The Pelion Peninsula in Winter: A Forgotten Greece

The Pelion Peninsula juts south from the Thessalian coast into the Aegean, a 52-kilometre thumb of forested mountain separating the Pagasetic Gulf from the open sea. In summer it functions as a weekender destination for Athenians and Volosans escaping the urban heat; the beaches of the eastern coast — Mylopotamos, Damouchari, Fakistra — are among the most beautiful in mainland Greece, accessible by footpath or boat, and known to a specific demographic of well-travelled Greeks who have determined that Pelion is the correct answer to the question of where to go without going to an island.

In winter, between October and March, the peninsula reveals what it actually is. The beech and chestnut forests go through a transformation that the Aegean landscape rarely offers: genuine autumn colour, then bare grey branches, then sometimes snow on the upper slopes down to 600 metres, against which the stone villages — Makrinitsa, Vizitsa, Tsangarada — appear as illustrations from a Greek fairy tale that someone forgot to publish.

Tsangarada is the highest village, at 550 metres on the eastern edge of the ridge, above the steep descent to the sea. It is built along a single long street through the forest, without a central plateia, the houses separated by gardens of enormous magnolias and ancient plane trees. The plane tree in the central square of Agia Kyriaki, which is claimed to be 1,000 years old and has a circumference of 18 metres, may be the largest tree in Greece. Sitting underneath it in November, in the silence of a Tuesday with no tourists, is an experience that has no obvious equivalent.

The food of the Pelion in winter: hilopites (local egg pasta) with wild mushroom sauce, slow-braised rabbit, spoon sweets made from the bergamot citrus that grows uniquely in the area, and tsipouro from Volos — the local version of grappa, served warm with a spoon sweet and a glass of water, which is the correct format for the consumption of tsipouro in all seasons.