Boat Trips in September: The Ionian at Its Most Accessible and Beautiful
The small hired boat that leaves the Paleokastritsa base in September carries the same equipment and the same potential as its August equivalent. The controls are identical, the coastal landscape it will explore is the same limestone cliff and turquoise cove system that the summer season has been delivering to hired boat operators since May, and the sea into which it moves is the same Ionian Sea that has been providing the finest boat hire terrain in the eastern Mediterranean throughout the season. What is different in September is everything about the conditions in which the boat and the coastline and the sea are encountered, and the difference is entirely in September’s favour.
The September boat day on the northwest coast of Corfu is the boat day of the season. It is the day that the combination of the warmest sea, the clearest water, the quietest coast, and the finest light of the year produces together in the form that no other month achieves in quite the same completeness. The guests at Kapella Apartments who take a hired boat on the northwest coast in September are taking it in the conditions that the season has been building toward since it opened, and the experience they find is the Ionian at its most completely and most personally available.
The Northwest Coast in September: The Finest Conditions
The northwest coast of Corfu, from the Paleokastritsa bay system northward to the cape above Arillas, is the boat hire terrain that the September conditions most completely transform from the peak season version of itself. The coast that in August receives the full pressure of the hired boat fleet from Paleokastritsa, the coves and sea caves approached by a steady succession of hired vessels through the morning hours of the peak weeks, recovers in September to something very close to its natural state of access, the boat traffic reduced to a fraction of its August volume and the coastal landscape available to the September boat in conditions of genuine exploration rather than the shared discovery of the peak season.
The sea caves that are the defining attraction of the northwest coast boat day are in September at their most accessible and their most visually extraordinary. The September water clarity, exceptional after the peak season disturbance has subsided and the clear Ionian water mass has recovered its full transparency, allows the cave interiors to be seen in a detail and at a depth that the slightly reduced clarity of the August sea does not consistently produce. The coloured light that enters the sea caves through their various openings and reflects on the water within, producing the blue and green illumination that makes cave exploration one of the most celebrated experiences of the Corfiot coastal landscape, is rendered in September with the saturation and the definition that the finest clarity conditions achieve.
The September light on the cliff faces of the northwest coast adds a further quality to the boat day that the overhead summer sun cannot produce. The lower angle of the September sun, falling across the limestone faces from a more oblique direction than the August equivalent, reveals the texture and the colour of the cliff surface with a definition that the flat overhead light of the peak season partially obscures. The warm gold of the limestone in the September afternoon light, reflected in the September sea below, is the coastal landscape in the form that the painters and the photographers who have worked on this coast through the season understand as the finest light of the year.
The Secluded Coves: September Solitude
The secluded coves of the northwest coast, the small beaches accessible only from the water that the hired boat reveals at each successive headland along the cliff line, are in September what their natural beauty deserves them to be: genuinely private spaces, their pebble beaches largely unoccupied and their clear water undisturbed by the boat traffic of the peak season. The cove that in August had two or three other hired boats pulled up on its small beach has in September the character of a discovery rather than a shared destination, and the hours spent at the finest of these coves in the September warmth and the September solitude are hours of a quality that the most carefully planned August boat day, for all its considerable pleasures, cannot replicate in the same form.
The swimming in these September coves, in water at 25 degrees and of the clarity that the annual maximum of the undisturbed Ionian produces, is swimming of the most complete and most naturally satisfying kind. The body moves into water that is immediately and completely warm, the transition from the September air to the September sea effortless and natural, and the time in the water is extended by the combination of the temperature and the clarity and the complete absence of any competing presence in the cove beyond the boat and the group that arrived on it.
The lunch at the September cove, eaten from the provisions brought from Kapella Apartments on the flat rocks above the waterline with the boat pulled up on the pebble beach and the afternoon available in its entirety, is the finest version of the boat day lunch that the season produces. The September bread and the September cheese and the September tomatoes from the morning’s market, eaten in a cove of extraordinary natural beauty in conditions of complete solitude, are the simplest and the finest food that the Ionian summer provides, and September is the month that delivers them in the most perfect setting and the most completely private conditions.
The Diapontian Islands in September
The ferry service from Agios Stefanos on the northwest coast to the Diapontian Islands operates with a reduced September schedule compared to the July and August peak, but the service continues through the month and the day trip to Erikoussa, Mathraki, or Othonoi remains entirely practical for the September guest at Kapella Apartments willing to make the early start that the ferry departure requires.
The Diapontian Islands in September have recovered from the modest peak season pressure that their summer visitors introduce, and the beaches and the village tavernas of the three islands are at their most naturally themselves in the early autumn weeks. Erikoussa’s exceptional sandy beach, already among the finest in the Ionian at any point in the season, has in September the character of the undiscovered paradise that its natural beauty deserves: the sand largely unoccupied, the water at its warmest and clearest, and the small number of September visitors sufficient to keep the island’s tavernas open and its ferry running without creating the concentration of people that the peak season’s fuller visitor numbers produce.
The September passage to the Diapontian Islands on the ferry from Agios Stefanos crosses the open Ionian northwest of Corfu in conditions that the calmer September sea makes more comfortable than the livelier peak season sea occasionally provides. The crossing, thirty to forty minutes in each direction depending on the island chosen, delivers the September visitor to what remains one of the most genuinely remote inhabited island environments accessible on a day trip from the Greek mainland or any of the major Ionian islands.
The Coastal Day: Morning to Evening
The September boat day from Kapella Apartments follows the natural arc of the early autumn coastal day, the morning calm and the afternoon light and the evening return combining to produce a day whose structure the conditions themselves suggest and that requires only the willingness to follow where the September Ionian leads.
The departure from the Paleokastritsa boat hire base in the morning, the sea surface still and the light at the low angle of the early morning that makes the cliff faces and the cave mouths most clearly defined, sets the day in motion with the particular quality of a September morning on the open Ionian: the air already warm but not yet at the midday heat, the water brilliant in its September clarity, and the coastal landscape ahead revealing itself at each successive headland with the generosity of a place that has recovered its natural character from the peak season pressure and is offering itself, in the September morning, with the completeness of a landscape that has been waiting for this moment of quietness to show its finest face.
The return in the late afternoon, the September sun at the angle that lights the cliff faces and the sea below with the warm gold of the early autumn, delivers the group back to the Paleokastritsa base in the particular state of satisfied physical completeness that a full day spent on and in the September sea produces. The drive back to Kapella Apartments through the September evening, the coastal landscape visible from the road in the last of the afternoon light, and the garden waiting at the property’s end with the warmth of the September evening already established in the outdoor spaces and the dinner ahead: this is the September boat day conclusion, and it is the finest version of the Kapella Apartments evening that the early autumn month makes possible.
