Pamela Goodman: Don't mess with the wind, else it might just blow your car doors off

This is a column about wind. Forget hurricanes, typhoons or any old rough and tumble storm; think instead of those winds that billow and blow across our continents with annual regularity. The ones with exotic names like haboob, khamsin, chinook; not those called Amy, Bram, Chandra or Dave (God forbid we should make it to Wubbo this year).

In Europe, we might also think of the mistral, the ‘master wind’ and cold north westerly, which blows most intensely in Provence and Languedoc in France in winter and spring; or the hot dry sirocco surging up from the Sahara at the change of the seasons with fiery sand in its entrails; or the cool meltemi cavorting vigorously through the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean in high summer.

Back in the day, before modern Greeks adopted the Turkish name, the meltemi was known as the etesian wind, something that Aristotle tried to get his teeth into in his famous scientific work, Meteorologica, written in about 340BC. His was the world’s first study of weather and natural atmospheric processes, marking a shift from ancient mythological explanations for everything that happened between the Earth and the heavens. Boreas, the Greek god of the north wind, was dispatched. In came Aristotle’s understanding that at the rising of Sirius, the Dog Star, when the sun was at its highest and the heat was greatest, melting snow in colder regions would cause the etesian winds to blow from the north, often for many days continuously.

The Aegean islands most susceptible to the meltemi have always been the Cyclades, an archipelago of some 220 islands and islets circled around the central sacred island of Delos, the mythological birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. I have many favourites among these islands, but a particular soft spot for Serifos where, over the years, we have spent many of the dog days of summer lounging around in the sun — and the wind.

Serifos is one of those islands where an authentic slice of Greek island life still exists. None of the glitz of sister islands such as Santorini or Mykonos has made its mark here. Instead, the island is defined by a barren, predominantly treeless landscape of steep hills ribbed with ancient and abandoned terracing, remote farmsteads and tiny blue-domed chapels — not to mention its 72 beaches and bays, some only accessible by boat. The bountiful days of flourishing industries in wine, wheat, vegetables and iron ore are long gone, leaving behind a quiet haven where life is truly simple.

On our first visit, the lady in the car-rental agency, at the island’s small port of Livadi, handed over the keys to our tin can of a hire car with a nonchalant warning about being mindful of the wind. We thought little of this as we explored the island along Serifos’s sparse road network; parking up to explore the labyrinthine cobbled passageways of the hilltop Chora, one of the prettiest and best preserved ‘old towns’ in the Cyclades; turning off down unmarked tracks in search of walking trails and panoramas; navigating routes to beaches such as sandy Kalo Ambeli, picture-perfect Agios Sostis, remote Sikamia and sweet Platis Gialos with its pretty beachside taverna, all of which would become focal points of future stays on the island.

Then came our own Italian Job moment, returning to our car at one of Serifos’s highest points on a ferociously windy afternoon. We blew the bloody doors off — well one, actually. Don’t mess with the meltemi, Aristotle might have said.

This feature originally appeared in the April 1, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.