How the seashores, tradition and other people of Corfu hit me for six | Corfu holidays

This just isn’t the place you’d count on an article about one of many Mediterranean’s most stunning islands to start out. It’s the tail finish of winter, 2021. Kensal Green Cemetery in west London: the imperial mausolea canted and crumbling, low clouds dissolving into rain. We are nonetheless  in that  unusual section of the pandemic after we are masked, newly conscious of our our bodies and the house round them. We are right here to bury Nikos, a person who for me, for a lot of, was the incarnation of Corfu.

I had spent my 20s looking for the proper Greek island, hopping from the well-trodden (Mykonos, Santorini, Cephalonia) to the extra obscure (Kythira, Symi, Meganisi). None fairly matched the imaginative and prescient I had dreamed into being as a baby, once I segued from Robert Graves to Mary Renault, then to Lawrence Durrell and John Fowles. Greece was an concept earlier than it was a place: freedom and deep thought, a constellation of sand, salt and thyme.

Then, on a whim, I accepted an invite to play cricket in Corfu.

I knew little concerning the island on the time – not about its strategic historical past, nor how that place had formed a tradition that’s directly Greek, Venetian and British. I hadn’t but walked the Liston, the elegant colonnaded arcade that is perhaps Venice or Trieste, Bologna or Perugia have been it not for the cricket pitch specified by entrance of it. The pitch is surrounded by a carpark; its groundsmen battle warmth, salt spray, digging kids and fouling canines. Yet it stays the one cricket pitch on the earth I know that’s set inside a Unesco world heritage site. Taking guard there, you look as much as the Old Fortress for solidity, and to the Palace of St Michael and St George for class and aptitude.

I went out with the Lord’s Taverners, a UK sports activities charity group. We have been a motley bunch: a few former internationals – Andy Caddick and Chris Cowdrey – some actors, entertainers and a handful of writers, together with me. The Corfiots, it turned out, have been superb at cricket. The Greek nationwide group is drawn nearly fully from the island. We have been soundly overwhelmed, then consoled by heat, generosity and a run of wonderful dinners within the Old Town.

It was over a kind of dinners – on the Pergola – that I met Nikos Louvros and his spouse, Annabelle, our hosts and the founders of Cricket Corfu. Nikos was rambunctiously Greek, full of untamed power; Annabelle was English in that exact means that falls deeply for Greece and builds a life round it. I recognised the impulse. By the top of the meal of lamb, ouzo and wonderful native wine, we had deliberate our future collectively: we’d launch a literary competition.

Over the following years, that imaginative and prescient has taken wonderful form. Corfu literary festival started modestly: at our first, in 2017, there have been as many audio system on stage as there have been folks within the viewers. I bear in mind Nikos’s hope, irritation and at last, characteristically, laughter as invited visitors failed to point out up. But there was by no means any sense it could cease. With Nikos beside you, the whole lot appeared doable.

Slowly, buoyed by native help, the competition grew into one thing far bigger than we had imagined. We’ve had Stephen Fry and Sebastian Faulks, Bettany Hughes and Natalie Haynes, Matt Haig and Tom Holland. They got here and spoke, they stayed on the heavenly Kontokali Bay hotel, or within the villas and residences of Ionian Estates, they usually fell in love with Corfu as I had. Many have come again to talk a number of occasions.

Nikos lived for this – for exhibiting others the sweetness and drama of the island on which he was born, then left and returned to. He is gone now, however the competition endures. This September, it can return, bigger and extra magical than ever, with Homer’s Odyssey at its coronary heart – a becoming topic for an island the place the mythic and the on a regular basis nonetheless fold into one another with ease.

This is what I realized from Nikos, and from Corfu, through the years: swim early, earlier than the day warms and when the water nonetheless has a faint chunk. Swim after lunch, when the ocean feels silky. Swim at nightfall, when the floor holds the day’s warmth and the sunshine turns into thick and gradual. Corfu is massive sufficient and diverse sufficient which you could construct a complete itinerary round water and by no means really feel you might be repeating your self.

On the west coast, Myrtiotissa stays the seashore that feels closest to a personal miracle. Set in a steep inexperienced cradle, it’s an initiation to achieve it. Not unreasonably, Durrell referred to as it “perhaps the most beautiful beach in the world”.

Paleokastritsa possesses a special form of magnificence. The monastery above the bay seems to be down over a scatter of coves the place the water is so clear you may see the rocks far under, like a second panorama suspended in blue.

Then there’s the north-east, which has calmer waters, protected coves, a extra intimate shoreline. Agni Bay is a mild curve of shoreline made for lengthy lunches. Agni Taverna sits shut sufficient to the water which you could depart your desk, swim and return nonetheless tasting salt. Eat fish, eat merely, let time loosen its grip. If you may, arrive by boat: the north-east coast has a convention of taking water taxis between bays, and there’s something unmistakably Corfiot about stepping straight from deck to lunch.

A shock – particularly in case your picture of Greek islands is Cycladic sparseness – is how inexperienced Corfu is. The inside rises and folds like a small nation. Olive groves run for miles; cypresses spike the skyline. Drive up into the villages above Paleokastritsa and also you attain Lakones, perched excessive sufficient to make the island really feel all of a sudden huge. At Boulis, the meals is nice, but it surely’s the terrace view you come for, the sense of stepping straight into the blue horizon.

Corfu’s delicacies just isn’t what you often consider as Greek: formed by Venetian affect, by centuries of contact with Italy and by produce from the island’s land and sea. Pastitsada is a beef stew with pasta; sofrito is beef or veal slices braised in a sauce of white wine, vinegar, garlic and parsley; bourdeto is fish stew.

In Corfu Town, find time for a evening at Salto – up to date however grounded, with wonderful elements and an excellent wine listing. Then go for ice-cream at Papagiorgios. Walk the Old Town with a cone in hand, the stone nonetheless heat, and you are feeling a part of a lengthy custom of summer season nights.

In 2020, in a quick, unbelievable lull between Covid lockdowns, we held the competition as if it have been an act of defiance in opposition to the gods. The world was half closed; plans modified by the hour. Yet, for a couple of days, the island opened its arms and allow us to in. Chairs have been spaced out, masks slipped on and off, hand sanitisers have been perched on each desk – and nonetheless there was laughter, concepts, magnificence. Things that made us really feel human.

One morning, Nikos appeared with a ship. He had a present for that – arriving as if from nowhere, already midway into the following concept. “Come,” he stated. A dozen of us climbed aboard and pulled away from the city, forsaking the anxious information cycle and the low-level worry of that 12 months. We ran alongside the north-east coast, slicing the engine in inlets you’d by no means discover from land: slivers of shingle, limestone cabinets, seashores no greater than sofas. Each time we stopped, we swam as if making an attempt to slough the 12 months off our pores and skin. I felt like freedom, one thing snatched from darkness.

That was the final competition Nikos attended. He died of Covid the next January – on my birthday.

When I consider Nikos now, I consider that day on the water: of pleasure beneath stress, of how treasured it turns into. When he died, the island felt altered – not much less stunning, however extra charged, as if the sunshine carried grief in waves. Yet, Corfu additionally teaches one thing: that love for a spot can outlive the one who introduced you there, and change into a means of honouring them.

I’ve tried to try this in my very own means, too. My novel A Stranger in Corfu is devoted to Nikos. It grew out of this island – its layered previous, its ambiance of secrecy and hospitality, the sense that tales cling to the land. The novel is, at coronary heart, a love letter: an try and pay correct consideration to a place that has given me greater than I can simply identify.

Go to Corfu and don’t hurry. Swim typically. Drive into the hills. Eat as if time have been a present. Let the island reveal itself at its personal tempo – slowly, then .

And if, sooner or later, somebody seems with a ship and an concept, say sure.

A Stranger in Corfu by Alex Preston is printed by Canongate (£18.99). To help the Guardian purchase a replica at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery fees could apply. The 2026 Corfu literary festival runs from 21-27 September