Paths of Greece with Fivos Tsaravopoulos

In this episode Jason König interviews Fivos Tsaravopoulos, founder and manager of Paths of Greece.

This is the first episode in our new Mountains of Greece series within the Mountain Stories, Mountain Futures podcast project.

Paths of Greece was founded in 2010 as a social co-operative enterprise, and has played a leading role over the last fifteen years in developing new hiking routes across Greece.

We talk first about Fivos' childhood spent on archaeological sites around Greece, and then his first Paths of Greece projects on Kythera and elsewhere.

Fivos talks about some of the bewilderment that greeted his early efforts from local people, but also the growing interest in hiking in Greece over the last decade or so, and the special character of the mountains of Greece as 'hospitable' that marks them out from some of the other big mountaineering destinations in Europe.

We talk about some possible ways of quantifying the economic and health impacts of the 2000 km of trails that Paths of Greece have established over the last few years.

Fivos then gives some examples of recent work, for example the Paths of Peace project at Florina, and talks about some of the similarities and differences between mountain and island trail projects.

Finally we discuss the challenges of depopulation that a lot of Greek mountain communities are facing, and some of the ways in which tourism might be able to help.

This episode was edited by Zofia Guertin.

To learn more about the Mountains of Greece project you can visit our website https://mountainsofgreece.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/, or follow us on Bluesky @mountainsofgreece.bsky.social. 

For the broader Mountain Stories, Mountain Futures project please visit our website https://msmf.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk, or follow us on Bluesky @futuremountain.bsky.social.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to this first interview in our new Mountains of Greece podcast series. This is part of the broader Mountain Stories Mountain Futures podcast project. These interviews follow up on our recent conference, Mountains of Greece Heritage Narratives from the Past for a Sustainable Future, held at the British School at Athens in October 2025. We thought it would be nice to have a more leisurely chat with some of our contributors to the conference, hearing about some of the stories lying behind the projects that were showcased there. And also as an opportunity to make them accessible to those who weren't able to attend. The goal of the Mountains of Greece project is to explore a wide range of stories from people working on different aspects of mountain heritage in Greece. That involves thinking about the past, but also thinking about the future. How can we find new ways of engaging with history, heritage, and conservation in the mountain landscapes of Greece? How can we ensure a sustainable approach to environmental and cultural preservation for these extraordinary places? I'm Jason Koenig from the University of St. Andrews. It's a great pleasure today to welcome Fivos Tseravopoulos. Fivos is founder and manager of Paz of Greece, Monopatia Tizelados. Paz of Greece was founded in 2010 as a social cooperative enterprise. The stated goal on the PARS of Greece website is to establish Greece as one of the top 10 hiking destinations in the world. They've achieved amazing things already just over the last 15 years. That has involved working on a huge range of projects right across Greece and increasingly now in other parts of the world too. I hope you will have the chance to hear about some of those as we talk today. So welcome, Pivos. Great to have you on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Thank you, Jason. Great to be here. And it's a very uh enjoyable work what we're doing. And uh above all, we really, really deeply love what we do. So the achievements are just a side product, but uh basically the the main things that we love what we do.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Fantastic. It's great to hear that. Um we'll come to understand more why that's the case as we go through this conversation. I wonder if you could start just by telling us a little bit about how you came to be interested in both in hiking and in heritage, I guess. Were these things important to you as you were growing up?

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Yes, I've been um always surrounded by culture and nature because both my parents are archaeologists and I've spent all of my childhood holidays in archaeological excavations all over Greece, uh near the sea, on the mountains, in different places, always trying to take history lessons from the findings. So growing up, I uh realized on the island of Kithira, uh, between the Peloponnese and Crete that uh there are a lot of hidden treasures to be found along trails, with one problem. The trails were not in good shape. The trails could not be hiked anymore. So I said to myself that I absolutely need to do something so that people can hike these trails and discover these treasures on this island. So I've looked a little bit what is happening in the world, how do people develop trails, promote trails, and try to apply the same on the island of Kithira, together with the local organization? And that's how I came to become a trail expert, if I can say so, and uh to develop hiking destinations uh in Greece.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

Great. It's great to hear about that. Your archaeological heritage, as it were. Were you dragged off to archaeological sites for your summer holidays every year? And did you did you get to help in the archaeology or were you kept kept to one side?

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Well, I was always helping. I always remember my mother saying that I was like three years old, and some of my first words were dad assured, you know, uh walking uh between uh the different trenches. And later on I was actively participating in archaeological excavations because my father was always uh in favor of open excavations, so he would welcome people from any specialization or any uh background. But I also remember that at some point I said, okay, some of the trenches have difficulty, you know, to be accessed. So I might create something to help people access these trenches. So I started working on footpaths even before I knew that this would be my actual work.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Fantastic. Really great to hear how that it came out of a kind of archaeological background. So Kithra was a start for you. How did Pars of Greece come into being and what were the what were the what were the first years like for you?

SPEAKER_01 4:23

So yeah, as I aforementioned, thought you know, of doing something on Kithra together with this local organization and with uh uh kind sponsorship of uh Ethereum Australians, so the diaspora of Kythere in Australia. And then some articles uh were published in different newspapers, and people started asking me to go and do the same thing in their localities, either near the village or to uh find a road for a monastery that these people were using when they were kids and it has disappeared, etc. etc. And because my background uh is uh environment and resource management, I thought that maybe I could do something professional with it, and I started really uh trying to see what is the state of the art in trail development, and I tried to apply this knowledge that I gained uh in different localities. So that's how Paso Gris uh came into existence. Many uh localities asked me to do this, and little by little I got connected to the international community of trail builders, trail managers, and thus Passorgis became also an international consulting entity.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Great. Okay, so did you go off at some point to get some training, or did you gain those skills just by trial and error and by imitating what others were doing and learning from others?

SPEAKER_01 5:36

A lot of trial and error, of course, but also uh that that's something we do in Greece, yes, you know already. But uh, I also got connected and I'm uh I've been serving at the board of the World Trails Network for over a decade as a treasurer. And through the World Trails Network, we have a lot of networking through which we share knowledge. I have participated in many uh trainings as well. I've also become a trail auditor for the Green Flag Trails, which is the world label for uh green trails that have some standards of sustainability, information provided, etc. etc. So, of course, I've been trained, but I have also trained people myself, also abroad, not only in Greece. So, yeah, it's something that we we keep learning, we keep adapting to the needs uh of the hiking world, but we also have things to say.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

Fantastic, great. So, what you say, it sounds as though those initial projects took on a life of their own very quickly and gained a lot of momentum, and you had people getting in touch with you, as you say, to go do the same thing elsewhere. But were there challenges, were there things that were really difficult in those early stages?

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Absolutely. I will uh always remember the fact that uh in the very first years, of course, when people would call me in a place, you know, to develop a hiking trades network, these people knew what we were talking about, obviously. But other people in these villages or areas had no clue about it. So sometimes I would go there and ask, you know, in the coffee shops, uh, the elderly people, where are your trails? Where did you used to hike with your kids? How can I go to this waterfall on foot? How can I go to this uh church on foot, etc.? And they would always look at me as if you came down from planet Mars, you know, and asking them some weird question. They would always tell me that there is a road now, you can go by car, you know, you don't need to hike in the trails. Snakes are gonna eat you, bears are gonna eat you, wolves are gonna eat you. And I say, I want to be eaten by wolves, just show me what the trail is. And then they would show me the trail. And another type of comments, oh, what is your job? What are you actually doing for life? And I say, That's what I'm doing. You know, I uh put waymarks on trails, I clear trails, I find all trades. No, no, but we mean what do you live from? You know, what's your actual work? This is my work, and then I would always get this answer: why don't you find yourself a serious job? You know, try to do something serious. Until one day I was called by the president of the Greek Republic who was hosting the president of the German Republic to talk about trades. And that was a big change. And I think that from this moment, especially after the economic crisis in Greece and boosted by uh the COVID years, Greece stopped talking about hiking as something weird, or that only crazy people do. But Greeks started hiking extensively, I would say, and now people tell us, oh, this is a dream job. How can I come and help you? I will pay you money to come and help, and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

That's great. So that's good. Yeah, it's kind of anticipated. The next question I was going to ask, which was just about change, what is what has changed over the last 15 years? So I presume it's the case that the identity of the people who are hiking has changed as well, is that right?

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Yes, in previous years, previous decades in Greece, the people, I dare you to say the only people uh who would hike were people members of mountaineering clubs, aiming mainly at the mountainous areas, mountain peaks, etc. Now it's people who live in cities mainly and who want to go out and explore nature, explore the culture of areas through the trails. Nevertheless, um I still believe that we are way behind some main European Western European countries like uh France or Germany or the UK, where the locals do hike and um uh the nationals do hike and uh enjoy the trails. So if you take a trail in the UK, most of the trail users come from the UK, whereas if you take a trail in Greece, most of the trail users do not come from Greece. And this is something that um we are uh trying to change, we are doing our best to change it. We believe that it has to do with newer generations, and we would love to see that uh the local economies that depend on trades in Greece depend on nationals more than internationals uh as visitors.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Yeah, really interesting. Even for international visitors, I guess there's some way to go, isn't there? Particularly in the mountains, people talk about mountain tourism and hiking as something that's really growing fast in Greece. And I think that must be right, but it's it's not an explosion exactly, is it? Because you you still, I mean, I've been I've been hiking in the mountains a lot in the last few months, and uh you can go for days on end without seeing anybody still, can't you? So it's a long way to go. There's there's a lot of potential.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Absolutely. When we talk about Greece, the first image that people have in mind is probably the sea, some islands, some dry landscape. I believe that most of people who do not come from Greece, although this is true for many, many Greeks as well, uh, they totally ignore that about 70% of our territory is mountains, it's forested mountains, and that there's so many things to see that combine nature and culture on these mountains. However, I believe that no matter what we do, Greece will always be an island destination, will always be famous for either its antiquities or its blue and white landscape. So we have to compete with in Europe, with Mont Blanc, with uh the Alps, we have to compete with the Andes in Latin America, we have to compete with uh the Caucasian uh landscape that is exploding at the moment, we have to compete with the Himalayas and many others, can be manjaro, just to mention a few. So, regarding mountains, I don't think that Greece could ever be considered as a top mountain destination. However, our mountains have something that the destinations I forementioned do not have, is the human size. You cannot be intimidated by these mountains. These are mountains that are welcoming you. You can really explore them. They're very hospitable, if I can say. So I believe that this character, if we manage to uh show it and to put it forward, uh it will it will attract a lot of visitors.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

I love that idea of the mountains as hospitable. And I feel that especially more and more with the in the hot summers as well. I feel that those spaces, those slightly more elevated spaces, are just a bit cooler and very inviting and as you say, hospitable. That's a great way of putting it. The work obviously the work you do is always one step at a time, and it quite literally a lot of the time. And I I guess maybe we'll hear a bit more about the whole process of how you go about your projects in a minute, but just wanted to step back a little bit from that for a moment and think about the bigger impact that your work has had as far as you can quantify that. Is it possible to quantify what difference your project has made? Do you know how many kilometers of trails you put up? Do you know how much? I mean, is it possible even to quantify the economic impact actually?

SPEAKER_01 12:45

We can do some estimations. We have done actually some estimations. We've been uh around for uh about 15 years, from 2010 to today, actually. So within these 15 years, uh we've developed uh over 2,000 kilometers of old hiking trails, trails that were linking villages, that were linking a village to a holy place, to a field area, uh, to a bigger city, etc. So all these old trails we have it's over 2,000 kilometers that we have brought back to life. And according to some international studies, uh bringing back to life this amount of kilometers of trails uh has saved about 20 million euros from public insurance costs. So basically, what it does, what this study that we used to calculate this does is that it tells you that if the public sector invests money in developing trails, it will actually enhance the health, it will improve the health of the people that are living around these trails because they're gonna hike. And by improving the health, you cut in health expenditures. We believe also that we have contributed about 60 million euros in uh economic benefits in the localities where we have developed trails because people are coming there as tourists, as visitors, and they do spend money for food, for accommodation, to buy souvenirs and other things, so and services, of course. So we saved about 60 million euros in these different areas. We have developed trails in around 160 different settlements. We have also calculated that uh we have created about 300 jobs in these different localities, and our trails benefited about 200,000 people.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

Wow, those are very powerful figures, and I guess that's exciting to remember when you're there on the trails, actually kind of chipping away one meter at a time. Fantastic. I wonder if we could actually dig in a bit more to a few examples here. And and I'm very much aware that many of your projects are not in mountain regions. You do a lot of a lot of your work is down at down at sea level or or not far above that, but I'm also aware that you've done some amazing work on mountain trails around Greece. So I just wonder if you might be able to give us some examples of one or two of those.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

Well, I'll I'll give an example of an island and an example of a um mountainous area. So, talking about islands, one of my first projects was on the island of Ithera that I mentioned earlier. So there we actually developed about 100 kilometers of hiking trails, passing through different villages, but also through medieval castles, forgotten forests, waterfalls, stone bridges, and amazing viewpoints. We retraced these old footpaths, cleared them, waymarked them, signpost them, and uh we created websites, of course, a logo, an app. We participated in hiking fairs, we created uh fun trips for tour operators, for journalists. We have seen Kethera trails in many uh international publications as you know, a place to visit, of course, uh hiking publications, and we have seen a tremendous increase in the visitors outside of the peak summer season, which was the essential aim to bring people to extend the tourism season with quality tourism. So, this is about the island of Kithra, and then uh the other example is about uh the uh so-called paths of peace, which is a short trail network, basically a trail uh multi-day hike in uh northern Greece, in the region of western Macedonia, where we have developed a trail that links different villages in an area that has been heavily exploited for its charcoal. So we Greece produces its energy from huge charcoal fields over there, and right next to it, it's this very pristine area with very, very beautiful forests where we have a huge wolf and a bear population. So, what we did is that we have created this line linking these villages and these beautiful forests and lakes and uh viewpoints. We called it paths of peace because this area was also devastated during the Second World War by German occupation and bombings, etc. And this project has been funded with a German fund. So we called it Paths of Peace because actually we look into the future and we want with this German money to look towards a more peaceful world where you know during the World War II we had these issues, and at the same time, we refer to nature because from these trades, sometimes we can see these big mines in the far distance with these fumes coming out of uh the uh energy plants, and uh we want to lay stress on the fact that we need to make peace with our nature, and this is one of the most uh powerful um uh messages that uh our trails uh try always to promote that uh we need to respect nature and draw lessons from the past for a better future.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

Fantastic. You're making me want to go walk on these trails now. So I've now added to my list of um uh places to go. I'm just trying to envisage what the process involves for you when you start on a new project, with that Powers of Peace project, for example. Were you approached by local communities there, or was that your idea? When you first started working on it, how long did it take you to come up with a clear sense of where the path would go? Did you have to try lots of different routes? Did you spend a lot of time just walking around and again trial and error?

SPEAKER_01 18:18

Well, we never knock on the door of an area, we always wait for an area to come to us and tell us we would like to be developed as a trade destination. Why? Because this ensures that there is already some people that are willing to develop their area as a trail destination, and this kind of ensures some sustainability in all this work that will be done because people will take care of it. When we go to an area, we have already done a preliminary study, either looking at old books or guidebooks or old maps or points of interest, etc. Then we go to the place and uh village by village we try to meet all the people that have information about trails. These people are disappearing more and more because these are old people and they, you know, it becomes increasingly difficult to spot them and to be able to communicate with them. And then we do fieldwork. So we try to test everything that we got information about. So we sometimes we have to climb over vegetation or to crawl under vegetation. Sometimes we have to walk on dry stone walls because there are thorns to the right and left of it. We always try to find these old footpaths. Then we create, we design on GIS software all these lines that we we hiked, and we draw on OGIS software the final map of the trails according to the needs of the modern hikers. We of course do a marketing study that will tell us what the hikers for this area would be. So, would they like more of a cultural aspect of a natural aspect? Would they come from France because there are connection flights from France, etc. etc. I'm just giving some examples. And then we organize all the clearing of the trails, the waymarking and the promotion that I talked about earlier. It is always a process that where we include the locals, we always tell them this is what we came about, and uh we get their inputs and we adapt and we change. So basically, it's a very enjoyable work to do. Sometimes we get some pressure from a mayor telling us why my village is not on your trails. And we try to say that, you know, there are some other priorities, etc., etc. If the person in the municipality that will pay us for our work, if their village is not on the map, then we make sure to put it though. The mayor has the second highest importance.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

Great. That gives a really vivid sense of just the hard work that goes into this, the hard work of negotiating and cutting your way through the undergrowth. Is it harder working on mountain trails, or is it just always hard wherever you are, whether you're down at sea level or high up?

SPEAKER_01 21:01

I wouldn't say so. Mountains have one good thing if there is a forest, and usually there is, that the trail under a forest usually remains almost intact. Almost intact. Sometimes it will collapse, especially if it's not very rocky, a very rocky terrain would keep a trail for ages. A less rocky terrain would have landslides and the trail might disappear. But generally, under the forest, once you find the track line, you can follow it, um, no matter how old it is. On the islands, on the other hand, we have usually stone walls because islands have a lot of stone. So you have stone walls that uh delimit the trail, so it's easy to find it, to spot it even from satellite, and to walk it on thorns. But we know that these thorns generally are quite low. So, no, it's not a very difficult work to do. Islands like Corfu, though, I remember, where you have a lot of rain, it is an And it doesn't have exactly a forest, but it has a lot of vegetation. Yes, there it sometimes we have to surrender to the trail and the vegetation. So we could only assume that the trail would go there and would try to check in on different spots. But I still remember these scratches.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

Yes, I bet. I bet. Fantastic. The other thing I wanted to ask about is just about the work I know you've been doing more recently, I think, outside Greece in a whole range of other places in Saudi Arabia, Japan, elsewhere. Could you tell us a little bit about those projects and what that's like to work on after all of those years working in Greece? Are you I mean it are there ways in which are you struck more by the similarities or are there other differences as well with the challenges you face in those other places?

SPEAKER_01 22:49

Everything comes from Greece, Jason. So everything is similar to Greece. And I'm of course kidding. So yes, I said earlier I'm heavily involved in international networking through the World Trade Network. So I have a knowledge of different places, and you know, I've been traveling for our uh biannual conference uh many times around the world, from South Korea to Canada and uh Europe and other places. So I've seen many things on trades. I always see a similarity in a trade. A trade always tries to link two points in the easiest possible way, and this is a rule. There's no trail that makes it complicated. If we're talking about old trails. So when I went to consult in uh in um uh China, for example, which was one of my first international consulting projects, we tried to retrace some old trails linking different places. It was almost the same, just the environment would change a little bit. But the the idea that you, if you need to cross a mountain, you try to find the lowest passage, you go from the mountain pass, that's universal. In Japan, consulting was about trail promotion in Europe. So, you know, that's what I do with the trades in Greece. So I knew exactly what the European market needs. I also had some consulting in Albania where basically it was teaching people how to use GIS for trail scouting, signage, etc. And then now in Saudi Arabia, it's extremely similar to what I do in Greece because we are specifically looking for old trails, all camel roads, mule trails, and human passage. So uh I'm I was really astonished, especially at the beginning, to see how how similar these trails are. And that made my life easier, of course, when I was trying to spot trails. Of course, there's no serious vegetation, at least in the area of uh Alula where I work. But the the idea is always the same. You have a landscape and you try to move in the easiest way possible. And if there is no trail, you create a trail that will be easy to use. So that's the main idea behind a trail, no matter if you're in Greece, in Japan, uh in South America or anywhere else in the world.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

Really interesting to hear about how those issues are culturally transferable in Scotland here too. There are more and more interests over the last decade or two in uh reviving old trails and actually marketing them for broader use as well. So that all sounds very familiar in lots of ways. It'd been great for us then to just dig into some of the things that you do day to day and to hear a bit more about those stories. Just wanted before we finish to ask you a broader question, uh, just about the bigger issues that we're we're trying to address within this project. What do you think are the particular challenges facing the mountain regions of Greece at the moment? Where would you see solutions, opportunities, what are the priorities for the future?

SPEAKER_01 25:42

For Greece, the main issue that uh the countryside is facing at the moment is uh the depopulation. People are moving uh to the city, they don't go back, uh they might go to the city to study, etc. They usually don't go back uh to their village or their small city, small town uh in the countryside. So um uh this is um even more important in the mountains, where in mountains of Greece a lot of villages are ghost villages. They might get some people in summer, but even this is decreasing year by year. So these places, um, despite all the technology that we have in the moment, the ease of moving, you know, by cars and better roads, etc., did not manage to really stop this depopulation. And I think that this is the most crucial factor that Greece is facing at the moment. Uh, attempts like the ones we do with the trails are actually trying to give one small help, you know, to these people there, or to some people that might decide to go back to these places to have a better livelihood, but still it is absolutely not enough. There are lots of things that need to be done in parallel to be able to stop this depopulation and to enhance their livelihoods.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

Yeah, I mean I can see it's it's a complex problem, isn't it? But it and an influx of tourists is no substitute for a local population, but as you say, maybe it makes it more possible for people to be there, at least these are small steps, at least, which maybe add up to something more.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

Yes, exactly. This is how we also see, for example, no one would go to live in a place that's very remote with kids if they don't have friends, if there's no good hospital, if there's no good school, if they don't have good internet, for example. So all these things sum up to no decision. However, I would like to invite everyone to plan Greece for the next uh hiking holidays because Greece will offer you much, much more than what you might think.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

Brilliant. Okay. Thank you, Phoebos. It's been great to talk about all of that today. We've got more episodes coming up, exploring mountain heritage in Greece from a whole range of other perspectives. If you enjoyed this episode, please share our podcast with others, have a look at our other episodes. You can follow us on social media or get in touch directly via the Mountains of Greece project website. You might also like to have a look at the separate website for the broader mountain stories, mountain futures project that this series is a part of. You can follow the links to both of those in the episode notes. Thanks to Sophia Girton for editing. Thank you for listening.