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.
