‘In a single walk you can see an acropolis, falcons and eagles’: hiking Greece’s ancient island paths

On the islands of Sifnos and Kythera, the revival of ancient walking routes offers low-impact tourism that is a lifeline for rural communities

Beauty is all around us on the bright April morning my daughter and I climb a path marked as a donkey trail on our map of the Cycladic island of Sifnos. Butterflies flit over terraced meadows brimming with wild lupins, red poppies, and soft, green grasses. A whitewashed chapel is luminous against the blue sky. Over on a hilltop stand the silver canopy of an olive grove and the remains of a stone windmill, spokes and sails long absent. We approach the edge of a rocky outcrop and a mosaic of blues emerges beneath us: it’s the Myrtoan Sea and it stretches, glittering, in three directions, as if to the earth’s very ends.

Our trail is well marked. Still, we hesitate when we see that it crosses a farmer’s field and, along with it, the herd of cows that he’s shepherding toward a stone outbuilding. “Come on,” he shouts to us in Greek, smiling as he encourages us to follow the footpath across his land. He greets us warmly, asks if we’re having a good walk, then carries on with his work.