By Anastasia Christine

STOUPA – MESSINIA COUNTY

In May this year my regular visit to my second homeland Laconia was direct on the newer roads, now through plains and not over winding mountain passes, with good junctions to lead onto the well worthwhile visits to Mystras and Monemvasia.

There is now a bypass before Gytheio, if you care to get on the country roads leading on to Messinia County, having already made your visit to Gytheio’s narrow medieval lanes of the harbourfront that has a ferry port, for ferries on to Crete and Athens.

My journey from Gytheio to Kalamata and thence on to Koroni was on well maintained winding roads carved into the mountain sides, giving dramatic views of wide bays and oceans below. A journey even more peaceful than heretofore. Where was everybody, was my thought to myself, it was the last week of May.

The hawk rose over Itilio in solitude, the quiet only broken by the sound of sheep bells and goats’ hooves. And far off a cock’s crow.

Out of curiosity, my journey strayed to the favourite resort of the English, Ayios Nikolaos to find only those few who lived there all year round.

The other main resorts for the English are Stoupa / Kalogria Stoupa. There my sight was of bright sunshine, golden beach and only a handful of English and German to enjoy this. This year I came across a restaurant called Yesterdays and Todays and a luxury room to rent above it that gives the best panoramic view of the beach, but set back in its courtyard for peace, until the evening to enjoy the traditional Greek meal downstairs. Voula told me that not even a third of the English had yet come. We exchanged the fact gleaned by me from forums that the charter flights from regional airports in England had abandoned the flights this year.

In the centre of the London commuter town of Brighton in July, the Thomsons branch had a Greece brochure with no mention of the Peloponnese at all. The Manos Summer 2009 brochure does not list flights to Kalamata from any regional airport save Manchester, and in London only from Gatwick.

So onwards into 2009 this region is becoming less and less the holiday destination of the charter flight package and more for the independent traveller.

My research has come across a scheduled summer flight route that started this year from London to Thessaloniki and from Thessaloniki to Kalamata 3 times a week. This information has been placed on my updated personal website, with links to gain the flight as well as information on hotels that happenchance gave me their business cards and so have been placed on my website (free of charge to the hoteliers).

My travels took me to stay for a treat in a best class hotel just before Kalamata called the Messinian Bay, with every room having a sea view and having a large swimming pool and secluded beach. Happily quite a few Germans were staying there, so it was not as lonely as my journey across the hills of the southern Peloponnese had been.

My loneliness returned as my journey continued on south of Kalamata.

Finikounda is best now reached by turning for Pylos for a good road, as the road between Koroni and Finikounda is having a major overhaul.

Finikounda, Methoni and Pylos were equally as bereft of tourists, under great sunshine, with only a few Germans enjoying the spectacular scenery.

My walk amongst the spring flowers of the great Venetian citadel of Methoni castle showed a Methoni beach with only a handful of sun-worshippers.

Finikounda had some Greeks enjoying their favourite beach.

Pylos had Greeks looking out to sea morosely. There were tourists, but I must have missed hearing or seeing them.

Koroni had its handful of permanent English and German population coming down for evening meals on the spectacular harbourfront.

The region still has not the tourism from England nor Germany, from phone calls to friends in Koroni and now it is late July.

The skies are blue, the sun hot, the beaches empty, and great restaurants to enjoy waiting for you.

Charter flights will get booked up by those addicted to Stoupa or holiday home owners probably already. So the scheduled flight link from London is now the best way to get to the secluded, quiet bays of the southern Peloponnese to an authentic, Real Greece, that we are keeping a secret for us … shhh!

ANASTASIA CHRISTINE   
www.anastasias-koroni-greece.co.uk