Our 4×4 rumbled to a halt at the riverbank. George, my guide, reached for the second gearstick. “Now you’ll see why we need two,” he said. Through the window, the “river” looked more like a stream but it all felt rather dramatic as he charged the car forward, roaring “Here we go!”.
By this point, we were deep in Valia Kalda, a beautiful valley within Northern Pindos National Park, an isolated mountainous region in Greece. It felt far removed from the sun-soaked islands and golden beaches more readily associated with the country.
George had promised excellent hiking and a decent chance of completing a trail without encountering another tourist and the stats backed it up. In 2025, the region’s main town Metsovo recorded just 26,622 hotel arrivals, compared with popular European mountain ranges like the Dolomiti-Cortina area, which had 1.1 million visitors.
I love hiking, but queuing along busy paths and jostling for space at viewpoints is not my idea of fun.
Valia Kalda appeared to offer the antidote. “You definitely wouldn’t think this is Greece,” Cambridge-based Alison and Keith, who were also exploring the region, told me. “Just how green it is. We were hiking all the way down a trail the other day, which was about 900ft to the bottom, and I think we only saw one other couple.”
The pleasures of this area extended beyond its empty trails, too: it’s home to smoked cheeses, high-altitude wine, truffle-rich forests and a distinctive culture.
My base for the weekend was Grand Forest Metsovo, a family-run luxury hotel on a forested mountainside 20 minutes from the historic town of Metsovo. The hotel’s fine-dining restaurant, Metsovo 1350m, serves a tasting menu that showcases a succulent slow cooked Kalarrytiko lamb (indigenous to the area). It comes with pea purée, an earthy cumin jus and a spectacularly pink sunset.
The meal set me up for the following morning, when George collected me for the 40-minute drive to the trailhead. From the car, the landscape rolled in green waves, bringing isolated roads and distant villages in and out of view. Occasionally, we stopped at the side of the road to take it all in, with George telling me the names of wildflowers along the verge. Eventually, we bumped along a steep, unmarked forest track, swerving around branches and rocks dislodged from the hillside, until we reached the river crossing. On the other side, we left the car and followed the river on foot beneath black pine and beech trees, some more than 700 years old.
The wider Northern Pindos region is one of only three areas in Greece with a population of brown bears and is also home to wolves, wild cats and roe deer. While we had no luck in spotting any of those, there was abundant life on a much smaller scale at our feet. Baby frogs no bigger than bugs swam and hopped in rain-filled puddles, while fuzzy pine processionary caterpillars advanced nose to tail across the trails.
At a clearing near the water, George set up a picnic spot with a spread of treats packed by the hotel’s kitchen, like spanakopita. In the north, the spinach and feta filo pie is slightly thicker. George used a hob to whip up a pot of tarhana, a regional dish somewhere between couscous and porridge, cooked with a good lump of butter, feta and paprika.
Back at the hotel, I made my way to the spa’s glass-covered indoor pool, making myself comfortable with an Alpine tea in one of the loungers as I watched the sun sink into the horizon. As well as being a thriving wildlife habitat, these mountains provide fertile ground for grapes. Some of Greece’s highest-altitude wine – rich reds and herbaceous whites – is made here, Averoff Winery in Metsovo the most historic of the producers.
The story goes that in the late 50s, Greek politician Evangelos Averoff-Tositsas planted Greece’s first cabernet sauvignon vines on the slopes of Mount Pindus, where he had to fend off local boar and bears attracted by the sweet grapes. The experiment grew into one of the country’s best-known wine estates, with tours now available at the Katogi Averoff hotel. Averoff-Tositsas spent decades investing in his ancestral hometown. The Averoff Art Gallery, for example, has a permanent collection of more than 250 19th- and 20th-century Greek paintings.
Nearby, the Tositsa Folk Art Museum tells the story of Metsovo’s Vlach culture, which is rooted in nomadic farming with a distinctive Aromanian language, similar to Romanian but mixed with Greek and Slavic.
For lunch, I headed to one of Metsovo’s oldest restaurants, Galaxias. Within minutes of sitting, every inch of the table was covered with plates of grilled lamb and pork chops, chunks of bread, and meze dishes like saganaki – hard salty cheese, grilled and drizzled with honey – and a butter bean stew cooked with spinach and smoked mackerel.
Some of the region’s most prized ingredients are still gathered from the mountains, and so, the next morning, I found myself heading into the forest in search of truffles. We followed the truffle dog through the trees as she darted between roots and leaf litter, occasionally stopping to sniff at the earth before charging off again.
Then, suddenly, she began digging. Within minutes, the soil had given up an enormous black truffle, which would later be shaved over a fresh plate of orzo with cheese and wild mushrooms. Luckily for us there were still no other tourists in sight, so any more finds would be ours alone.
How to get there
Jet2, easyJet and British Airways fly from the UK to Thessaloniki, roughly 2.5 hours by taxi (from about £150), or four-five hours by bus (£30-50), to Metsovo.
Where to stay
The writer was a guest of Grand Forest Metsovo, which has doubles from £220 and offers a range of excursions. The hotel can also arrange airport transfers.