Folegandros

Folegandros is the island people mention quietly, half hoping it stays a secret. There is no airport, no big hotel and no schedule beyond the ferry timetable. What there is: a cliff top village of rare beauty, water of astonishing clarity and the sense, increasingly precious in the Aegean, of an island still living its own life.

Everything centres on the Chora. Built back from a sheer drop to the sea, it folds around the thirteenth century Kastro, where houses double as fortress walls, and opens into a string of small squares under pepper trees. Evenings here follow an old rhythm: a slow dinner outdoors, a walk between the squares, conversation carrying on late under the lamps.

The island's beaches ask a little of you and repay it doubly. Katergo, many say the finest in the Cyclades, is reached by footpath or boat; Agali sits below the Chora in a deep bay; further coves have no road at all. A day with a local boatman, swimming off pale pebbles in water like glass, shows why nobody here is in any hurry to build a bigger port.

With our local team, Folegandros stays effortless as well as pure: rooms on the caldera like cliff with the view you came for, a boat arranged for the beaches worth reaching and the tavernas where the cooking matches the setting. You arrive, and the quiet takes over.