Skópelos

Kastáni beaches

If you hadn’t guessed already, the theme for Charlotte and Sophie’s holiday is the film “Mamma Mia!”. So, on the morning of 20 July we headed out of Néa Klima at 0930 and initially went the wrong way for our route. Just to the south of Néa Klima are the Kastáni beaches used in the film; we motored the mile or so south to take a look before turning north. Mamma Mia site number one was ticked off the list by the girls but working out which scenes had been filmed there was made a little more difficult by the view of the beach being somewhat blocked by a large motor yacht. Maybe they are doing the Mamma Mia tour as well.

Loutráki harbour and Glóssa

With sails hoisted we started to make our way north, past Loutráki harbour with the village of Glóssa standing out very clearly high up on the hill. We planned to visit Glóssa later in the girls’ holiday but for now the plan was to sail clockwise around Skópelos.

Four miles to the north we passed the lighthouse on the northern tip of the island.

But, despite the scenery being excellent, it was clear that it wasn’t to get in the way of a good holiday read.

So Nicky and I sailed BV down the picturesque eastern side of the island looking for our next film location.

Ak Kastri

Not quite far enough in to get the view in the film

Perched on top of what looks like a very large boulder is a small chapel. This amazingly pretty location, Ak Kastri, was used in the film as the setting for the wedding. Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan had an emotional singing discussion at the foot of the hill before cantering up the narrow stepped path to get to the wedding ceremony. We had hoped to be able to anchor in the small bay beside the hill and go ashore to retrace their steps.

However, by the time we arrived the brisk northeasterly wind blowing directly onshore made the open anchorage untenable for us. We watched a large tripper boat rolling around madly at anchor whilst waiting for its passengers to return from the chapel. That, and our chart showing lots of rocks in the bay but no great detail, decided us to go in just as far as was comfortable to get photos but not to anchor.

Film sight-seeing completed for the day, we motored away from Ak Kastri towards our destination for the night, Skópelos town.

None of the distances we are going are very far. Today we logged a fraction under 20 miles so we moored up in Skópelos harbour just after lunchtime. That had a couple of advantages: lots of space on the quay for us and a whole afternoon for Charlotte and Sophie to explore the town. I’m not sure how many of the 123 chapels and churches they spotted but they seemed to have fun. We covered some of the more mundane essentials as well as booking a table for dinner at Kyratso’s Kitchen. After evening cocktails watching the sunset we headed out to the restaurant. It was an excellent meal; authentic Greek food, enthusiastic staff and some mellow Greek tunes from the 2 piece band.

Bellies full, we walked off some of our excesses wandering around the narrow lanes of the town. It was much busier than when we had visited earlier in the month and you could tell that the town had clicked into high season tourism mode. Good fun to be part of but we also wanted to show Charlotte and Sophie some of the more remote areas of the islands which you can only get to by boat.

Skópelos, Greece