Balkan bounty: the little-known corner of Greece now ripe for walkers and nature tourism

Mountains, butterflies, bears and pelicans are among the natural wonders in the stunning Prespa lakes region, which straddles three countries

I’m on a steadily rising road in northern Greece as swallows sweep over the burnished grasses to either side of me and pelicans spiral through the summer sky. Gaining height, the land thickens with oak forests and a Hermann’s tortoise makes a slow, ceremonial turn on to a sheep track at the edge of the asphalt. And then, just as the road briefly levels out before corkscrewing down the other side, a glittering lake appears beneath me – a brilliant blue eye set in a socket of steep mountains. I can’t even begin to count how many times I’ve crossed the pass into the Prespa basin on my way home from trips into town, but the sight of shimmering Lesser Prespa Lake – often striking blue in the afternoons and silvery at sunset – takes me back to the summer of 2000 when I saw it for the first time.

A little over 25 years ago, my wife and I read a glowing review of a book about the Prespa lakes region. In the north-west corner of Greece and an hour’s drive from the towns of Florina and Kastoria, the two Prespa lakes straddle the borders of Greece, Albania and North Macedonia in a basin of about 618 sq miles. We’d never heard of Prespa until then, but the review of Giorgos Catsadorakis’s Prespa: A Story for Man and Nature got us thinking about a holiday there, imagining a week or two of walking in the mountains, birding around the summer shores and enjoying food in village tavernas at night.