Walking in Mount Athos

You might get the impression that the monasteries of Mount Athos don’t want you to visit. You cannot drive onto the Athos Peninsula; the only way to enter is by boat. As you creep up to the green shore, the monastery walls, some cut right into the cliff, rise sternly above you.

“In the olden times there were pirates, and the monks had to defend their monasteries from looting. So, they built high walls and towers along the coast,” explains Nikos Todoulos, founder and senior guide at Agion Oros Treks.

Nikos leads our Mount Athos walking vacation onto this thin peninsula, which is found in the Halkidiki region of Northern Greece. Today, the imposing fortifications of Simonopetra Monastery is one of the most famous images of the area.

It might feel like the same fortifications were designed to keep out something worse than marauders – women have been banned from the peninsula for over a thousand years, with a 12-month prison sentence for those who break the rule. Mount Athos is an autonomous community in Greece, with special jurisdiction that allows it to restrict guests based on sex, and places strict limits on the number of visitors.

The message is clear: If you’re a pirate, or a woman, don’t come. Men of a non-piratical persuasion, however, can spend a few days on a small group walking vacation, and have the peninsula practically to themselves.

Whatever you feel about the Holy Mountain’s ban on women, it looks as though it’s here to stay. In summer months, Nikos tells us, it’s habitual for Russian pilgrims to leave their families in the resorts of Halkidiki. From here, women and children can choose to see the monasteries by boat excursion, just so long as they stay at least half a kilometre from shore.

Despite this remarkable ban, the region shows tolerance elsewhere.

“No, you don’t have to be a Christian Orthodox,” Nikos explains. “We have Muslim, Jewish and Protestant visitors.”

They come, not just because they can, but because, alongside religious visits to Mount Athos is another, quieter kind of pilgrimage – that of hikers coming to trek in this special place.

There are daily visitor quotas to Mount Athos for pilgrims, capping entrants at 100. Even fewer can come to hike – or climb – in the area. You need a permit to do so.

The peninsula consists of Mount Athos itself, a lone peak rising two kilometres from sea level, and the monasteries – there are 20 of them peppering the coast. Between the monasteries, the steep hills are cloaked with vast swathes of chestnut forest.

Permits are not so easy to come by. “If the monks don’t know you, they give you nothing,” warns Nikos, who has built a good relationship with those on the peninsula over the last two decades of running special, small group hikes in the area. Contacting them without a facilitator like Nikos is difficult, and the process bureaucratic. “They don’t have phones, they use fax machines,” Nikos explains. “They don’t answer the telephones.”

Tech is coming, and you might see the odd monk with a smartphone, but they’re not exactly early adopters. The best way to visit, then, is by organised tour – and you’ll likely be the only hiking group going in.

Custodians such as these monks are rare in the world, which is why the peninsula is of special interest to conservationists. The peninsula is too steep for agriculture, which is confined to terraces and to the seashore. The rest of the area is woodland – except for the tonsured peak of Mount Athos itself, rising high above the treeline.

The area gained UNESCO Heritage Status in 1998, both for its cultural significance and for the preservation of its ancient Mediterranean forests. The peninsula has virgin wood – old growth trees that have existed untouched for millennia – growing so densely on the steep slopes that there’s little knowledge of what lies within. Don’t expect to see wildlife – the forest is too deep; instead, enjoy the trees themselves and, when they part, the views.

“Spectacular,” says Nikos, describing November when trees are resplendent in autumnal colours. Spectacular also is the Aegean Sea beyond – a superlative blue.

There are 20 main monasteries on the Athos Peninsula, most of them on the coast. A four-day visit will have you taking in up to 10 of them, including famous Simonopetra Monastery, perched daringly on the cliffs and renowned for its 16th-century paintings, and Xenophontos Monastery and Gregoriou Monastery, down on the sea shore.

“I like Pantokratoros Monastery on the north side of the peninsula,” says Nikos. “It’s a location that is just above the sea, so calm. There are great balconies where you can sit and enjoy your coffee.”

The monasteries each have their own ecclesiastical treasures: books, manuscripts, icons and paintings. Panteleimon Monastery, the Russian monastery, has a bell so big that it takes at least two monks to ring it. Most visitors are impressed by the size of the monasteries, in which only a handful of monks now rattle around, preserving their empty castles, and keeping alive traditional art forms; you may hear strains of atmospheric Byzantine chanting at mass.

Visitors may also hear about sketes. “These are small brotherhoods of 2-3 monks,” Nikos explains. They live in very isolated conditions, found on the southern peninsula in the foothills, in caves that are accessible by a dilapidated series of ropes and ladders, and are difficult to visit on foot. “They are mostly very hardcore pilgrims that have left the outer world completely.”

There are spectacular colours on the hillsides in spring and autumn, however, consider winter too.

“Not many people visit from November to February as they’re afraid that it will be cold, but they have stoves,” says Nikos. “It’s warm inside the monasteries.”

Plus, Nikos adds: “The weather has changed – here in Greece right now [November] it’s like summer. Well, 25 years ago, in November we had snow and we would go skiing but this November we go swimming. So, I would say it is a year-round destination.”

Climate change will affect this region, just as it will the rest of Greece. In the summer 2022, fire services struggled to extinguish forest fires on the peninsula – a victim of its own sequestration – and had to use helicopters. Walkers will probably avoid summer, anyway, because it’s too hot.

There are few places left that are like Mount Athos, untouched and unchanged despite its old-fashioned ways falling further and further out of step with the rest of the world. The few who visit can safely say they are in a privileged minority – send us a postcard.