Skyros

Skyros is the largest of the Sporades and stands apart from the rest, lying well to the south and east in the open Aegean, closer to Evia than to Skiathos and Skopelos. It is really two islands joined at a narrow waist: a green, wooded and gently farmed north, and a bare, rocky, mountainous south dominated by Mount Kochylas, whose wild slopes are grazed by the small native Skyrian horse, an ancient and endangered pony breed.

Because of its isolation, Skyros preserved a culture all its own. The main town, the Chora, is a dazzling cascade of flat-roofed Cycladic-style houses tumbling down a rock beneath a Byzantine castle and the fortified monastery of Agios Georgios. Traditional Skyrian houses are famous for their densely packed interiors of carved wooden furniture, embroidery and imported ceramics, and local craftsmen still make the island's distinctive wooden stools and pottery. The island's raucous pre-Lenten carnival, in which men don goat-hair capes, sheep bells and grotesque masks for the "Geros" dance, is among the most striking survivals of folk ritual in Greece.

Skyros carries a thread of poetry too. The English poet Rupert Brooke died offshore in 1915 and is buried in an olive grove in the south of the island, remembered by a bronze statue in the Chora. Below the town spread the sandy beaches of Magazia and Molos, while quieter coves and the cave beaches of the wilder south reward those with a car.

Unusually for the Sporades, Skyros has its own airport with seasonal flights from Athens, though the classic approach is by ferry from Kymi on Evia to the pretty southern harbour of Linaria, a crossing of under two hours. That relative remoteness keeps mass tourism at bay and rewards travellers who make the effort.

Come for the extraordinary Chora, the ponies and the carnival tradition, the empty southern trails and beaches, and the strong sense of an island that has always done things its own way.