Chalkida, Eretria & Dirfys

At Chalkida the water narrows to forty metres and you simply drive across — which is why almost nobody treats Evia as an island. The strait, the Euripus, does something strange: the current reverses direction roughly every six hours, then becomes irregular for a few days each month, and Aristotle is said to have spent time trying to explain it. People still lean on the railing of the old bridge to watch the water run the wrong way. Athens is about an hour and a quarter away, which makes this the easiest base on the island for a first visit.

Eretria, half an hour down the coast, was a major ancient city and a rival of Chalkida, and the Swiss have been excavating it since the 1960s — theatre, temple, baths and the House of Mosaics are scattered through the modern town, with a good museum to make sense of them.

Behind Chalkida, Mount Dirfys rises to 1,743 m and the village of Steni at its foot is where Athenians go for chestnuts and cold air. Over the ridge on the Aegean side the coast turns wild: Chiliadou under its wooded cliff, Thapsa and Kalamos. Kymi, a balcony of a town above its own port, has the ferry to Skyros.