A retreat far from the madding ski crowds
The Epirus region of Greece offers a blissful, budget-friendly alternative to the more traditional resorts – and a chance to spot bears, writes Heidi Fuller-Love
It was deceptively cuddly with its fluffy Paddington Bear ears and ruff of fur
Greece was experiencing the warmest winter on record when I arrived in the Epirus region, straddled between north-west Greece and southern Albania, in late February. As I hiked part of the 32km perimeter of Aoos River Lake in the Pindus mountains, behind my guide Giorgos, from Epirus Adventures, it was so hot I stripped to my T-shirt beneath skies as blue as stonewashed denim.
Epirus has budget-friendly slopes and reasonably priced tavernas and, with snow generally expected between December and late March, it is loved by Greeks seeking great-value winter fun.
Although I was visiting to ski, there were advantages to the warm weather. Greece has an estimated 450 brown bears and, at 1,340 meters up in pine-furred mountains, Aoos lake is one of their preferred habitats.
Normally they’d still be hibernating in late February, but, as I drove back towards my hotel that evening, I glimpsed one lumbering through the forest. The size of a Shetland pony, it looked deceptively cuddly with its fluffy Paddington Bear ears and stiff ruff of cinnamon-coloured fur.
My base was Katogi Averoff, a boutique hotel named for one of the region’s best-known families. It is in Metsovo, a northern town around an hour and a half from Albania and the epicentre of Greece’s nomadic Vlach population.
Metsovo’s mottled stone buildings with shuttered windows and long low roofs – some topped with slate the colour of elephant hide – descended steeply to a central plateia (square). The square was lined with tavernas, fountains, guest houses advertising rooms with tzaki (fireplaces) and large sheepdogs padding around on bear-sized paws.
That evening, at locally loved taverna, Galaxias, I lounged on a tapestry-cushioned bench by a log fire and devoured spicy loukaniko sausages, herb-smoked metsovone cheese and agriogourouno wild boar slow-cooked in a wine sauce, while Galaxias’s owner, Giorgos, regaled me with tales of big bad bruins devouring horses, raiding barns and getting drunk on ouzo.
Cut off from the world until the advent of tourism in the 1980s,
Metsovo was once one of Greece’s poorest hamlets. The wider province of Epirus is still one of the poorest in Europe.
Like many of its inhabitants, most of Metsovo’s poverty-stricken men were forced to seek work overseas, until substantial investment by the Averoff family reinvigorated the town.
While enjoying breakfast at Katogi Averoff – sheep’s yoghurt as thick as clotted cream drizzled with resin-yellow local honey and dotted with walnuts – I read about Georgios Averoff, who was one of the economic exiles.
Leaving Metsovo for Alexandria in Egypt in 1837, the boy became a successful businessman who later invested his considerable fortune in financing various projects in his home country, including the building of the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens.
Later, Averoff’s grandnephew Evangelos was the driving force behind the creation of a philanthropic foundation to finance the building of schools and museums in and around the region of Epirus. These days, Metsovo, which is also home to The Averoff gallery (showcasing work of 19th and 20th-century Greek artists) and the Katogi Averoff winery (stocked with tannin-rich wines from the Averoff’s own vineyards), is the family’s main shrine.
With ski slopes still closed and no sign of snow, I spent the following days in Ioannina, the medieval lakeside city near Metsovo that is like a miniature Rhodes.
I visited the Silversmithing Museum that commemorates the town’s history of making silver jewellery, lunched on meze at Filalimata’s family-run taverna near the stalagmite- and stalactite-littered Perama cave and criss-crossed Lake Pamvotida on a horn-tooting boat to wander cobbled lanes and visit monasteries on Ioannina’s tiny island on the other side.
One evening, I drove to 1350. Named for its altitude, this restaurant is reached via a narrow-rutted road with scarybut-spectacular views of Metsovo far below. I lingered over lightly charred cauliflower dusted with truffle flakes, fresh trout fished from the Aoos River, and a beef fillet cooked in a wood oven and dished up with a gravy-thick wine and onion sauce.
As I gazed at the cold night – sipping my Averoff Inima wine, and musing that my feast had cost a quarter of what I would have paid in the UK – the snow began to fall. I spent the final days on the slopes of Anilio, one of the country’s newest ski resorts. Since Greeks generally ski at weekends – and even though a day pass cost only €13 (£11) – I had the place almost to myself.
Watching the sun melt like raspberry syrup over the mountains on my last day, I was sad to leave. Metsovo couldn’t match Zermatt or Chamonix for snow, but with ouzo-drinking bears, affordable tavernas and Vlach culture, this magical region of Greece made a blissful budget alternative far from the madding ski crowds.