Kýthnos

Time your visit right and you can have this island to yourself, avoiding the Athenian summer invasion. Like its neighbour Kéa, Kýthnos attracts relatively few foreigners, and although the island has been discovered by the cool kids, until recently the majority of arrivals are not tourists, but folks full of aches and pains who come to soak in the thermal spa at Loutrá; the locals often call their island Thermia.

Since the closure of the iron mines in 1940, the 1,500 islanders have got by as best they could by fishing, farming (mostly figs and vines), basket-weaving and making ceramics; the one thing that has stopped the population from dropping any further is the construction of a harbour mole in 1974, allowing ships to dock.

Perhaps to make up for its slow start, Kýthnos became the first Greek island (1982) to get all of its electricity from renewable sources – wind in the winter and sun in the summer, inspiring similar projects on Mýkonos, Kárpathos, Samothráki and Crete.