A Week in Paleokastritsa, Corfu

The view over Paleokastrista in Corfu with the beach, the village, the harbour, all wrapped in verdant vegetation and that beautiful blue sea.

Corfu was my introduction to Greece and I loved it almost immediately.

It wasn’t quite the Greece I had pictured. It was greener, wilder and somehow softer — olive groves, cypress trees, steep hills, old stone, faded pink and green buildings and water so clear the boats looked like they were floating in mid-air. I stayed in Paleokastritsa for a week and basically walked, photographed, caught buses, ate very well and got lost. A lot. Apparently my sense of direction does not travel well to the Northern Hemisphere. Google Maps would say left. I would confidently decide it meant right. It did not. Corfu Town bore the brunt of this, although there are worse places to be completely geographically compromised. Around every corner there seemed to be another laneway, faded wall, shutter, doorway, balcony or tiny detail begging to be photographed. So I kept walking. And photographing. And occasionally discovering I had walked back to where I started. Excellent.

The water was so clear in Paleokastritsa the boats looked like they were floating on air.

I walked a LOT that week. One day I set off from Paleokastritsa and hiked across to Angelokastro through little villages, olive groves and along ancient pathways. I suspect it should have taken considerably less time.But there were cats. And doorways. And old architectural details. Poppies. Jasmine. Bougainvillea. Wildflowers. Giant dandelions — genuinely enormous things. Mossy stone walls, twisted olive trees and light doing interesting things everywhere I looked. Basically, I was never going to get anywhere quickly. And that is exactly why I loved it.

I didn’t have my own transport - and you do sort of need it to really dig in and explore the island. But I used the bus and I walked. For miles. Walking lets you see all the bits between the places you are supposedly going to see. The ordinary stuff. Someone’s front step. A cat asleep against an old wall. Flowers growing out of cracks. A chair left outside a doorway. Olive trees that look as though they have been standing there since Zeus was a boy.That is the stuff I want to photograph.

Then there was the sea. Paleokastritsa has some of the clearest water I have ever seen. Blue, green, turquoise, glassy — and endless source of fascination for me. You can see the ripples in the sand at the bottom and the fish. A great way to see Paleokastritsa is from the sea and I took a little boat along the coast and into the caves, past beaches tucked into the cliffs and enormous rocky headlands. I probably should have put the camera down occasionally and simply enjoyed myself. You can imagine how that went.

Colours of Corfu - many of the buildings are painted pink and green in Corfu

Corfu also gave me my first encounter with proper Greek yoghurt. OH. MY. GOD. Thick Greek yoghurt, honey. That was it. Life-changing. I also tried candied kumquats — very much a Corfu thing — and added those to the growing list of reasons why travelling via your stomach is an excellent idea.

And then, of course, there were the Durrells. I loved The Durrells, so there was absolutely no chance I was going to Corfu without doing the tour. Gerald Durrell spent part of his childhood here with his famously eccentric family, and seeing the places connected with them, along with locations used in the series, was a complete treat.

Suddenly all those olive groves, little coves, animals and slightly chaotic island life made even more sense.

Corfu certainly has its resort side. There’s a long history of British tourism and you can absolutely have the sun-lounger-and-resort version if that’s your thing. But wander a little further and there’s another Corfu.

Villages. Local buses. Quiet beaches. Old tracks through the olives. Cats everywhere. Weathered buildings. Tavernas. People getting on with their lives. That was the bit I loved.

I walked a lot, photographed an almost unreasonable amount, got lost repeatedly and discovered that real Greek yoghurt had ruined me for all future yoghurt.

Pretty successful first week in Greece, really.

-Georgie