Zagora, Pelion

Where it sits. Agios Ioannis is the main beach settlement on the Aegean side of the Pelion peninsula, strung along a shingle bay on the eastern coast of Magnesia about 55 kilometres from Volos. Administratively it belongs to the community of Agios Dimitrios in the municipality of Zagora-Mouresi; practically it is the place the mountain villages come down to in summer. The setting is what distinguishes it from an ordinary Greek resort: the Pelion ridge rises almost immediately behind the shore to well over a thousand metres, thick with plane, chestnut and beech, so the backdrop is deep green rather than the pale scrub of the islands, and streams run to the sea in the middle of August.

The beaches. The village beach is a long arc of grey-brown shingle with a paved promenade behind it, sun-lounger concessions in the middle stretch and free sand at either end. Immediately north, across a small watercourse spanned by a footbridge, lies Papa Nero, a quieter kilometre of pebble where umbrella pines lean over the water and the shade is natural rather than rented. Beyond that, a rough track and a footpath reach Plaka, wilder again, and to the south a fifteen-minute coastal walk arrives at the rock-walled inlet of Damouchari. The water on this coast is noticeably cooler and clearer than on the Pagasetic Gulf side of the peninsula, and it shelves quickly; when the meltemi blows from the north-east the swell here can be substantial, which is why the sheltered western beaches fill up on windy days.

On screen. This stretch of the Pelion coast was the mainland unit's base during the Greek shoot for Mamma Mia! in the late summer of 2007, with the crew working out of Agios Ioannis and its neighbouring beaches while the harbour sequences were filmed a kilometre south at Damouchari. It is worth being precise about the film's geography, because almost everyone gets it wrong: the production divided its Greek exteriors between the island of Skopelos, which supplied Kastani beach and the clifftop wedding chapel of Agios Ioannis sto Kastri near Glossa, the island of Skiathos, which supplied the second Sporades base and the airport that brought the production in, and this mainland coast, which supplied the harbour village. Nothing in the film happens on a single island, and Donna's hotel was a studio set built on the 007 Stage at Pinewood in England. The chapel and the beach bar are therefore a ferry ride away from here, not a walk.

The villages above. Agios Ioannis works best as a base for the mountain rather than as a destination in itself. Mouresi sits 300 metres above on the road, with a plane-shaded square and a bakery that supplies half the coast. Tsagkarada, further south, is really four hamlets around four churches, and its square at Agia Paraskevi holds a plane tree traditionally said to be a thousand years old, with a trunk over fifteen metres in circumference and a cafe built around its roots. Zagora, north, was the wealthiest Pelion village in the eighteenth century on the back of silk and later apples, and its public library, founded in 1762, still holds manuscripts and early printed books from that period. The cobbled kalderimia connecting these places are signposted, largely intact and shaded; the descent from Tsagkarada to Damouchari and the loop back up to Mouresi is the classic half-day.

Practical texture. The village has more infrastructure than anywhere else on the east coast: a couple of dozen small hotels and rooms, a supermarket, pharmacy, cash machines, a dive operator, boat hire and a line of tavernas along the front where the specialities are the mountain ones — spetzofai, the sausage and pepper stew, wild greens, and the local apples in autumn. Prices are lower than on the Sporades islands across the water, and the crowd is largely Greek, with Volos and Larissa families dominating in August and northern European walkers in the shoulder months. Nightlife is a handful of bars on the promenade and not much beyond midnight.

Getting there and timing. From Volos the road climbs to about 900 metres at Tsagkarada and then descends in tight hairpins to the coast, roughly ninety minutes of concentrated driving; buses run several times a day in summer and less often out of season, terminating in the village. Volos-Nea Anchialos airport takes seasonal charters, but most visitors arrive via Thessaloniki, about three hours away, or Athens, about four and a half. The swimming season runs from mid-June to early October, with September the sweet spot for warm water and empty shingle. Winter is quiet and wet, and the mountain above frequently holds snow while the beach below stays green — the Agriolefkes ski centre on the ridge is under an hour away, which makes this one of the few places in Greece where the two are genuinely combinable.