Amorgos

Where it sits. Amorgos is the easternmost of the Cyclades, a long, narrow spine of rock about 33 kilometres end to end and rarely more than six wide, covering some 121 square kilometres and home to fewer than 2,000 people. Its geography is unusually severe for the group: the south-eastern flank falls to the sea in an almost continuous cliff several hundred metres high, while the north-western side holds the terraces, the villages and both ports. Mount Krikellos reaches 823 metres at the north-eastern end. There is no coastal ring road; the single spine road runs from Katapola in the middle of the island to Aegiali in the north-east, and everything else is reached on foot.

Two ports and a Chora between them. Katapola sits at the head of a deep bay in the middle of the island and takes most of the ferry traffic. Aegiali, properly Ormos Egialis, is the second port, set in a wide sweeping bay in the north-east beneath the hill villages of Tholaria, Langada and Potamos, and it has the island's only real sandy beach. The Chora stands on the ridge above Katapola at around 320 metres, a compact whitewashed village of vaulted lanes, some forty churches and a cluster of windmills on the crest, with a small Venetian fortress on a rock at its heart, built by the Ghisi family in the thirteenth century. The lanes are so narrow and so low-arched that no vehicle enters, and the village keeps a domestic, unstaged quality that the more visited Cyclades have largely lost.

On screen. Amorgos is The Big Blue — Le Grand Bleu — Luc Besson's 1988 film about the freediving rivalry of Jacques Mayol and Enzo Molinari, whose opening chapters are set on the island in the 1960s and which was largely shot here. The monastery of Panagia Hozoviotissa, white against the cliff on the south-east coast, and the chapel and rock platforms of Agia Anna directly below it are the images the film fixed in the European imagination; Kalotaritissa bay, at the far south-western tip beyond Kato Meria, also served the production. The effect was extraordinary and long-lasting: French visitors arrived in numbers from the late 1980s onward, French is still the second language of half the island's accommodation, and a bar in Aegiali has traded under the film's name for decades. Besson's crew filmed a real place and barely dressed it, which is why the island still matches the footage — a rare thing among screen locations.

The best walking in the Cyclades. Amorgos has a signed and maintained trail network built on old donkey paths, with numbered routes covering well over a hundred kilometres. The classic is the Melania path, which links Chora to Aegiali along the flank of the mountain in about five hours, passing the Byzantine chapel of Agios Ioannis Theologos and running high above the sea for most of its length. Shorter routes climb from Aegiali to Tholaria and Langada, descend from the Chora to Hozoviotissa in twenty minutes, or reach the ancient site of Minoa on the hill above Katapola, where a Hellenistic gymnasium, a temple terrace and stretches of wall survive. Spring brings wildflowers and green terraces; by August the landscape is bleached and the walking should be done early.

Water. Swimming here is off rock as often as off sand. Agia Anna, below the monastery, is a set of stepped rock platforms with deep clear water and no shade; Mouros, on the south coast, is a pebble cove under a cliff; Kalotaritissa has two small sandy bays and a boat service to the uninhabited islet of Gramvousa. The rusting hull of the freighter Olympia, aground since 1980 in Liveros bay just round the headland from Kalotaritissa, is a fixture of island boat trips and one of the more atmospheric wreck dives in the Cyclades. The island has a small dive centre at Aegiali, and the water clarity on this exposed eastern edge of the archipelago is exceptional.

Getting there and timing. Amorgos has no airport. Ferries from Piraeus take between five and nine hours depending on the vessel, and the island is linked to Naxos, Paros, Santorini and the Lesser Cyclades — Koufonisia, Schinoussa, Irakleia and Donousa — by a mix of conventional and fast boats, with the Small Cyclades caique providing the local service. Most sailings call at Katapola, some at Aegiali, and the two ports are 40 minutes apart by a bus that meets arrivals. A car or scooter helps but is not essential, since the bus network follows the single road reasonably well. May, June, September and early October are the strongest months: warm sea, open tavernas, and trail temperatures that make the long walks a pleasure rather than an ordeal. In winter the island is quiet, windy and largely closed to visitors, though the ferries keep running.