Centaurs

Pelion was the home of the Centaurs, and of Chiron, the one among them who was wise rather than wild. He taught Achilles, Jason and Asclepius, and his cave is in the Taxiarchis ravine, on the slope the little train climbs to reach Milies.

The mountain was also where the gods came in summer, and where the wedding of Peleus and Thetis took place — the wedding at which the apple of discord was thrown.

The train

The Pelion railway runs from Ano Lechonia to Milies, fifteen kilometres in about ninety minutes. Locally it is sometimes called the Moutzouris, the sooty one, from the smoke of the coal engine it once had.

It was built between 1894 and 1903, and the engineer who designed it was Evaristo de Chirico, an Italian working in Volos. His son Giorgio de Chirico, born in the city, became one of the most influential painters of the twentieth century — and small smoking trains, station arches and Centaurs run all through his work.

The line is sixty centimetres wide, among the narrowest in the world, and it climbs through ravines, over stone arched bridges and through tunnels. The engine is diesel now.

Why the villages are so grand

Pelion's villages were prosperous under Ottoman rule. They had trading privileges, they sent people abroad who sent money home, and the result is a scale of building you would not expect on a mountain.

Vizitsa and Makrinitsa keep the best of it: three-storey stone houses with a projecting upper floor, slate roofs, and painted ceilings and walls inside.

Milies has a library founded in 1814, with books that were unusual to own anywhere in the Ottoman Balkans at the time.

The Museum of Folk Art and History of Pelion is in Makrinitsa.

There are twenty-four villages and they divide by slope.

Above Volos, Makrinitsa hangs on the hillside with a view straight down over the gulf — it is called the balcony of Pelion, and it is the busiest. Portaria is beside it, larger and greener.

On the eastern side, facing the Aegean, Tsagarada is spread across four separate quarters, each with its own square, and in one of them stands a plane tree said to be a thousand years old. Zagora is the largest village on the mountain and the centre of the apple growing.

Milies and Vizitsa sit on the western slopes above the gulf, and Vizitsa in particular is a preserved settlement of mansions with almost nothing modern in it.

Agios Lavrentios, Chania and Kissos are higher and quieter, and Afissos, Horto and Lefokastro are the villages down on the gulf.

The paths

Because the villages needed to reach each other before there were roads, Pelion has a dense network of kalderimia — cobbled mule paths, many of them centuries old, with stone bridges and fountains along the way.

They are the best thing about walking here. Routes connect village to village, and most can be done in two or three hours. The Centaur's Path from Portaria and the paths around Tsagarada down to the sea are the ones people do first.

Water

Springs come out of the mountain everywhere, which is why it is green when the plain below is burnt.

The Waterfall Path starts at the car park of the ski centre, below the peaks of Agriolefkes and Agrionidi, and follows dozens of springs and small falls down into the Feloukas gorge, which comes out at the Aegean near Fakistra.

Snow

The Agriolefkes ski centre has been running since 1967. It sits at 1,471 metres, two kilometres from the village of Chania and twenty-seven from Volos, and it has four downhill runs approved by the international ski federation, a beginners' run and a five-kilometre cross-country track.

It is the only ski centre in Greece from which you look down at the sea.

Pelion has two coasts and they are completely different.

The Aegean side is open, dramatic and mostly reached by steep roads down from the villages. Mylopotamos is white pebble between rock formations. Fakistra is reached on foot and is the wild one. Damouchari is a tiny natural harbour with a pebble beach, used as a location in Mamma Mia!. Papa Nero, Agios Ioannis and Horefto are longer and sandy, with facilities. Potistika has golden sand and large rocks.

The Pagasetic side is calm, shallow and warm. Afissos, Kala Nera, Horto and Milina are family beaches with the villages behind them, and the water is flat almost all summer.

The mountain grows things. Zagora apples are the best-known product and are sold across Greece. Pears, chestnuts, walnuts and olives come from the same slopes, along with herbs and honey.

Spetsofai is the dish of Pelion — village sausage cooked with peppers and tomato — and boubari, stuffed intestines, is the other. Tyrenia and local cheeses come from the mountain flocks.

The coastal villages cook fish and octopus, and the drink is tsipouro, served with small plates in the manner of Volos.