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Day 25: We’d read that walking Samaria Gorge was a must-do while in Crete.

The walk is about 14km, all the way downhill, starting at an elevation of around 1200 metres and finishing when we stepped onto the ferry boat at Agia Roumeli, the sleepy town at the end of the walk.

While there are plenty of package tours available from all over Crete, we were happy to take a public bus up to the Samaria Gorge trailhead just past Omalos, leaving Hania at 6.15am. There are two other morning buses but it’s a case of the earlier you start, the better.

The bus ride itself is pretty spectacular, up narrow winding roads with great views looking back to the northern coast of Crete.

Arguably one of the finest views is your first sight of the gorge itself, right at the top of the trail, when we disembarked from the bus (shown above).

We thought we had prepared ourselves for the masses of fellow walkers, but we were genuinely surprised by the traffic that we encountered in the first stages of the walk. It can be a little disconcerting to be stuck on a small path behind a busload of 60. Fortunately, the pack thins out as the walk progresses and even rare moments of solitude are possible.

The trail is well set up for the thousands of people who walk it, with dedicated rest stops (smoking permitted) with WCs and fountains of crystal clear running spring water - so there is no need to take any bottled water with you.

After a long descent to the bottom of Sumaria Gorge, the trail flattenned out and we caught our first glimpse of where the cliffs become an earthy red colour - a beautiful sight.

The gorge becomes quite narrow at points and at times we were walking between sheer cliffs on both sides. At the narrowest point, the gorge is only 3 metres across, at a location known as “The Iron Gates”. From here it was only a kilometre or two more to the end.

Agia Roumeli is not accessible by car. While waiting for the afternoon ferry to take us to the next port around, Hora Skafion, we did what everyone else did - sat in a waterfront taverna and enjoyed a well-deserved cold Mythos lager.

The bus trip back from Hora Skafion is even more spectacular than the morning bus in as the road repeatedly hairpin bends back on itself over and over again as it climbs into the centre of the island, with good views to the Imbros Gorge, and Crete’s second highest peak, Pachnes.

Getting on the bus is a bit of an exercise in dealing with crowd panic as your fellow walkers are all desperate not to be left off the first bus back.

All up, with decent hiking boots, the trip was a relatively easy one. Not a bad day, once we adjusted to the crowds.