Beaches in Sithonia

Sithonia is a peninsula organised around a single coastal ring road, and its beaches sort themselves along it. That makes planning unusually simple: you are not choosing between distant coasts, you are choosing which side of one loop to be on today, and the two sides give you genuinely different beaches.

The west coast: sandy and shallow. Kalogria and Lagomandra are the names on this side, and the character is sand rather than rock. This is the family half of the peninsula and the reason Sithonia has the reputation it does with Greek domestic visitors.

The east coast: sculpted coves in pale rock. Kavourotripes and Orange Beach are a run of small carved coves and the most photographed part of the peninsula. They are the shots you have seen, and they are small, which in August matters more than how good they look.

Porto Koufo, at the southern tip. A near-enclosed natural harbour, the deepest in Greece, that the German navy used in the Second World War. It is not a beach day in the ordinary sense; it is somewhere to swim in water that is almost entirely surrounded by land, which is a strange and memorable thing.

Vourvourou and its islands. In the northeast, a low-key resort scattered along a shallow bay with a cluster of small islands offshore that people take boats out to. A day here is a swim plus a boat rather than a swim alone, and the shallow bay is the softest water on the peninsula.

The east coast also has the view. From that side the whole of Mount Athos stands across the gulf, a 2,000-metre pyramid rising straight out of the sea at the end of the third peninsula. On a clear evening it is a remarkable thing to swim in front of, and it is the single reason to prefer the east side for a late-afternoon beach.

What the peninsula is like, so you can judge the beaches fairly. Low-rise and family-oriented rather than glamorous: hotels and campsites rather than resorts, tavernas at the beaches, and a long Greek domestic season, because this is where Thessaloniki goes. That means beaches with a taverna behind them and no beach-club economy, and it means August is busy with Greek families rather than with tour groups.

The car is the whole thing. A car is essential, because the peninsula is the road. Without one you are on a single beach for a week; with one, the entire ring is a comfortable day and every beach on this page is available. Which islands need a car is the general question, though this is a peninsula rather than an island and the answer is even clearer.

Reading the water. Two coasts facing opposite ways on one narrow peninsula means there is nearly always a sheltered side, and crossing between them is short. Read the sea when you arrive rather than a description. What the sea is like covers the mechanism.

Five nights, or a week, which is how most people use it. Our Sithonia guide has the practicalities, things to do covers Porto Koufo and the Athos view, and Thessaloniki is the airport you fly into.