The Peligoni Club

The shore at the Peligoni Club is rock, so the way into the sea is off decking at the water's edge or, for anyone with an audience, from a diving board out over it. Vanessa Goldie and Johnny Alexander came on this corner of northern Zakynthos in 1989, sailing round Greece, when the roads were dirt tracks and the only neighbours were a herd of goats. The Shearer family, guests since the mid-1990s, took it over in 2005. It is a club with no bedrooms of its own. Guests take privately owned villas, cottages and suites within fifteen minutes of it, some with their own pools, and a driver runs them home in the evenings. The gym is open-air, just above a pool with a swim-up bar, which keeps the reward close to the effort.

Recommended for families who want the children on the water, and for couples in September, when the schools have gone back and the Club turns quieter and mostly grown-up. In July and August the clubs run from a crèche for babies of four months to a programme for teenagers, and RYA-qualified instructors teach from a shack on the shore. Beginners go out in the morning calm; the wind waits until the afternoon for the sailing and windsurfing. On Wednesday mornings a boat leaves for Shipwreck Beach and the Blue Caves. The Terraces cooks over open fire under the pines, or a water taxi runs along the shore to Mikro Nisi, for mezze and a swim between plates. And from Agios Nikolaos harbour, a walk away, two ferries a day cross to Kefalonia in summer, should one island start to feel small.