The perfect Greek island
Watermelon or baclava? Morning nap or afternoon siesta? This secret beach or that one? Life is full of tough decisions on Skopelos - by Matt Rudd

The man hiring the boat to us wasn’t there when he’d said he would be, so I walked up the stony path, away from the tiny, rickety jetty, until I got one bar on my mobile. I dialled his number and he answered in Greek. I said: “Hello, it’s Matt. We booked a boat at 10am and it’s 10am now.”

In reply, he spoke for two whole minutes, both of them still in Greek. From what I could gather from his tone, he was neither apologetic nor angry. If I were pressed, I’d say he sounded philosophical. Expansive even. At the very most, judicious.

When it sounded like he had finished his piece, I took my chance: “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Greek.” I said it in English because I didn’t know how to say “I don’t speak Greek” in Greek. “Fifteey. N. Minits,” he offered.Back at the tiny, rickety jetty, Freddie, my son, was unconcerned, primarily because he was only 18 months old.

“He said, “Fifteey. N. Minits,” I explained. “Fifteen minutes?” “I’m not sure. There was an N, a definite N, but I’m not convinced it was attached to the 50 or the minutes. It could have been 50... Nminutes. Or fifteeeeeen minutes. It’s impossible to say.”

“For goodness’ sake,” she replied, scrunching up her face in the rising heat of the morning.

Twenty-four minutes later, the man arrived in his pickup and greeted each of us with a grunt. Freddie grunted back. The man then siphoned some diesel from one boat to another, showed me how to start the outboard engine, advised us to put on life jackets, without advising us where they might be, then made to leave again.

“Don’t you need a credit-card deposit?”
“No.”
“Don’t I need to sign a disclaimer?”
“No.”
“Which way should we go?”
“That way.”
“Are we allowed to stop at any beach?”
“Yes.”
“How do we stop?”
“Throw in the anchor when you are 10 metres away.”

And before I could ask anything about tides or currents or metres, he left.

I know the whole point of going to a sleepy Greek island for your summer holiday is so that it leaves you no choice but to unwind. There is nothing to do but sit around all day on the beach, rising only to cool off in the turquoise waters, then retire, sun-kissed, to a taverna for stuffed vegetables, beer and a life-affirming sunset. I know that. But it’s still difficult.

All the usual dilemmas of life (How do I get to work when the Tube’s not working?/If we send Freddie to a private nursery, will he become a tweed-jacket-wearing toff before he’s 18?/Do I buy organic chicken from the supermarket or bog-standard chicken from the nice butcher?) don’t exist on a secluded Greek island, but they’re replaced by other ones. And they become just as worrying. You spend a whole morning trying to decide whether you can be fagged to drive 5km further to beach B because it’s slightly nicer than beach A. You agonise over whether you should have the moussaka or the calamari. You threaten divorce over whose turn it is to give whom a back massage.

It is, as I’m sure you can imagine, tough – and on Skopelos particularly so. It is so perfect, you really have to scratch around to find things to get worked up about. It doesn’t have an airport, for a start – you are forced to arrive and leave in a relaxed hydrofoilish way from Skiathos. It has just one main town, which is too wiggly and hilly and whitewash gorgeous to do anything as taxing as drive round. It has no multinational one-stop supermarkets and far more monasteries than you’d expect on an island of about 5,000 people. And it has very little of archaeological, cultural or scenic interest beyond a genuinely unspoilt, forested interior. There’s the odd tomb, some Byzantine icons, a Venetian castle and a really crumbly temple: not bothering to see any of them is not like going to Athens and skipping the Acropolis, so relax.

If you do want to break the fabulous monotony of beach life, you can walk up into the forests (this is one of Greece’s greenest islands), have a snoop around a hilltop chapel, spot birds – I don’t know. Some people even come to Skopelos on walking holidays. Weirdos.

And although there are enough tavernas along the pretty seafront to feel as if you have a choice, you haven’t really: the one at the very end and the one three along are by far the best. You can get worked up in the process of establishing that, but I’m going to save you the bother by telling you the best restaurants in the smart guide below.

Now you see why it’s tough to keep yourself from panicking about nothing. Fortunately for me, there was the whole boat thing. Just at the point where I really was spending an hour trying to decide whether to have a slice of fresh watermelon or fresh baklava, Harriet found the boat-hire leaflet.

Some of my earliest childhood memories are of my father put-putting my sister and me off to boat-only beaches on Paxos, Corfu and Skopelos. Now, as a father myself, the chance to rediscover that sense of freedom, to escape the shackles of our health-and-safety-dominated lives, was exciting. Almost thrilling by Skopelos standards.

Except I was being all English about it. What if we got struck by a freak wave? What if we ran out of petrol? What if that tanker didn’t see us? Why couldn’t that man have given us a proper safety demonstration?

Fortunately, Harriet was determined that we would enjoy ourselves. She’s good like that. She sat at the bow, languorously selecting one beach, then another, then another for closer inspection. To me, battling with the motor at the back, they all looked fine and, more importantly, land-based. Eventually, about an hour up the west coast of the island, she found one she was happy with. It was sandy, it had the requisite band of turquoise before shelving into deep blue and it was cut off from the rest of the island by impenetrable, sweet-smelling forests. We could all run around naked if we wanted.

With a deep, brave breath, I turned the boat and made for land.

“How far is 10 metres?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is that 10 yet?”
“I’d say that was about 40. Can’t you go a little faster?”
“How about now?”
“Thirty-eight. It’s going to get dark soon.”
“Those waves look quite big.”
“They’re fine. Nearly there.”
“Pass me the anchor. Pass me the anchor. For Chrissakes, pass me the anchor.”
“Don’t get so stressed.”
“Now?”
“I s’pose.” I threw in the anchor and watched as the whole rope uncoiled and vanished into the water after it.
“Why didn’t you attach the rope?”
“Well, I can’t do everything myself.”
“You’re an idiot. Now jump in and find our anchor.”

You’ve been warned: Skopelos is the perfect Greek island.

Sunday Times, January 13, 2008