beach-resort strip. There is one small resort, Batsi; there is the port, Gavrio; and there is Chora, the town, which is something else entirely — a single street of marble paving running out along a rock spine, lined with the houses of the shipping families who made Andros rich, and ending at a ruined Venetian castle joined to the shore by a stone bridge.

ΒWalking is the reason to come

Around 300 kilometres of old stone footpaths have been cleared and waymarked across the island — the network signed as the Andros Route. These are not scenic loops invented for visitors; they are the roads the villages used before there were roads, running between dry-stone walls, past watermills and dovecotes, over arched bridges. You can walk from coast to coast in a few days or take an afternoon from Apikia down to the Pythara waterfalls, which is the walk everyone does first.

The other inland set pieces are the fountains of Menites, where the water comes out of lion heads under a plane tree, and Panachrantou Monastery, a white fortress of a building on a cliff ledge an hour's climb above Falika.

ΓMuseums you would not expect

Chora holds the Museum of Contemporary Art, founded by the Goulandris shipping family, with a permanent sculpture collection and a summer exhibition that regularly brings major names to an island of 9,000 people. Next door the Archaeological Museum keeps the Hermes of Andros. Out west, the ancient capital Palaiopoli tips down a hillside into the sea, and the Geometric settlement at Zagora sits on a headland behind an 110-metre wall.

ΔBeaches

The sheltered west coast has the easy ones: Chrysi Ammos, Kypri and the town beach at Batsi, all sandy, all with sunbeds and tavernas. The north and east are wilder — Achla at the mouth of a river valley, Vitali and Zorkos down rough tracks, Ateni in its double bay. Several need a car with some clearance and all of them are exposed to the meltemi.

ΕGetting there and when

Ferries run from Rafina to Gavrio in about two hours — Rafina is the closer port to Athens airport, roughly 30 minutes by KTEL bus. No airport on the island. May, June, September and early October are best: the paths are walkable, the water is warm by June, and in August the Athenians who own half the houses are all here at once. Winter is quiet and wet, which is why the island is green.