The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
I’ve found my quintessential Greek islands
With its fishing ports, Orthodox chapels, goats, shipwrecks and tales of pirates, the little-visited Fourni archipelago hits the spot for Hugh Thomson
It was on a visit to Ikaria, the island where Icarus supposedly fell into the sea, that I first saw the Fourni Islands. I was standing on a headland by the Tower of Drakano, built more than 2,000 years ago by the Athenians and their Delian League to protect these Aegean waters from the Persian threat.
The tower was high and honey-coloured and a tremendous lookout point, facing east towards the rising sun. Below me on a small outcrop, I could see the small Orthodox Greek chapel of Agios Georgios, and below that a beach of the same name, with immaculate turquoise and translucent water, completely empty.
But the distant view was even more enticing. A sightline had opened up through and into the much smaller and wild islands of Fourni, a scattered archipelago used by pirates for many centuries. It was a place I had heard about but, like so many Greek islands, never reached. Now I could see in their centre the little port of Fourni Korseon, its white houses glittering in the sunshine.
I knew a little of the fearsome history of these islands; how for centuries a freebooting group of French corsairs, Maltese adventurers and fast Arabic boats had used them as a base from which to raid more settled neighbouring islands.
So much so that on Ikaria, villages had been built high up from the shoreline, with caves to retreat to if the Fourni pirates raided. There was even a rule that no Ikarians were allowed to have dogs in case passing pirates heard them as they sailed by and came to investigate.
When I finally had the opportunity to visit the islands, they proved even more entrancing than I had suspected. Lying at the northern end of the Dodecanese, not far from the coast of Turkey, this whole area is far less visited than Rhodes or Kos to the south – or even nearby Patmos, which every summer now sees its population swell tenfold, helped by celebrity visitors such as Julia Roberts and historian William Dalrymple.
The Fourni archipelago is made up of three big islands: Fourni itself, where most visitors base themselves, Agios Minas and Thymaina – and 10 other beautiful small islets. One is listed as having a population of just three shepherds and an unspecified number of goats. The main island got electricity only in 1969, and today the population of the whole archipelago hovers at around 1,200 people.
While there are tales of €70 (£60) sunbeds on Mykonos, there is not a single one to be rented here – although beachside bars have some for free if you buy a drink. Instead, there is the rare and happy feeling that local people still outnumber summer visitors. It is the quintessence of everything you might want from a Greek island experience, yet few people come here for what, in an old joke among English-speaking visitors (who will hate me for publicising the place), is a “Fourni-cation”.
The little harbour port of Fourni Korseon has one of everything: baker, post office and candlestick maker, or the equivalent – a small store selling beeswax, honey and delicious home-made pesto. There are some of the cheapest fruits and vegetables I have ever found in Greece for those who are self-catering (most rooms for rent have simple two-pan stoves).
This can be supplemented by enjoyable foraging: wild thyme and fennel to flavour orzottos; and plenty of ripe prickly pears to pick from cacti, delicious chilled and scooped from the shell. Just be careful not to touch the skin – the prickles have an annoying habit of lingering and being too small to remove easily. And yes, I speak from personal experience.
A few cafés line the waterfront – crayfish is a local speciality – and a delightful tree-lined street leads back to a small square. Wander that way and plenty of cats will give you the eye as locals greet you with “kalimera”. A handsome marble sarcophagus dating from classical times stands beside one of the more exuberant bars.
The Greeks have a charmingly casual attitude towards their own past, partly because they have so much of it. The church above the port is built on the foundations of what was once a classical acropolis, not that any sign tells you that if you decide to visit.
Prices are noticeably lower than on some of the fancier greek islands. Hiring a scooter – the perfect way to get around – costs half as much as on Kos or Zante, say. And a scooter, or a car if you are a family, is ideal for exploring the island as there is only one taxi and its driver, George, is a busy man.
Having your own transport can be a necessity. Remember that Odysseus and his fellow Greeks got blown to pieces when they tried to sail past the Dodecanese on the way back from Troy. There is a lot of wind. But one advantage
that Fourni has over some other islands is that, with beaches on every side, there is always one that is sheltered: from Kamari with its excellent small taverna – the centre for shipwreck investigations – to Vlyhada in the south, often empty apart from a few goats, with a strip of perfect sand and some tamarisk trees for shade.
Those strong winds may have caused all the sailing accidents over the millennia. For shipwreck investigations have gained pace in recent years, with the realisation that around the Fournis lies a greater concentration of wrecks than almost anywhere else in the Aegean.
An astonishing 23 shipwrecks of ancient vessels were found by diving archaeologists at the rate of almost one per day when they explored these waters in 2016; many more are presumed still to be on the seabed. The earliest dates to roughly 525 BC, while others range right across the classical period up to medieval times.
Tension arose when the Greek authorities (the wonderfully named “Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities”) declared an extensive archaeological zone around the shores, which meant local fishermen could not go there. As almost every family has a boat and the islanders define themselves by their relationship with the sea, this was not popular.
Which is not to say locals are not proud of their pirates. Indeed, some might say they are obsessed by them. In almost every house or restaurant, you will see ancient amphorae displayed which have been caught by local fishermen in their nets.
Archaeologists have been able to use the amphorae recovered from shipwrecks to analyse what was being traded – or taken: garum, the fermented fish sauce the Romans so liked, along with cargoes of olive oil and wine, so the pirates must often have been wealthy from their spoils.
An old man in a café told me that he and his friends have often gone searching for the pirate gold which is supposed to be hidden somewhere on the island. He was also proud of their cosmopolitan nature: “We didn’t just have Greek pirates. We had pirates from France, from Turkey, from Malta, from Africa – they all based themselves here. We probably had the odd pirate from England as well.”
The islands are known for the wild thyme which gives such a strong flavour to their honey. One of the charms of walking over the hills is the way the wild thyme and oregano release their scent when you brush against them.
On my last day on the Fournis, I was very fragrant by the time I had walked over the maquis of myrtle and laurel to a headland in the south, from which I could just make out the tantalising silhouette of double-backed Agathonisi in the evening sunlight. I had heard it was even less visited, with just one taverna and a few “sugar-cube” pension-houses; only one ferry a week went there. In Greece, it seems, there is always another island to explore.