September Water
Why those who know come to Skyros in September, when the sea still holds the summer's warmth and the island exhales.
Ask anyone who has spent many summers on Skyros which month they would keep, if they could keep only one, and a surprising number will say September.
It is not the warmest month, quite. It is not the liveliest. What it has is something harder to name: a quality of light, and of water, and of mood, that the high weeks of August, for all their warmth, never manage.
The sea remembers
The sea in September is the secret. It has spent the whole summer being warmed, and it holds that warmth long after the air has begun, very slightly, to cool. You walk in without flinching. You stay in longer than you mean to. The water is glassy in the mornings, the meltemi mostly spent, and so clear that you can count the pebbles a long way down.
And the light has changed. The hard, white glare of midsummer has gone soft and golden, kinder to everything it touches, the white walls of Chora, the pale sand, your own slow afternoons. Photographers call it the good light. On Skyros in September it lasts most of the day.
The island exhales
There is a feeling, too, that the island has let its shoulders down. The few crowds of August have thinned. The tavernas are calm. The people who run them have time to talk again. You can have a long stretch of Magazia almost to yourself at nine in the morning, and a quiet table by the water at nine at night.
It is, in the end, the most complete version of the slow Greek summer this whole guide is written for: warm sea, soft light, few people, and time that seems to move at half its usual speed. If you can choose your month, choose this one.
Our full breakdown of the season is in when to visit Skyros, and the beaches that are loveliest now are in the beaches of Skyros.
More from the Journal soon. To plan a September of your own, start here.