15 June 2022. We travel by local bus. The driver has the sun visor down. It’s easy to see what’s important to him: his grandchildren are all there, right where he can see them.





The bus takes us from Adamantas to the bottom of Plaka, which sits at the top of a cliff. Memories of our time there fade, but I know that we get off the bus and walk. We use maps, but don’t really know where we’re going. All we know is that it’s up.

As we follow the alleyways and staired lanes moving ever higher the town seems to crumble around us. We begin in what I learn later is a “new” town








but as we climb higher there are more and more indications this is an ancient place – a crumbling stone wall here, an abandoned and unkempt home there,








a long neglected small garden with a pot or two of tenacious plants, broken pots,





disintegrating walls. Not a sense of despair so much as a feeling of being a little left behind, perhaps neglected.

The remains of the13th century Venetian fortress is the only thing in Milos that bears testimony to Venetian rule. It was a peaceful and productive time enriched by farming and mining. Then pirates came, and Greek Buccaneers, along with venereal diseases and general dissolution, but trade still created a high standard of living. The Turks defeated the Venetians, and evicted the Buccaneers. Muslim pirates raided stole raped slaughtered. 1703 the plague entered the scene. 1706 a volcanic eruption. Five years later another. In 1738 a powerful earthquake. The island was reduced to a time of filth, noxious pollution, destroyed buildings. By the end of the 18th century the original town was abandoned, the residents moved into the castle and built a new village by stripping the old buildings. Eventually there was not enough room within the castle walls so the residents built a village next to it. This is the town of Plaka.

Plaka, the capital of the Cycladic island of Milos, sits atop the cliff with a view as wide as the sky, as wide as your imagination, or mine,





and topped by the ancient Venetian stronghold. Climbing higher and higher we come to the final ascent.





From the top all potential disturbance could be detected by the Venetians long before it became a real threat. We are on top of the world!





Hot. Enervated. Thirsty. Sun beating down. No shade, no breeze. We make our way down and collapse into the first inviting place we come to. Aaaaaahhh shade, a cold drink, a seat for weary legs, a time to inhale and exhale without wanting to achieve anything. We sit for a while, almost motionless.





Eventually it’s time to move again. Making our way further down we somehow find the trail. As usual maps.me guides us, otherwise how would we have ever found it? In retrospect I’m not entirely sure how I even found out about the walk we embark on. All we know is that there’s a tiny local trail from Plaka down to the water; a trail from the top of the cliff to the sea below and the utterly irresistible fishing village of Klima; a trail that has been used by the people of the two villages for generations.

We follow what’s left of the flagstone paving, overgrown with weeds, bordered by centuries old stone walls, and likely equally old olive trees.








It’s a treasure hunt finding the way, an endless search for an indication of the trail’s direction. It is teasing us, challenging us to discover it. Is it this way? Or that way? Look at the map again. In some parts the trail is almost hidden.





We pass a small church,





and at about the halfway point look back up to where we’ve come from; Plaka at the top of the cliff.





We walk towards Profitis Ilias Chapel sitting high on its own hill,





as our feet tread the narrow path, following in the footsteps of so many before us, centuries of people connecting from village to village up and down the cliffside.

We come unexpectedly to a wide open space with no indication of where to go next,





but crossing it we find the way. We are closer to the sea now.





There’s a sign indicating the way to the ancient Roman amphitheatre but we choose not to go there; I’m pulled relentlessly towards Klima, and if you could see around this bend





you would see a long steep stone staircase that leads right down to the water; and to the road that in these modern times connects the two villages with each other and with the rest of the island; and to Astakas Restaurant, the only restaurant in Klima. It is our first stop.

A meal, a drink, a rest for weary legs, shade, a cool breeze. We are revived by all this, and it’s time to explore Klima, this bright enticing ribbon of colour spread along the shore.





It is the epitome of Cycladic folk architecture, and the most iconic of Milos’ fishing villages. These small fishers’ houses, called syrmata, comprise boat storage beneath and a home above. The boat is dragged into the front of the sea-level area for protection against harsh weather; the rear is a cave dug into the volcanic rock – a storehouse for fishing and boat-maintenance gear. The bright colours are so the fisherman can see his house from a distance, and also to use the paint left over from painting his boat. The syrmata date from the 1800’s after the newly-founded Greek state was liberated from the Ottomans. People turned to activities like mining, agriculture, and fishing, and during this time the fishermen living in Klima built their small boat garages. Some are still used this way; many have been turned into a boutique, or rental accommodation unique to Milos.

We are worlds away from all we’ve seen of the Cyclades; worlds away from the typical sugar-cube architecture; worlds away from the usual labyrinth of streets. This is something different. We have arrived at some kind of fairyland, a magical place, a song of colour, and I’m reminded of the same bright joy of the coloured houses of Burano.








I want to see everything! We walk from one end to the other and back, past the syrmata, some open, most closed; past the concrete breakwaters; past the small beach.








My enchantment never fades.








I want to know everything – do people still live here? How do they live? What can I know about their unique lives that are so different and so the same as mine – the moods, the feelings, the hard work, the rest, the restlessness, the contentment? I peer into open doorways trying to divine the interior – of the home, and of the person who lives there or owns it. To live in such a place is so far beyond my own experience that I can barely imagine it.











How delightful that people got to live like this, between the bright colours and the shining sea, and that some still do; in a tiny house with the blue water as their front garden and the mountain at their back. I call it magical, and for me it is; it’s so bright; it’s so exotic.











But on a more prosaic note it is no doubt ordinary for the people who still make a living from the sea, who still fish and live in the tiny house above the boat garage; work eat sleep dream rest work eat sleep; so different yet so the same.

A day later we return by boat and see the vivid panorama of Klima from the sea, with Plaka above on the right, and Profitis Ilias Chapel high on the hill on the left.











We make a foolish decision. Well perhaps not foolish so much as not well thought out; it amounts to the same thing. We decide to walk back up to Klima via the road. Hot. Steep uphill. Really hot. Dying from the heat. Relentlessly uphill. No shade anywhere. No sidewalks. Traffic. What were we thinking?








At last we reenter Plaka, and by following the winding streets,





come at last to the centre of the “new” old town where there is shade, and cafes, and cold drinks, and ice cream,








and a notice board displaying some really really faded real estate notices. I idly wonder if any of the places listed ever sold.





On the bus back to Adamantas a glimpse of the ancient windmills of Trypiti, the village just a little down the hill from Plaka.





As I write this it occurs to me, and astonishes me, that we didn’t think to look into a bus from Klima back to Adamantas. Of course there is one . . . . .








Next post: That boat trip I mentioned: a day on the water circumnavigating Milos Island. One of our best days, and the last of the posts about Greece.





All words and images by Alison Louise Armstrong unless otherwise noted.
© Alison Louise Armstrong and Adventures in Wonderland – a pilgrimage of the heart, 2010-2023.