Greek Island Hopping - Part 2: Leros

The second location on our Dodecanese odyssey was the tiny island of Leros. Occupying an area of just 26 square miles with no all-inclusive hotels, a port too small to accommodate cruise ships and a two hour ferry/catarmaran voyage from Kos, the nearest island with an international airport, it's way off the radar of your average tourist.

We stayed in Pandeli, a traditional fishing village nestled in the shadow of an imposing Mediaeval castle. Our trendy apartment was in the old town, overlooked by a derelict Italianate mansion I'd sell a kidney to own.

 Dimitri, our delightful host, had recently returned to the island of his birth after living & working in New York for over ten years. As a welcome gift he presented us with a bottle of superb local red wine, just what the doctor ordered after such an eventful voyage!

Leros knocks Santorini into a cocked hat....no crowds, no £2000 a night apartments, no VIP bars....this is Greece in all her rugged, authentic & unpretentious glory! The Greece we fell in love with back in the 1980s.

 Savannah's on Pandeli harbour is the largest bar on the island. mostly frequented by locals (and cats) and where you order wine by the kilo. They play excellent music and close when the last person goes home...we had some very late nights here! 

We met Doune and Bob on our first night. Although they'd lived on Ibiza for 16 years, Doune had been visiting Leros since the 1990s and gave us loads of invaluable insider tips (and we had an absolute blast hanging out with them). 

There's three tavernas in the village. frequented by a mixture of locals, travellers, the sailing jetset, who arrive by tender and swagger across the beach in their designer finery or plebs like us who dance down the jetty in our charity shopped outfits! 

@vixbrearley Kalispera from Leros! #greece #islandhopping #saturdaynight ♬ Mamma Mia - From 'Mamma Mia!' Original Motion Picture Soundtrack - Meryl Streep

Lerian cuisine is incredible, traditional Greek with a twist. The island is famed for its thyme honey, avocados, sheep's cheese & shrimps and is the only place in Greece where guavas grow, so lots of the local cheese dishes are served drizzled with honey or baked with guava jam but, as a vegetarian I can't tell you anything about the shrimps!

A local shepherd wandered around the tavernas with his homemade cheeses, slicing off chunks for diners to sample. Oh man, they were wonderful!

My Shirley Valentine moment!

The island only has one bus and it was in the garage for repairs when we were there! Luckily, car hire is very reasonable (approx £30 a day) but be warned, the single track roads around the villages are extremely narrow with inches to spare between buildings... I was more scared being a passenger than I was on the catamaran in a Force 8 gale.

These traditional Lerian houses are open to the public daily, except on Saturdays, the day we visited! A great excuse to go back!

We headed to Merikea to visit The Tunnel Museum situated in one of the network of tunnels built by the Italians who occupied the Dodecanese archipelago from 1912 until 1943. The museum is crammed with tanks, bombs and all manner of artifacts either found on the island or donated by individuals. Leros is the island of Navarone, which inspired Alistair MacLean to write the Guns of Navarone based on the infamous Battle of Leros. The battle lasted for almost 50 days and nights from September 23rd until November 16th, 1943, when the German forces launched Operation Leopard to capture the island from the Italian and the British forces. With the loss of 254 Italians, 600 British (187 died in fighting, the remainder lost at sea), 68 members of the Hellenic Royal Navy, 20 civilians and 520 Germans, the Battle of Leros is said to have been one of the bloodiest battles of WWII.

Dubbed Greece's Weirdest Town, Lakki is a five minute drive from Merikea. As Southern Europe’s biggest natural harbour, it was here that Mussolini decided to house the Royal Italian Navy, as part of his plan to establish control over the eastern Mediterranean. In 1923, he sent two architects, Rodolfo Petracco and Armando Bernabiti, to Leros in order to construct a model town on the harbour for the settlement of thousands of Italians, including military personnel and their families. At the time, the whole bay was uninhabited marshland and authorities began filling in the area with tonnes of concrete imported from Italy.

Upon arriving in Leros, Petracco and Bernabiti surveyed the area, sat down and began to design their utopian town from scratch. Fanning out in a series of wide, curving roads, their town would prioritise efficiency and order, while espousing a sense of beauty and harmony. The resulting town, which the Italians named Portolago, is considered to be the only true rationalist town outside of Italy.

Rationalism, an architectural movement which developed in early 20th-Century Italy, emphasised simple, functional design based on ideals of purity, reason and universalism. It drew inspiration from emerging trends such as modernism and the Futurist movement, as well as the classical geometry of ancient Greek and Roman temples.

After World War Two, Petracco and Bernabiti returned to Italy to find their architectural philosophy discredited and a public ignorant of – and uninterested in – their work abroad. Neither of them ever made another rationalist building. Both men died in obscurity.

 Lakki harbour was used by the Italians from 1913 to 1943. The marina was established in 1989.

On the east of the island, in a quiet spot overlooking overlooking the Aegean, we found The Leros War Cemetery. Here lie 183 casualties of war, made up by 13 sailors, 162 soldiers and 4 airmen belonging to the forces of the United Kingdom; 2 airmen of the Royal Canadian Air Force; and 2 soldiers of the South African Forces. Owing to the loss or destruction of the local records by the occupying Nazi forces, the identities of many of the graves were lost, 3 sailors and 55 soldiers are unidentified, with the words Known Only To God, engraved on their tombstones.

Parking our hire car outside our apartment we walked through the old town to Aghia Marina, rubbing shoulders with the glamorous yachting fraternity, watching the ferries coming and going. 

Pandeli beach is mostly shingle, which makes the water look so intensely blue. Following Doune's advice we ate breakfast at Siroco and were able to take advantage of their free sunbeds for the rest of the day. Most of the clientele were Greek, especially on a Sunday where they'd swim out and return with octopus and squid, which they'd stow in plastic boxes, anchor them in the shallows and taken them back home for lunch.

I spent hours every day in the water, swimming from one end of the bay to the other then lying on my back, gazing up at the castle. Leros is so tranquil and idyllic, it's hard to imagine that eighty years ago there was a Nazi flag flying from the turrets.

One of the reasons I chose Leros was because, apart from Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, who'd stayed here a few weeks previously, I didn't know anyone who'd ever visited the island. Imagine my surprise when, posing for my Shirley Valentine photo, I glanced up and saw Norma and Kevin, a couple of traders we know from Beautiful Days...what a small world!

Did you mention cats? Leros, like everywhere else in Greece is crazy cat lady (or man) heaven! 

After four idylic days it was time to make our way to the harbour and board another catamaran....

Leros, we loved you!