I taught English in Greece once, not very well, although every child in one Thessaly fishing village did acquire perfect Lancashire vowels. I longed for the weekends, when a group of us English teachers would escape to nearby Mount Pelion. In the winter we'd catch the bus up and ski. The rest of the year we walked, off-road, not so much as a barley sugar between us; crashing straight up through wild thyme and chestnut groves; strolling from the undergrowth at 2,600ft in time for lunch. Now, years later, an organised 'Aegean Islands hike' makes me nervous. Nine days, three islands, one very comprehensive itinerary, with people I don't know and a leader with a whistle.
We reach Tinos on the early boat from Piraeus still getting each others' names wrong. Five of us are British, five American, one Indian, one Australian. Women outnumber men two to one and the age range is 27 to 72. We look like a jury on day release. For some, Greece is new, exotic and, as Curt from Florida points out, in breach of all US health and safety regulations when it comes to disembarking from a ferry: everyone at once, trucks, old ladies, tweeting boxfuls of day-old chicks, almost before the gangway hits the quay.
There may be more beautiful islands in the Cyclades but Tinos is a one-off. It was the last to surrender to Ottoman rule, in 1715; because the Venetians held on for so long here, a large Catholic community survives. Tinos became a place of pilgrimage for Orthodox Greeks after a miracle involving a nun. Stray from the noisy, colonnaded harbour and you're in souvenir heaven. A woman tops and tails beans in her doorway flanked by 6ft processional candles wrapped in orange and pink paper. Windchimes tinkle. Her neighbour wafts incense at you, then weighs it out by the gram in delicate shades from carbon to lilac. Further up the street, reproduction icons gaze with big eyes at beach balls, didgeridoos, bikini Barbies and 15 kinds of Virgin Mary fridge magnet.
For every 11 inhabitants of Tinos, there is one chapel: white, with a blue cross; tiny, many of them in the middle of nowhere or in people's back gardens. 'This place is way over-churched,' observes John, from Waco, Texas, as we snake inland on the bus to Falatados. An hour later, families lunching in the shade look on as people in shorts file out into the afternoon sun.
'No one mentioned long trousers,' says Steve from Washington DC, darkly, to his partner Susan as our English guide Sarah announces that the going will be 'quite prickly'. Unburdened by any apparent knowledge of Greek culture, history, language, flora or fauna, Sarah leads a high-speed charge up Mount Tsiknias, through knee-high thorns and ones that get you right in the ankle.
We're all in proper boots and quite a few people have sticks, those lightweight metal ones, so they must know what they're doing. Yet the group splits into two almost immediately: the racers, who include a woman with no cartilage in one knee, and the dawdlers, among them two marathon runners. Stop to smell the roadside fennel, look at huge farmyard beasts or take in how far you've climbed in so short a time and you're soon left behind, carrying the whistle in case you become lost. All the best conversations happen here.
The next day is Sunday and a five-hour walk. We leave Falatados at 9am, to the sound of duetting priests and bells outdoing more bells, but there are no visible signs of life. The night before was the annual raki festival. The whole village filled the schoolyard: children played on the swings, alcohol flowed as nectar and the band never stopped. Four of us went, and slept like logs afterwards; those who listened to the bouzouki in bed for hours look wasted. Steve thinks he finally drifted off during the raffle results, announced over the PA system at 1.30am.
By mid-morning we've climbed to Exoburgo, a Venetian fortress with television aerials on it. We press on. I photograph pillows of star-shaped spikes no one can identify, let alone walk through, and drop further behind. The colours of Tinos are lovely, like a gentlemen's outfitters: russet, sage, mustard and fig against the grey of a thundery sky. At Kolymbithra there's a small beach. Saltwater enlivens the day's injuries.
The next ferry stop north, Andros is made for walking. Numbered routes criss-cross the island, marked with daubs of red paint every few metres. You really can't go wrong. Many paths are enclosed by Venetian stone walls: whole slabs stood up, topped by smaller stones leaning one way, then another. The tiered hillsides are dotted with palatial whitewashed dovecotes, two storeys high, each with its own decorative design (those Venetians again).
We scramble to the tenth-century monastery of Panachrantou: Colditz on the outside; inside, a flower-filled courtyard, running spring water, a box of vegetables by the kitchen door. By the nineteenth century, 300 monks lived here. Now there are two. If you're lucky, you'll be shown round by the charming, handsome 30-year-old one who, in the sweet, glittering gloom of the chapel, tells us that they burn 150 kilos of candles a year, polish and pray. He's pointing out the monastery's prize relic, the skull of a local doctor-turned-saint, when in no uncertain terms he's called away by a white-bearded man in vest and braces; good monk, bad monk.
Weekending Athenian millionaires have colonised much of Andros, but in the village of Siteri a man called Iannis climbs up to the road with a gift of two huge, dripping bunches of rosaki grapes. He used to be a sailor: 'Hartlepool, Liverpool, Newcastle_'
The valley floor is lush with streams, mint, burst figs, hawthorn and oleander. At the baked hilltop fortress of Paleokastro, Charlie, the group's resident orthotist, holds an impromptu foot clinic after lunch, making Curt walk up and down in a straight line; admiring Steve's customised insoles and Australian Kathryn's posture. That afternoon we do some of our best trekking: the racers thwack ahead through tall grass, the dawdlers listen for goat bells.
On day six, Evia appears through Aegean mist in the shape of 14 wind turbines spinning above the port of Rafina. Evia is the second-largest island in Greece and so close to the mainland that it's largely overlooked by tourists. But we're here to climb wild Mount óhi - a two-day trek with an overnight stay in a mountain refuge and a visit to some haunted sixth-century ruins. I've been looking forward to this all week.
'I can't believe we've paid for this,' says Steve, as we unpack our sodden belongings after a four-hour march uphill in rain. There is no hot water, or any difference between the toilet and the shower. One or two people take to their bunk beds. Unable to continue to the summit that afternoon, we make a fire, drink beer, play cards (our leader comes into her own here) and fight over the only book for several miles, a jumble-sale copy of a Clare Francis novel.
But it was worth it, to walk down through Tolkienesque mist and ghostly, fire-scorched slopes with a carnival of unseen goats. The Dimosaris gorge swallows us up until chestnuts, maples, waterfalls and shiny red toadstools give way to the sea. At the end of the road is a taverna run by the Mizas family, who look back up the astonishing gorge from their geranium-festooned balcony, cook the best food, then teach you how to dance.
Factfile
Carol McDaid travelled with Explore Worldwide (01252 760 000) The nine-day Aegean Islands Hike departs between April and September (except for July and August) and costs from £555 per person. The price includes flights, transportation, eight nights' accommodation (hotels, pensions, taverna and mountain refuge), some meals and the services of an Explore tour leader.
