Vasiliki & the south: Porto Katsiki and Egremni

Vasiliki's bay funnels a thermal wind that arrives most summer afternoons with enough consistency to have built a whole industry around it — schools, board hire, and a village full of people with sunburnt forearms. Mornings are flat and calm, which is when the beginners go out and everyone else swims.

Round the headland are Egremni and Porto Katsiki, the beaches that sell Lefkada. Porto Katsiki is reached by a long stair down from a clifftop car park. The stairway to Egremni was destroyed in an earthquake and most people now arrive by boat from Vasiliki or Nidri — which is, honestly, the better way to see this coast anyway.

At the very tip, Cape Lefkatas is a sheer white headland with a lighthouse on it, the cliff that Sappho is said to have jumped from. There is nothing there but wind, rock and the view, and it is the best hour you will spend on the island.