Beaches in Poros

Poros is really two islands joined, and that decides where you swim. Sferia is the small rocky one carrying the town, all waterfront and boat traffic. Kalavria is the larger wooded one behind it, and that is where the space and the bays are. So the beach question here is not which beach, it is whether you have crossed onto the green half yet.

Askeli, the main bay. On Kalavria, and the one most visitors use: an organised stretch on the wooded side within easy reach of the town. If you want a straightforward beach day without planning it, this is the answer.

Neorio, the other one. Also on Kalavria, quieter, with the pine standing behind it. It is the alternative for a day when Askeli is busier than you want, and it is a short move rather than a different trip.

The pine, which is the point. Kalavria is wooded, and shade at the back of a beach is genuinely rare in Greece. It changes the middle of the day here in a way that is hard to appreciate until you have spent an August afternoon on a Cycladic beach with nothing but a rented umbrella between you and the sun.

What Poros is not. This is not an island with a famous beach, and nobody should book it for one. What it has is easy, sheltered swimming a few minutes from a town you can walk, on an island a few hundred metres from the mainland. Judged as that, it is a good deal. Judged against Naxos or Lefkada, it is not the same category of thing.

The mainland is part of the day here. The channel is only a few hundred metres wide and small boats cross it constantly, so the classic Poros half day is not a beach at all: it is the Lemonodasos, the hillside of lemon trees across the water, with a stream and an old watermill and a walk up through the grove. Build one afternoon around that rather than a third beach.

Reading the water. This is the Saronic Gulf, sheltered by the standards of the open Aegean, and Kalavria’s bays face away from the channel. Read the sea when you arrive rather than a description; what the sea is like covers the mechanism.

Getting to them. The island is small, the bays are on the wooded half, and getting across is short. That makes this one of the few islands where you can have a beach week without hiring anything, though wheels make the far end of Kalavria easier. Which islands need a car is the general question.

Two nights suits Poros, and it works well as a first stop in a Saronic chain with Hydra and Spetses. Our Poros guide has the island in full and things to do covers the clocktower, the temple and the lemon forest.