Milos travel guide: how to plan your trip

Milos is a volcanic island in the western Cyclades, and it is shaped by that in a way you notice within an hour of arriving. The rock is white, red, grey and yellow depending on which bay you are in, the best of the coast has no road to it, and the single most famous thing on the island can only be reached from the water. Planning a trip here is mostly a question of how you intend to get around it.

Who Milos suits

Milos is the white island, and we send people who want an alternative kind of beauty to the typical Cycladic postcard. If you have seen the blue domes and want the next thing rather than the same thing again, this is it.

We also send people who have done Greece before and want the landscape rather than the view. This is volcanic geology in the open air: white tuff ridges at Sarakiniko, red and ochre cliffs on the south coast, sulphur mines and a Roman theatre in the same afternoon.

Getting there

Milos is one of the easier Cyclades to reach, because it has both a fast boat and an airport. The high speed ferry from Piraeus takes about two hours forty minutes. The conventional boats take roughly four to seven hours, depending on the operator and how many islands they call at on the way, and they are cheaper and steadier in weather.

Flying is about forty minutes from Athens. Olympic Air, Aegean and Sky Express all serve the route, and in the week we checked there were 106 flights, which is a lot for an island of this size. That matters most at the ends of the season, when the fast boats thin out and the plane is still there.

Timetables move with the season and the operator, so we check live schedules for your dates rather than working from last year's. We book the boats as part of the trip through our Greek island ferry bookings.

How many nights

Three nights is the minimum. Four or five is what we book most often, and it is the range we would argue for.

The reason is simple. At three nights you are choosing between the boat day and the beaches, and the boat day always wins. Four or five is where the island stops being a choice between the two and starts opening up.

Where to stay

With a hire car this matters less than the internet suggests, because nothing on Milos is more than about thirty minutes from anything else. Without a car it decides the trip.

• Adamas, the only base that really works without a car. The port, the bus hub, every boat tour, and the most that stays open in May and October.
• Pollonia, our pick for couples. A shallow sandy bay you can walk into, the best waterfront tavernas, and the Kimolos ferry at the end of the street.
• Plaka, the hilltop capital, for sunset and dinner with a view.
• Trypiti, just below Plaka, quieter and cheaper, sitting on the catacombs and the Roman theatre above Klima.

We book the room as part of the trip through our hotels and villas across Greece, and on an island this compact we would rather argue about the village than the hotel.

The coastline is the island

Seven of our eighteen Milos tours are on a boat, and that is not an accident of what we happen to sell.

Kleftiko, the sea caves on the south west corner, has no road to it. Polyegos, the uninhabited island across the strait with the clearest water in the group, is a boat trip by definition. A good part of the western side of Milos is dirt track that ordinary hire cars are not meant to be on, which is why the off road day out exists at all.

So the practical planning question on Milos is not which sights to tick off. It is how many days on the water you want, and in what: a shared catamaran with twenty five people, a sailing boat with twelve, a rib that goes where the big boats cannot, or a private charter for the day.

Where the tours leave from

Tours leave from one of two places, and they are at opposite ends of the north coast. The shared catamaran cruises and the private catamaran sail from Adamas, the main port. The land tours, the rib boats, the motor yacht and the monohull sailing trips, including the full day to Polyegos and Kleftiko, leave from Pollonia.

It is a short drive between them, but it is a drive, and it is the reason we ask where you are staying before recommending a tour rather than after. Transfers are quoted with the tour so you can see what the day actually costs from where you are.

When the season runs

Late April to the end of October, opening and closing in stages. The land tours and the walking tour start on 20 April. Most of the boats follow in early May. By June everything is running, including the wellness sessions and the photography tour, which keep the shortest season of the lot and finish at the end of September.

At the far end, the rib boats, the motor yacht and the morning catamaran to Kleftiko run to the end of October, which makes a late trip here more workable than on a lot of islands.

One local quirk worth planning around: most Milos tours run daily except Fridays.

Do you need a car

We always recommend one. The buses reach Adamas, Plaka, Pollonia and Sarakiniko, but they thin out after dark, and most of the beaches people come here for are not served at all.

A standard car handles Sarakiniko, Pollonia and Provatas. The west coast and parts of the south are rutted dirt track, and this is the part worth reading twice: most rental agreements quietly void the collision cover the moment you leave the asphalt. That is the real reason the west side is a guided 4x4 day rather than a self drive one.

Automatics and 4x4s go first in July and August, so book the car rental in Greece when you book the room, not when you land.

Combining Milos with another island

Milos sits on the Western Cyclades line, so the honest answer is to pair it with what the ferries already serve. Sifnos is the easiest, then Serifos and Folegandros on the same line. Santorini is a genuine second island on the fast boat and the obvious contrast.

Mykonos and Naxos are the pairings people ask for most, and they are the ones that need the most planning to get right. They sit on a different ferry line, so the crossing is less frequent than the map suggests and more exposed to the wind. We build these trips regularly. It is a question of picking the right connection, leaving the right amount of room around it, and flying that leg instead when the boat does not fit the dates.

Kimolos earns its place for the opposite reason. It is a short hop from Pollonia, which is why we sell it as a day trip that never costs you a night. Private Greek island hopping is where we build the route around all of that.

What first timers get wrong

Kleftiko is not a beach you can drive to.

It is boat only, unless you want a ninety minute exposed hike in each direction. People arrive having seen the photograph and assume there is a car park behind it.

The second thing is scale. Milos is the fifth largest island in the Cyclades, with a west coast most visitors never reach at all, and it is routinely planned as though it were a small island you can see in two days.

The third is the expensive one. People leave the boat day until they arrive. In July and August that is how you end up on the boat nobody else wanted, on the one windy day of the week.