Lefkada Holiday and Travel and Guides for the Ionian Island of Lefkas - Greece.

Lefkas (or Lefkada) is only just about a Greek Island as one part of it is only a few yards away from the Greek Mainland.

The island is split down the middle by a fairly high range of mountains which makes the weather interesting at times let alone travelling between it's east and west coasts. Our information relates to our two week walking holiday on Lefkas Island during May 2007 - so where we quote a price or some detail of type this was as we found it for that period and may well be changed.

Getting to Lefkas. Since it is as mentioned all but attached to the mainland there is plenty of opportunity to drive to the Island - which is what many Greeks and Italians do once the summer arrives. If flying in from Northern Europe you arrive into the military airport at Preveza (on the mainland) - flight time out of Gatwick is around 175 minutes and then coaches take you off onto the island - Nidri is around 50 minutes of coach trip for instance.

Roads - Driving etc. There is an extensive series of tracks going off here and there on the island - sadly quite a few just come to a dead end sometimes in the middle of nowhere. These tracks often as not were really suitable only for goats, sheep and pick-up trucks - probably most cars would end up with nice shiny bottoms if used on many of them. With easily the best beaches on the west coast and with most people staying on towns along the east coast it is sadly the case that you cannot easily and quickly cross from one coastline to the other because of the mountains - at best you have to take big diversions around the interior to achieve a crossing. Otherwise you have the option of the long trip up along the coast to Lefkas Town and then back down the coast the other side. However we did find a couple of ways across - several routes shown as tracks on the Freytag have actually been tar-macd. The best map we found was the Freytag - according to our gps trackings in most cases the map was really accurate - although even this map did not have all the tracks shown. Although the surfaced roads are signposted at junctions many of the unmarked tracks you may come across have no indication of destination at all.

Sightseeing. The mountains are very impressive of course especially up in the Pirghos area where the rock formations are beautiful and really show off the absolute masses of wild flowers - we spent a lot of time up in this area during our holiday just wandering around on various small roads and tracks.

Walking. Quite honestly unless you don't particularly want nice long (or even short) circular walks on paths and sometimes tracks then forget Lefkada for a walking holiday. There are no paths to speak of - the tracks quite often go no-where and very few are signed anyway so you have to just walk them there and back or else you have to get into a commitment for a really long walk of maybe 25 km to make a circular walk up. In this case almost certainly a huge amount of climbing is required and you may well have to walk a lot of the time on tarmac roads or lanes. We think that Lefkas is probably much more suited to biking than walking - it is of course just as hard going when your route takes you up into the mountains but the tracks and roads are nice and quiet and you can at least have a nice freewheel on the way back. On the plus side the roads are generally very quiet indeed with only the occasional pick-up truck meandering by and in May you are walking between masses of broom and wild flowers etc. - but it is nice to be able to walk on non-hard surfaces at least for a while. Lefkas is probably the most disappointing of the 16 or so Greek Islands we have visited from a walking point of view due to it's almost total lack of paths.
Nevertheless we did find a few track and lane walks which were enjoyable mainly due to the scenery and abundant foliage and wildlife and these are described with photos on this walks page.

Wildlife. Lots of birds were around with buzzards frequently seen up in the mountains - accompanied by the usual grumpy crows trying to scare them off. Around the towns and villages there were loads of sparrows which is nice to see (we seem to have lost a lot of our sparrows in England), also the fantastic flying displays from the swifts and swallows were always available. We spotted quite a few lizards around especially up in the hills - as far as snakes were concerned there must be quite a few about as we frequently saw - sadly - dead ones on the roads. Again once up in the mountains we did on occasion come across various snakes busily basking away in the sun alongside the tracks - but generally speaking you can only get to a few yards before they clear off. (who can blame the snakes for being so frightened considering the way many Greeks will go out of their way to kill any they come across - a pathetic and unnecessary thing to do. Is it justified to kill a deadly viper - moot point of view if you are working in the fields amongst them because they do obviously pose a threat. However grass snakes, leopard snakes, Montpelliers - these are harmless - why oh why slaughter them.)
Bees and Wasps and Butterflies. Particularly up on the mountain areas there were an incredible amount of butterflies and bees around - obviously enjoying the fields of red poppies and other wild flowers which were in such abundance in this part of May/June. Generally speaking we did not find any problem with the bees however if there are goats or sheep about watch out for flies - some of these will give you white a bite if they can. As a matter of interest we drove to one monastery buried up in the hills and ultimately decided not to even get out of the car (we could see the gates were locked anyway) however the reason for not even trying to find a "back way in over the fence" was the massive amount of bees around - they were really swarming and banging into the car windows and bodywork. Having decided to just leave, the bees followed us down the track for over half a kilometre. We were around the area a couple of days later and thought to try to visit this monastery again but the bees were just as active.

Lefkada Beaches. The best beaches by far to use whilst on holiday on the Greek Island of Lefkas are located on the western side of the island - with a while series available more or less starting a little south of Aghios Nikitas. The beaches north of Aghios Nikitas are quite pebbly and some are subject to beach debris though possibly they will be cleaner than when we visited which was early season May. Once you get to Kathisma Beach the really great beaches occur going down as far as Meghali Petra. These beaches are sand and shingle mix and are actually more or less connected depending on the tides. They offer facilities varying from taverna and beach chairs and so on through to nothing at all - just wild beach. Therefore the possibilities for chosing a bit of beach for whatever type of sunbathing and swimming dress you fancy are widely possible. Certainly on the south side of Kathisma's long beach area we enjoyed plenty of nude sunbathing and swimming along with a few others. We have created a page about the beaches we found - how to get to them etc. which is located here.

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Good External Links
Lefkas by Greeka
Lefkas Greece Travel Guide from Greek Island Postcards

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