first visit to south corfu

We've just come back from a lovely fortnight in Ag. Gordios.  We've never stayed down this end of the island before, always having stayed in Sidari or Kassiopi.  What a lovely  place for a relaxing(?) holiday.  We did a marathon walk one day from Ag. Gordios to Kato Garouna, then from Kato Garouna up the track to the viewpoint where you could see from A.gordios beach right across to Corfu town (I think this is where they do the paragliding from).  Then we walked back down and went to Pentati and collapsed into Chris's place for lunch.  Someone had told us about a track across the cliffs from Pentati to Ag. Gordios, so we set off to find it and missed the turn and ended up on Pentati beach. By this time we were absolutely shattered, but had no option but to walk back up the hill.  We found the path and had a great time scrambling about across the cliffs to Ag. Gordios - some great views of 'Tracey' island which I'll try to upload later.

We also took the kalderimi (donkey trail) upto Aerostato - you just follow the sign off the main road for the Sinarades footpath, follow the wide track for a while, and look for the 'bottle tree' on the right and take the little steep path right up the side of the hill.  There's a cafe when you get to the top, then if you come out of the cafe and go right, then turn left down a hill past a few houses, it takes you down in to lovely Sinarades where it's great to sit in the cafe on the road by the square.  We were going to walk back but we had another storm and torrential downpour so as it was 5pm and we knew that the bus would come to the square at 6pm ish, we had a couple more beers and took the easy option!

We had a few excellent thunderstorms - the best one on the Saturday night when we had simultaneous thundercracks and lightning forks right infront of us, and the rain ran down the high street like a little river, trapping people in the tavernas for an hour (although they could have escaped if they really wanted to! - it was only a few inches deep).

We hired a scooter, it was only 30 euros for three days (found out after it would only have been about 50 euros for a week - we'll do that next time). We followed the road out of Pentati towards Paramonas which took us through some fantastic old olive groves; it was like being in an enchanted forest!  Paramonas beach was sandy, very quiet with a taverna which served the best spanakopiata I've ever had.  We then went on down to Lake Korission which was lovely, and Chalikounas beach which runs alongside the lake was almost deserted and very beautiful.  We couldn't go without seeing Kavos while we were down there, which is a lot bigger than I expected, but we found a nice taverna which served a nice meal and an ice cold carafe of white wine, and we sat and people watched for a while.  we went back through Strongilli and missed the turn we wanted and ended up going back thorugh Agii Dekka, but it was a lovely detour and the mountain village is great.  The next day the scooter took us to the Achilleon which we have never visited despite having visited Corfu quite a few times in the last 15 years.  We got there for 9am and there were already 8 coaches there - then we realised it opened at 8am. We wandered about for a bit and managed to find a lull between coach parties and saw most of the house on our own.  I'd recommend a visit there, the building's lovely and the decor is very extravagant.

The rest of the holiday we spent lazing on the huge beach, or sitting on our balcony with an ouzo.  It's a lovely place, and although at first we missed the relatively lively nightlife of Kassiopi, by the end of the holiday we had got into the pace of the place and didn't want to leave.  We'll definitely be going back! - Walks, mountains, beaches and villages where people still wave back to you and call 'kali mera' - what more could you want?

di & dave

(Moderator - I know this is a bit long winded but I hope there's some useful information in it - feel free to edit it down however you want!)