TRAVEL GUIDE: Shoulder Season in Folegandros

The magic, far-flung Greek island you should make plans for off season...

Kalimera from Athens,

Between ferrying to and fro across the Aegean, I really wanted to take a moment and share the incredible experience I had in Folegandros just over a week ago. If you’re considering a ‘shoulder-season’ holiday this Autumn or you’re planning your 2025 trip to Greece, I would love this email to implore you to look into Folegandros. Please, by-pass the overcrowded spots that really could do without extra foot-fall, and enjoy a real and authentic version of the Greece I know and love.

A sail away from Santorini, perhaps Greece’s most well known (and sadly, over-touristed island) this magical spot with wild, craggy cliff egdes and the Cyclades’ most pretty ‘Chora’ (town), lies resplendent and overlooked by most travellers.

It takes a good four hour ferry from the port of Piraeus to arrive at and partly also because of the Santorini instagram phenomenon, Folegandros has avoided becoming built up and crowded. The landscape, like much of the Cycladic islands, is sun-burnt orange, lapped at by the inky blue Aegean. Dusty, rock-strewn roads and dirt tracks wind around the tiny island that takes only twenty minutes to cross by car. Goats are the island’s main occupants. There are only 400 permanent residents that stick around throughout the winter months.

I’m struck by how little development has happened on Folegandros. The ferry port won’t be expanded and there’s no airport to give people the go ahead for mass tourism to descend. The locals are proud and staunchly refuse to allow paid-for sun loungers on their wild beaches. The clear trees and rocks suffice for the people of Folegandros. Why pay 15 euro (or triple that if you’re in Mykonos) for shade when nature has bestowed the island with its very own?

On my first day I take a boat from local Agali beach and we chug along with a moustached captain to Agios Nikolaos, a beautiful bay with turquoise waters, home to a hippie style beach shack, a fish taverna and little else. I’m charged 50 cents for that journey. I can hardly believe it. I would happily have paid 20 euros. My hunch is that the locals don’t care so much about making a buck, as they do about preserving the character of the island.

It’s a cliche, I know, but on Folegandros, I feel like time actually has stood still. I find that I can pause with it and finally breathe after a summer of non-stop travel for my next book and a crazy three months of solo parenting my (now bat-shit crazy) two year old while my man worked away. I have very little phone signal and put it away, content to read my book (Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson - I couldn’t recommend it enough) and scribbling notes in a notepad about the next book I want to write.

Below is a special guide for my paid-subsribers, featuring places to stay, eat, shop and explore on the island. I can’t recommend Folegandros enough and I’m so happy to share the below must-visit spots for you all.