Karpathos

ΑFar from everywhere, and it shows

Karpathos lies about 47 kilometres south-west of Rhodes, halfway to Crete, in the open sea with nothing around it. That isolation is the whole character of the island: as Wikipedia puts it, Karpathos has preserved peculiarities of dress, customs and dialect that elsewhere went long ago. It is big — the highest point, Kali Limni, reaches 1,215 metres — and it has eleven villages and one road that matters, running the length of a mountain ridge with the sea on both sides.

The capital and main port is Pigadia in the south-east. Around it sit the old hill villages — Menetes, Arkasa, Finiki, Pyles, Othos, Volada and Aperi, the former capital with a ruined castle above it. These villages were built inland and high up, out of sight of the sea, for the usual reason.

ΒOlympos

The north is a separate country. Olympos hangs along a ridge at about 600 metres with windmills on the skyline, reached either by a long mountain road or by boat to Diafani and then a bus. Older women still wear the village dress every day rather than for visitors, the dialect retains forms lost elsewhere in Greek, and the bakeries use communal wood ovens. Above it, Avlona is a farming hamlet of a handful of houses, and the cave sanctuary at Vrougounda on the coast below is one of the strangest places in the Dodecanese.

ΓBeaches worth the drive

Apella is the one on the posters — a steep bowl of pine and white rock with turquoise water, reached by a hairpin road and then steps. Kyra Panagia, with its red-domed church, and Achata are its neighbours on the same east coast. Lefkos in the west is a series of sandy bays with a small resort; Agios Nikolaos at Arkasa and Finiki are the family choices; Diakoftis in the far south is white sand over pale sand-bottom water, as close to the Caribbean as Greece gets.

ΔWind

The southern plain at Afiartis gets a reliable, strong summer meltemi funnelled down the island, and it has been a serious windsurfing and kitesurfing destination for decades, with schools and international competitions at Makrygialos and the bays beside it. If you do not sail, the same wind is the reason the east coast can be rough in July and August — plan around it.

ΕGetting there and when to go

The airport sits on the southern plain and takes domestic flights from Athens and Rhodes; ferries run from Piraeus via Crete and Rhodes, which is a long crossing. See ferries and airports. Hire a car: the island is too long and too steep to see otherwise, and the buses are few. June and September are the best compromise between warm sea and manageable wind. Much of the north closes from November to April.