Palaiokastritsa by road, not by boat

Almost every photograph of Palaiokastritsa is taken from the water. The bays, the pines coming down to the rocks, the monastery on its headland: a boat gets you all of it in forty minutes and a road gets you none of it in the same time.

That is the reason most visitors arrive by sea, and the reason most of them miss the better half of the place.

What the boat gives you and what it does not

The caique trip out of the main bay is genuinely good. You see the sea caves, the shape of the coves, the colour of the water over the rock shelves, and you get the postcard of the monastery from below.

What it cannot give you is height. Palaiokastritsa is a place about looking down, and the two viewpoints that matter are both on the road: the terrace at Bella Vista above Lakones, and the shoulder of the hill on the Krini side above Angelokastro. From the water you are inside the picture. From the road you can see why the picture is famous.

The road, honestly

From Corfu Airport it is a twenty-five kilometre drive and around forty minutes, and only the last eight are interesting. The route climbs out of the plain, runs west through Skripero, and then starts a series of proper bends through olive groves that have been worked since the Venetians paid farmers per tree to plant them.

Two things to know about that road:

• It is narrow above Lakones. Two coaches meeting on the Bella Vista stretch stop the traffic for several minutes at a time, and this happens most days in July and August between eleven and two.
• The gradient is real. Hire cars with four adults and a full boot feel it, and the descent back down towards the bay is where brakes get overheated by people who have been riding them.

Neither is a reason not to go. Both are reasons to go early or late, and reasons the drive is more pleasant when somebody else is doing it.

The monastery

Theotokos Palaiokastritsas sits on the promontory that closes the main bay. It is a working monastery, founded in the thirteenth century and rebuilt more than once, and the courtyard is small, whitewashed, and full of bougainvillea in a way that is genuinely lovely rather than arranged for visitors.

Two practical points. It closes in the middle of the day, so an eleven o'clock arrival can find the gate shut. And shoulders and knees must be covered: there are wraps at the entrance, but there are not always enough of them at the hour when three coaches have just parked.

The view from the little terrace behind the chapel, out over the open Ionian, is the one thing at Palaiokastritsa that no boat trip includes.

Angelokastro, if you have the legs

Six kilometres further, above Krini, is the Byzantine castle that watched the northern approach to the island for six hundred years. The last part is a stepped climb and it is steep enough that it should be a decision rather than a surprise.

What you get for it is the whole north-west coast at once: Palaiokastritsa's coves to the south, Cape Drastis to the north, and on a clear morning the Albanian mountains behind you and the outline of Italy somewhere in the haze ahead. It is the best thirty minutes of climbing on Corfu.

The order that works

Start high and finish low. Bella Vista or Angelokastro first, while the light is still coming from the east and the coaches are behind you, then the monastery, then down to the bay to swim and eat when the day has warmed up and the viewpoints have filled with people you no longer need to share.

Doing it the other way, which is what a boat-first day forces, means climbing to the viewpoints in the middle of the afternoon and finding thirty other people at the parapet.

This is the shape of the Captivating Corfu day: the ridge road, the castle, the monastery, and the long swim at the end rather than the beginning.

Staying there rather than visiting

Palaiokastritsa is also a base, and a good one if you want the west coast and do not want a resort strip. It is a forty-minute airport transfer to Palaiokastritsa, the fare is fixed per vehicle before you travel, and the last part of the drive is the same set of bends described above, which is easier at the end of a flight in somebody else's car.

If your party is four or more with a fortnight's luggage, the size of vehicle matters more here than almost anywhere else on the island, because there is nowhere to turn around and nowhere to repack. The fleet page lists what actually fits, including bags, rather than seat counts alone.

One more thing about the water

The bays face north-west, which means they take the afternoon wind. If you are swimming with children, the first cove on the town side stays sheltered longest; the outer ones can get choppy by four o'clock on a breezy day, which is a surprise to anyone who arrived at ten and found glass.

Go up first. Swim last. Let the boat be the thing you do next time.