Corfu Trail

Two unlike halves. The trail turns its back on Kavos and runs south first, to the ruined Arkoudilas monastery on the clay cliffs at the tip of the island, then drops to the beach and climbs the cliff again into fields and shady olive-grove tracks. After Lefkimmi it becomes dirt roads across the southern plain, flat, agricultural and quiet, with nothing on the line itself for hours and little to look at beyond the next olive terrace. It improves at the coast: shore walking to Agios Georgios, then a strip of dunes carrying a juniper forest between the sea and Lake Korission, where soft sand makes the going slower than the contours suggest. It finishes on tracks and a stretch of road above the coast to Paramonas.

Logistics: Between Lefkimmi and Agios Georgios the trail crosses the plain on farm tracks and meets no settlement on the line, so this stretch is walked on what you carry out of Lefkimmi.

Navigation: Yellow CT signs at junctions with yellow paint marks between them, thin enough in places that walkers carry the GPX and use it. Two spots account for most of the trouble. The start, because the route heads south to the cape before it heads north and the first markers only appear near Cape Asprokavos. And Lefkimmi, whose run of adjoining villages and back streets is the place walkers most often report losing the line in the south.

The trail stops being a coastal walk here. It climbs sharply off the beach at Paramonas onto the coastal ridge and turns inland, and from Ano Pavliana on it is village-to-village walking across the Messongi basin, olive groves, heathland and quiet lanes, with a settlement every kilometre or two and few long views. The two climbs that matter come in the second half. First the pull from Strongyli up to the chapel and viewpoint on Mount Stavros and the string of ridge settlements behind it. Then the sharp ascent of Agii Deka, Corfu's second summit, identifiable from half the island by the radar dome on top, with a cobbled mule path down the far side. The last stretch to Pelekas is minor roads and undulating tracks along the tops above the west coast.

Logistics: Benitses, on the east coast, is not on the current line. Older descriptions of the trail drop to it from the Stavros ridge and climb back the next morning, which is worth doing only if you want the sea rather than the ridge.

Navigation: The climbs are the easy part to follow; the villages are not. This section threads a lot of them, and the ridge settlements between Komianata and Makrata run into one another with no obvious line through. Walkers report hill-village navigation as the work of this stage rather than any single junction. The ascent from Ano Garouna is unambiguous, being one path to a summit with a radar station on it.

Three unrelated pieces of walking in a short section. It starts by dropping off the Pelekas ridge to the west-coast beaches, a steep descent to Myrtiotissa and an equally steep climb away from it on old paths, which is the hardest hour here. Then the Ropa valley, level farmland where the trail simply crosses a plain and the pace picks up on its own. After Giannades it climbs back into olive-covered hills, rolling rather than steep and shaded most of the way, and stays in them until Liapades. The finish is the piece with a reputation: a rough footpath over the headland into Paleokastritsa, leaving from the far end of the beach and climbing over rock above the sea. It takes about half an hour and there is a road round.

Logistics: The drop to Myrtiotissa is an optional visit rather than the through line, and it is the only short cut the official planner offers on this day. Its figures for the day are 24 km, 6 1/2 hours and 450 m of ascent by the full route, against 5 hours and 200 m with the short cut, and its stage-to-stage table prices the saving at an hour and a half on the Pelekas to Vatos leg alone. The headland footpath into Paleokastritsa is not part of that choice: it is in the route either way, and the road round is the only way to avoid it. Our stored line takes the full option, so every distance and chainage on this section is the long one. Measured on it, the trail leaves Pelekas at about 218 m, drops to about 30 m at km 81.5 directly above Myrtiotissa and climbs straight back out, and Pelekas to Paleokastritsa comes to 23.7 km against the planner's 24 km for the full route. If you take the short cut on the ground you will be roughly an hour and a half and a couple of kilometres ahead of every figure shown here from km 82 onwards.

Navigation: Straightforward until the end. The link from Liapades to Paleokastritsa is where walkers report going wrong: the path leaves from the far end of the beach, climbs over rock, and is poorly marked at the point where you need it to be clear. The trail's own guide calls it a very difficult footpath. If it looks wrong, or the rock is wet, the road round is the honest answer rather than the soft one.

The hardest section and the most varied. It leaves Paleokastritsa on a network of cobbled footpaths up to Lakones and stays high on old donkey paths to Makrades, then loses the whole of that height down a footpath zig-zagged into a cliff face, which the trail's own guide calls one of the most remarkable in Greece. From sea level at Agios Georgios Pagon the trail turns inland and crosses the broad northern head of the island village by village, Prinilas, Pagi, Aspiotades, Agros, Rekini, Valanio, Sokraki, Spartilas, with a climb of a hundred or two between most of them on lanes, farm tracks, cobbled sections and old paths. It is relentless rather than steep, and there is no coast and no resort in the whole of it. The last stretch climbs a gully on a steep mountain footpath to the chapel and viewpoint at Taxiarchis, where the mountain country begins.

Logistics: The inland crossing from Agios Georgios Pagon to Sokraki is the longest part of the trail away from the sea and from anything resembling a resort, and walkers who have done it say plainly to carry more water than seems necessary.

Navigation: Obvious and well travelled as far as the coast at Agios Georgios Pagon. The inland half is where the marking thins and the linking paths between villages get overgrown, and it is the part of the trail walkers most often follow on a GPX rather than on signs. The villages are the specific difficulty: Agros and Agios Athanasios both sprawl, and the line through them is not self-evident.

Almost all the climbing is over in the first three kilometres. The trail comes up onto the karst plateau under the Pantokrator summit, which the trail's own guide calls Corfu's wildest scenery, bare limestone with nothing cultivated and nothing to shelter behind, and crosses it past the deserted settlement of Palies Sinies to the col on the main ridge. A good path drops from there into Old Perithia, a half-ruined Byzantine village in a high valley and the last real stop before the sea. Below it the trail descends a wooded gorge, rocky and uneven with a lot of undergrowth and the slowest ground of the day, then eases through olive terraces and small settlements onto the northern coastal plain. The final kilometres are flat: the beach, the Antinioti lagoon channels, and a rough shore path around the bare headland at the island's northern tip to Agios Spyridon.

Logistics: The trail no longer drops from the ridge to the north-east coast and climbs back. That loop was deleted from the official route because of building works on the north-east coastal path, so guides still describing a night at Kaminaki or Nisaki are describing a stage that has been removed.

Navigation: The plateau is open ground with tracks running several ways and few features to steer by, and it is the one place on the trail where mist would genuinely matter. The descent from Old Perithia is marked but overgrown, so it is a matter of picking up paint rather than seeing a path. At the end the two ways across the Nisi peninsula, the lane and the marked path past the ruined monastery, rejoin the same shore trail, so either is fine.