Heathrow and Gatwick: The beautiful Greek island 4 hours from London you can visit while staying in a luxury hotel for as little as £25 a night

If you’re thinking of holidaying on a Greek island in the Mediterranean this summer, you have over 6,000 to choose from. Greece has islands dotted all over the Aegean and Ioanian seas, some better known than others.

You may have already heard of some of them, starting with Crete, its biggest island. Other popular islands include Santorini, Mykonos, Corfu, Rhodes, Kos, Samos, Kefalonia, Lesbos and Karpathos to name a few. Some have their own airports that you can fly to directly from Heathrow or Gatwick, whereas others can only be reached by sea.

But one tiny island marking Greece’s easternmost point is almost unheard of, not only because there are no direct flights there, but also because it’s nowhere near the others. Kastellorizo is only 4.63 square miles in size, and has a population of under 500 people. It is part of the Dodecanese islands off the coast of Turkey, the largest of which is Rhodes.

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Rhodes is in fact its nearest Greek island at a distance of around 78 miles. A ferry transporting goods and people between Kastellorizo and Rhodes operates approximately once every four days. The most obvious way, therefore, to visit this island if travelling from London is to fly directly to Rhodes and then wait there for the next ferry.

If you miss the ferry, however, you could wind up getting stranded in Rhodes and inadvertently accrue extra costs on your holiday staying in a hotel there. That would also mean spending unnecessary extra amounts on food and drink.

But there is a cheaper and more convenient and ingenious alternative, and it involves leaving Europe, cutting across Asia, and re-entering Europe at Kastellorizo. In other words, you can also get to Kastellorizo through Turkey.

Instead of island hopping your way to Kastellorizo, you could take a direct flight from London to either Antalya or Dalaman in Turkey, and from there just take a short drive to the coastal town of Kas, which is just 1.5 miles across the sea from Kastellorizo. The island is so close to the Turkish coast that it can be seen with the naked eye, and there are several boats that sail between Kastellorizo and Kas daily.

Despite being part of Greece, due to its proximity, Kastellorizo actually has better transport links with Turkey than it does with the rest of Greece, so much so that local people living in Kastellorizo travel almost daily to Kas to do their grocery shopping.

Not only is this more convenient for locals, it is also way cheaper, as produce in Turkey costs far less than it does in Greece, or most European countries for that matter. In fact, the cost of living in Turkey is much cheaper in general, so tourists who come especially to see Kastellorizo more often than not choose to stay in hotels in Kas rather than in Kastellorizo itself.

That way, tourists not only save on their accommodation, they also get to save on their daily expenses as well. Hotels in Kas could come as affordable as £25 a night, if not less, while there are also private guest houses that could be even cheaper.

The journey to Kastellorizo from Kas only takes around 20 minutes, so you can literally travel there in the morning and come back the same evening. When you get there, there are plenty of things to keep you busy, including visiting a range of cafes and restaurants along its curving coastline.

There is an archeological museum on the island, as well as an arts museum built into what was once a mosque for the island’s once thriving Muslim population. Although the island’s Muslims have since mostly migrated to Turkey, the mosque building itself still stands along with its iconic minaret.

You can also climb up the hill to the Castle of the Knights of St. John, from which you can enjoy a view of almost the entire island and a number of nearby islets stretching out to Turkey. A short distance from there is the picturesque Church of Agios Georgos, where one can sit in a traditional Greek village cafe nearby and mingle with the locals.

Last but not least, you can also enjoy some sun and sea at the Saint George beach, where you can also swim in some of the bluest, cleanest waters you’ll ever see in your life. The beach is so isolated and untouched that the only way to access it is to take a boat from the harbour. Besides that, Kastellorizo is also a great place for diving as its clear waters are also full of huge sea turtles.

Owing to the small size of the island, for most people Kastellorizo only merits a day trip, but if you’re visiting from Kas, you could always hop on another boat and come back the next day.