Lesvos

ΑBig, and shaped like nothing else

Lesvos is the third-largest Greek island and two enormous gulfs — Kalloni and Gera — cut so deeply into it that the map looks like a hand. That geography sets the itineraries: the east is olive country, dark green and dense, with Mytilene and the villages of the Gera gulf; the centre is the shallow, bird-filled Kalloni gulf; the west, beyond Kalloni, turns suddenly bare, volcanic and treeless. Driving from the airport to Sigri at the far west takes two and a half hours. Plan around that, or you will spend the week in the car.

ΒThe petrified forest

Twenty million years ago volcanic ash buried a subtropical forest in the west of the island and replaced the wood, cell by cell, with silica. What is left is standing trunks of sequoia, pine and palm, some of them over seven metres high, scattered across bare hills — a UNESCO Global Geopark, with a park near Sigri where you walk between them on marked paths and an excellent museum in the village that explains the whole eruption. It is the single most unusual thing on any of these islands and it is almost always empty.

ΓMolyvos, Mytilene and the villages

Molyvos, properly Mithymna, is the picture of Lesvos: grey stone houses in tiers under a Genoese castle, lanes roofed with wisteria, a fishing harbour below. Petra next door has a church on top of a rock with a hundred and fourteen steps to it. Mytilene is a real city of thirty thousand people, with one of the largest castles in the Mediterranean, an ancient theatre, a good archaeological museum and the Theophilos museum at Varia, devoted to the naive painter who died poor on this island. Agiasos, high under Mount Olympos, is the mountain village with the ceramics and the big pilgrimage church.

ΔOuzo, olive oil and sardines

Plomari on the south coast is the ouzo town, with distilleries that have been there since the nineteenth century and a main square built for drinking it slowly. Ouzo is drunk with food here, never alone, and the food it is drunk with is usually the salted sardine of Kalloni — the shallow gulf produces a small fat sardine that is cured for a few days and eaten raw with oil. The olive oil is the island's other living: the olive-press museum at Agia Paraskevi explains an industry that once had hundreds of steam-powered mills.

ΕBeaches

The north has Molyvos and Eftalou, where a hot spring runs into the sea under the cliffs, plus Anaxos for sand and Tsonia with its reddish shingle on the north-east coast. The south has the long one: Vatera, nine kilometres of sand and the biggest beach on the island, plus the sheltered coves around Plomari like Ammoudeli and Agios Isidoros. Skala Eressou in the west, below the village where Sappho is said to have been born, has a long dark-sand beach and has been a destination for women travellers for decades.

ΣΤGetting there and around

Mytilene airport (MJT) has flights from Athens and Thessaloniki and seasonal European charters; ferries run from Piraeus, along the North Aegean line to Chios and Limnos, and across to Ayvalik in Turkey. From Romania, connect through Athens. See ferries and island hopping. You need a car, and you should expect to drive: it is an hour from Mytilene to Molyvos and considerably more to the west. Lesvos is on the reduced-VAT list.

ΖWho it is for

Travellers with a week or more, a car and an appetite — this is one of the best eating and drinking islands in Greece. It suits birdwatchers, geologists, walkers and anyone who likes a place that is clearly not performing for visitors. Skip it for a short break, or if you want to be able to walk from your room to three different beaches.