Kalymnos

Kalymnos is the wrong island for a beach holiday. The coast is mostly cliff and the sand beaches are few and short. The rhythm of the year was set by sponge-diving and is now set by rock-climbing, more than by tourism. That makes it the right island for guests who want to see the Aegean as a place where people work.

Until the middle of the twentieth century, almost every family on Kalymnos lived from the sponge trade. Each spring the fleet sailed for the North African coast and stayed away for months. The men dived in canvas suits and bronze helmets, and examples can still be seen in the Nautical Museum in Pothia, the harbour town. Many did not come back, or came back paralysed by the bends (decompression sickness). The trade collapsed in the 1980s, when a blight spread through the Mediterranean and wiped out the natural beds, and synthetic sponges took the market. The men who remember the work are now in their seventies and eighties.

In the 1990s a German climber, Andreas Kühne, mapped a series of routes on the limestone overhangs above the western sea cliffs. Since then Kalymnos has become one of the world’s leading sport-climbing destinations. There are roughly 4,000 bolted routes on the crags north of the village of Massouri. October is the season. Autumn is mild, the rock has cooled after August and the village fills with climbers from Eastern Europe, Spain and the English-speaking world. The atmosphere is unlike anything else in Greece.

A few notes. At Easter the islanders throw home-made dynamite charges from the hillsides. It is loud and traditional, and not for the nervous. The deep, fjord-like harbour of Vathy on the eastern coast is reached by a cliffside road. It is worth half a day for the citrus orchards and a slow lunch by the water. Stay three nights, hire a car and bring shoes you can walk in.

House Notes

  1. Arrival

    Kalymnos airport (JKL) receives Sky Express from Athens, an ATR turboprop flight of around an hour, currently the only scheduled carrier into the island. Larger jets land at Kos (KGS), 90 minutes away by car and caique, a traditional wooden boat, via Mastichari. The port agent Eleni Fragkou handles clearance and refuelling for arriving vessels.

  2. The address

    There is no luxury house on Kalymnos. The honest counsel is to base aboard a yacht and use the island as a working-day stop. The other way is to treat the climbing months as the climbers do, in a serviceable room at Massouri within walking distance of the crags. The Plaza Hotel at Massouri is the practical base for climbers; it is a 3-star property and presents itself as such.

  3. The crags

    Sport climbing began here in 1997, when the Italian Andrea di Bari opened 43 routes in the Arhi, Odyssey and Poets sectors above the western cliffs. The island now has roughly 4,200 bolted routes across 61 crags, on grey pocketed limestone with tufas (rock columns formed by dripping water), much of it shaded and cooled by the sea. Aris Theodoropoulos, author of the guidebook, drew up the development guidelines with the municipality, and is the reference for a guided ascent.

  4. Grande Grotta

    The vast overhang above Massouri is the headline crag of the island and arguably of Greece. It has three sectors of grey pocketed limestone with tufas, and a roof-line that draws photographers as much as climbers. Aegialis at 7c and Fun de Chichunne at 8a are the named classics, and easier routes are also bolted on the same wall. Climb it from October to April, as the rock holds heat through August.

  5. Harry’s Paradise

    Harry’s Paradise in Emborios, on the north-west coast, is the considered table on Kalymnos. Haralambos and Alexandra Roditis founded the garden taverna in 1979, and their daughter Evdokia runs it now. There is no printed menu: the kitchen cooks what the garden and the day’s catch supply. It is open daily for breakfast and lunch, and for dinner on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday only.

  6. Rina

    Rina is the fishing village at the head of the Vathy inlet: one street, a scatter of houses and a small harbour at the end of a long cleft in the rock. The orchards behind the village grow oranges and tangerines, and their valley is the one green place on an island otherwise made of stone. The cliffside road from Pothia takes around 20 minutes, but the prettier arrival is by water.

  7. The Halepas iconostasis

    The Metropolitan Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Saviour stands on the Pothia waterfront. Its marble iconostasis, the carved screen before the altar, in this 19th-century building is the work of Giannoulis Halepas, the Tinos-born sculptor regarded as the foremost Greek marble carver of his century. Painted icons by the local artists Alachouzos and Magklis hang alongside. The cathedral is a protected monument, and entry is free during service hours.

  8. The Vouvalis Mansion

    Nikolaos Vouvalis (1859 to 1918) became the wealthiest sponge merchant in the world, with offices in Pothia and at St Mary Axe in the City of London, and was received at the court of Queen Victoria. His widow left his mansion at Agia Triada in Pothia, above an orange grove, to the state. It is now open as the Historical Museum of Kalymnos, with several rooms left as the family kept them.

  9. Valsamidis at Vlychadia

    The Sea World Museum in Vlychadia, on the south coast, is the work of a lifetime by the sponge diver Stavros Valsamidis. It holds around 17,000 marine items across three rooms. Among them are sponges, embalmed sea turtles and rays, and an entire ancient merchant ship of amphorae from the 6th to 2nd centuries BC, raised off Telendos. There are also finds from the First and Second World War wrecks the divers worked. It is a serious private collection.

  10. Thymeli honey

    The Kopanezos family at Vathy move their hives across Kalymnos and Kos, following the thyme bloom. Drosos and Antonis are the fourth generation since their great-grandparents, Magriplis Nikolaos and Irene, began the practice. The thyme-pollen content of the honey tests well above the island average. Order ahead through the apiary for collection at the villa.

Anchorage Notes

  1. Pothia

    Pothia, the capital and main port, rises around a bay at the south of the island; it was built in 1850, when the pirate raids eased and the islanders came down to the sea, and its Venetian-Italian houses stack up the hills behind. It is the sponge divers’ town, with a naval museum kept for that trade. A yacht lies at the town quay among the fishing boats and the ferries, as there is no marina.

  2. Myrties

    Myrties is on the west coast, the island’s second harbour and its sunset side, where the caiques cross the narrow strait to Telendos through the day. Behind it rise the limestone walls that draw climbers from across the world, and the resort strip runs along the shore. A yacht lies off the channel here, with the islet’s flat-topped mountain filling the view to the west.

  3. Telendos

    Telendos is the car-free islet a kilometre off the west coast, opposite Myrties: a single steep, flat-topped mountain dropping into the sea, with its small settlement at the southern tip. It was part of Kalymnos until the earthquakes of the sixth century split it away, and a sunken ancient town is said to lie in the channel between. A yacht crosses to lie off it for the quiet and the ruins.

  4. Pserimos

    Pserimos lies between Kalymnos and Kos, a small island of some 80 people that Kalymnos administers, with a sandy bay and a scatter of tavernas, reached by the daily boat from Pothia. A yacht calls here for a beach day between the two larger islands. It is remote enough to have kept its own character, and some of the boats stay the night.