Beaches in Thassos

Thassos makes beach planning unusually simple, and the reason is its shape. A single ring road runs the whole way around the island, roughly a hundred kilometres, and almost every beach sits on it. So you are not choosing between coasts that are hard to reach from one another; you are choosing where on a loop to stop, and you can change your mind at lunchtime.

The long sandy ones, on the east coast. Golden Beach and Paradise are the big sweeps, and they are what most people picture when they imagine a Thassos holiday. They are the easiest to reach, which means they are also the busiest in August, and on an island that fills with cars from the mainland and the Balkans in summer that is a real difference rather than a small one.

Aliki, which is the one worth planning around. A double bay on a headland on the southeast, with an ancient marble quarry running into the sea and columns still lying where they were cut. You swim in one bay, walk over the neck of the headland and swim in the other, with an archaeological site around you the whole time. Very few beaches anywhere give you that, and it costs nothing.

Saliara, usually called Marble Beach. A small cove of brilliant white against clear water, reached down a rough track. The white is not sand in the ordinary sense: it is ground marble, which is also why the water above it reads the colour it does. Take the track seriously when you decide what to hire, and go early, because a small cove fills quickly.

Why some of this coast is white at all. Thassos has been quarried for white marble since antiquity and still is, and the stone ends up in the water as well as in the road cuttings. That is the unusual thing about swimming here: the geology, the ancient economy and the beach are the same fact rather than three separate ones.

The inland alternative, for the hottest hour. The mountain villages, Panagia, Potamia and Theologos, are noticeably cooler than the coast and a short drive up from almost anywhere on the ring. On a day when the beach is unbearable at two in the afternoon, that is the move, and it is one the ring road makes easy.

What you need. A car is worth having here, and unusually it is easy to bring your own, because the crossing is a short car ferry rather than a flight or an overnight boat. The whole point of Thassos is the ring road, and a beach holiday without wheels means picking one stretch and staying on it. Which islands need a car is the general question, and this is one of the clearest yes answers on the site.

How the sea behaves. This is the north Aegean rather than the Cyclades, so the wind pattern is not the meltemi story you may have read for the islands further south, and the island’s own shape means there is almost always a sheltered side of the ring. Read the water when you arrive rather than a descriptor here. What the sea is like covers the mechanism.

Four or five nights covers the coast and the interior. Our Thassos guide has the island in full, things to do covers the ancient town and the quarries, and the group is the north Aegean.