Day 4: Palaiokastritsa

We had another exciting day trip planned for today, although this one did not involve leaving Corfu. We were taking a bus across the island to a village called Palaiokastritsa, in the northwestern part of Corfu. The bus departed at 08.30 which was a relatively civilised time compared to yesterday's early start, though it was from a bus station about half an hour's walk from our apartment so we set off just before 8am.

After a scenic bus journey we arrived in Palaiokastritsa just after 09.15. It's a popular beach resort and as soon as we got off the bus we could see that the coastline here is stunning. The beach looked quite sandy too!

We weren't here to spend a day at the beach, but to visit nearby Angelokastro, a Byzantine castle built on a rock above the sea. We were planning to walk there, so we turned away from the beach and headed up a rather steep road.

Within a few minutes we had already climbed high enough to get a nice view.

We didn't spend long on the road before we came to the signpost we were looking for: path to Lakones. Lakones is a village located on the hillside above Palaiokastritsa.

The path got off to a steep start...

...and continued to be steep, with varying amounts of rockiness, for the duration of our ascent.

Every so often we'd emerge to a place with spectacular views...

...before the path led us into the undergrowth once again.

It's described online as a "donkey path"; luckily we didn't meet any donkeys, because in places it was quite narrow!

We barely met anyone at all, in fact; we only encountered two other people during the whole way up.

We passed a big cactus...

...and then climbed a final series of steps up the road. The path was named as "Lear's Path" here, after the poet Edward Lear who spent a lot of time on Corfu in the nineteenth century.

We had been walking for just under an hour and we had done the worst of the ascent now. The road was fairly flat and not very busy. We passed citrus trees growing by the roadside...

...and then came to a viewpoint which looked like it was hoping to be made famous on Instagram

It was a great view though!

We were ready for a second breakfast by this point, so stopped at a cafe with a terrace.

We ordered iced coffee with pancakes.

This was definitely the best view I've ever eaten pancakes to!

There was even a little viewing platform on the terrace  

As we continued to walk on the road, we got more glimpses down to the sea.

And Helen realised that we could now see up to Angelokastro. It still looked quite a long way away, though!

We made our way through some pretty Greek villages...

...and Angelokastro began to look a bit nearer.

We arrived at the entrance gate around 12.15, so about three hours after we'd arrived in Palaiokastritsa. That did include probably the best part of an hour eating pancakes though  

It was €10 to get in and then we climbed a series of stone steps up to the ruins of the castle itself.

Honestly, I think it's maybe a castle that's best viewed from a distance as once you were inside, there wasn't actually a lot to see. We did climb up to a tiny little church at the very top...

...and managed to get a peek inside.

The best thing about being up here was the views.

When you looked inland you could see what a green island Corfu is by Greek standards; definitely a lot greener than Rhodes and Symi, which we visited this time last year.

When we looked down, we could see the road winding all the way up the steep hillside.

We felt quite impressed with ourselves that we'd climbed up here from sea level

Once we'd finished admiring the ruins we climbed back down and began retracing our steps along the road. We stopped at a restaurant for lunch with a beautiful view.

I had apple juice which came in a rather posh glass, while Helen tried ginger beer which is a local Corfu speciality.

To eat, I had chicken souvlaki which were really nice; proper chicken breast meat rather than thigh!

Helen went for one of the specials, which was like moussaka but inside an aubergine.

After lunch we set off again back towards Palaiokastritsa, leaving Angelokastro in the distance behind us.

We couldn't resist stopping for another iced coffee at the cafe with the wonderful views!

Then it was time to tackle the steep bit of the path back to sea level.

I had been a bit worried about how steep it would feel on the way down, but actually it wasn't as bad as I'd feared.

The steepest part was probably right at the end.

We successfully made it back down to Palaiokastritsa with over half an hour to spare before our bus, so we took the opportunity to enjoy an Aperol Spritz.

The bus back to Corfu was rather packed! There was so many people queuing that we didn't manage to make it onto the 17.00 bus we'd planned to get, instead having to wait for a second bus at 17.20. But despite that it was a lovely day with some incredible views. And a very active day too; over 22,000 steps and over 100 staircases climbed!