Castle of the gods of Olympus

Under the shadow of Mount Olympos at Leptokarya, the E75 motorway that connects Thessaloniki to Athens abruptly stops for eight kilometres. Anyone who wants to continue the journey southwards is forced to venture into the wilds of the mountain before rejoining the monotony of the motorway.

If you sit at one of the tavernas in Platamonas village's central plateia, located high up on the mountainside, you can survey the whole scene and watch the difficulty Greece's heavy-freight vehicles have in climbing and negotiating the many hairpin bends that the short stretch of traditional mountain road provides.

From the same point, if you look out to the east, you can see the magnificent castle of Platamonas - a reminder of the strategic importance of this inhospitable location, immune to invasion in the past just as it is today to the modern road.

The castle, built in the 13th century AD most probably by the Franks, has seen the overlordship of the Byzantines and Ottomans in its long history. Rather appropriately, after the absorption of Thessaly into the Greek State in 1881, the naturally impassable mountain region became the border between the Ottoman and Greek states. It was at this time that the castle was restored to service, something that helps to explain its exceptional state of preservation.

Both north and south of Platamonas might today be Greece, but if you travel further from the main road towards the mountains, a completely different world remains to be discovered.

Rock and roll

Some idea of the difficulty of the terrain is given by the fact that the main peak of Olympos was only successfully climbed in 1913, despite recorded attempts dating back to the 17th century. Well into the 20th century, visitors were deterred from visiting the lawless region by infamous bands of robbers that roamed freely.

Although the locals are a little less formidable today, the mountain terrain can still baffle the outsider - what takes five minutes to travel under normal circumstances might take an hour there. The roads are rarely straight, and much of the time you are not progressing on your journey but climbing or descending the various obstacles in your way. As a result, villages that look close to civilisation are effectively stranded in the winter months. As a result, only a few villages have been able to survive the harsh tests of the mountain.

Those that have, like Pythio or Skotina, cling to the densely forested lower slopes of Olympos. It is in these small pockets that you will find a more traditional and tough culture. The simple dress of the women in the mountains is a far cry from the elegant fashion of Thessaloniki or nearby Katorini. It is an area where many of the cars are ancient and the old roads remain indistinguishable from the natural rock.

The region has its own thick dialect, too, with noticeable influences from the Slavic and Turkish tongues. What's more, these villages have a unique style of architecture that has been moulded by the location and history of the area. Atypically for Greece, all buildings have steep, pitched roofs to protect them from the rain and snow that is common at such altitudes. Surrounded by long wooden porticoes, the mountain houses have as many as six chimneys, giving them an almost alpine look.

Typical of the local population is Dareios, a goatherd in the Karya area. At 63, he told me in his gruff but friendly manner that he has been tending to goats for 58 of those years.

Most of his time is spent on the inhospitable mountainside, following his goats as they move to find new nourishment. Sometimes he can go for days without meeting another person. Dareios makes his living from selling the goats' milk and producing traditional cheese.

Although it is not an easy life, in the isolation of the village market he is at least sheltered from international economics. "I can't read, I can't write and I can't count," he says. "I don't know exactly how many goats I have, but they are like children to me. You know, I love them like my children, and I always know when one disappears."

So long as he can follow the difficult goat tracks and climb the mountain, he will continue his work. "I don't know of anything else to do or anything else that I'd be able to do," he quips.

"I'm sad that I will have to slaughter my herd when I retire. One of my sons looks after goats too, but in another area, and both my daughters are married. It's a different life for them."

He says that even in the isolation here people don't want such hard lives. "If you can choose to have a softer life, why would you stay on the mountain?"