Long before there were roads here, the villages of Pelion were joined by cobbled mule paths, and a great many of them are still in use. Twenty-nine are marked and maintained, which is why walkers keep coming back to this mountain year after year.
They are not a modern trail network laid over the landscape. They are the original roads, and they go where people needed to go: village to village, and village down to the sea.
What the walking is like
The paths run through chestnut, plane and apple trees, cross streams on old stone bridges, and pass fountains built into the walls where you can fill a bottle. The gradient is real — this is a mountain that reaches 1,615 metres at Pourianos Stavros above Pouri — but most routes between neighbouring villages are comfortable in a morning.
Good shoes matter more than fitness. The cobbles are worn smooth in places and can be slick after rain.
Routes near the house
The path from our garden down to Papa Nero is the shortest of them, a few minutes each way, and it will give you the idea. From Mouresi you can pick up the routes towards Tsangarada and Kissos.
One of the best short walks anywhere on the mountain crosses the old bridge that links Xourichti to Tsangarada, through a ravine thick with vegetation. Tsangarada itself is spread across the hillside in four separate communities, each named for its own saint, and the plane tree in the square at Agia Paraskevi is one of the oldest and largest in Greece.
If you would rather not walk
There is horse riding in the area, and mountain bikes can be hired. The other way to see the mountain is the narrow-gauge steam train, the mountzouri, which still runs the beautiful stretch from Ano Lehonia up to Milies.
And there is no obligation to go anywhere at all. The hammocks in the garden have held plenty of people who set out with every intention of walking somewhere.
When to come
Spring and autumn are the walking seasons. The mountain is green, the temperature is kind, and the villages are quiet. Winter brings snow to the high ground and skiing above Volos, which is when House Filitsa and its fireplace start to make sense.
