Originally founded as a pirate-safe refuge in Byzantine times, windswept ÓLYMBOS straddles a long ridge below slopes studded with mostly ruined windmills. Two restored ones, beyond the main church, grind wheat and barley during late summer only, though one is kept under sail most of the year. Its basement houses a small ethnographic museum (odd hours; free), while a small shop nearby sells locally produced farm products. The village has long attracted foreign and Greek ethnologists, who treat it as a living museum of peasant dress, crafts, dialect and music long since gone elsewhere in Greece. It's still a very picturesque place, yet traditions are vanishing by the year. Nowadays it's only the older women and those working in the several tourist shops who wear the striking and magnificently colourful traditional dress - an instant photo opportunity in exchange for persistent sales pitches for the trinkets, many of them imported.

After a while you'll notice the prominent role that the women play in daily life: tending gardens, carrying goods on their shoulders or herding goats. Nearly all Ólymbos men emigrate or work outside the village, sending money home and returning only on holidays. The long-isolated villagers also speak a unique dialect, said to maintain traces of its Doric and Phrygian origins - thus "Ólymbos" is pronounced "Élymbos" locally. Live vernacular music is still heard regularly and draws crowds of visitors at festival times, in particular Easter and August 15, when you've little hope of finding a bed.

Among places to stay , the friendly Rooms Restaurant Olymbos (tel 02450/51 252; up to ?24), near the village entrance, has rooms with baths or unplumbed ones with traditional furnishings, while the Caf?Restaurant Zefiros , near the centre and run by two sisters, manages the en-suite Hotel Astro (tel 02450/51 378; ?24-33). There are a few other places to eat ; one of the best and most obvious is O Mylos , occupying one of the restored mills and offering locally made wine and home-style specialities.

From the village the superb west-coast beach at Fysses is a sharp 35-minute drop below, first cross-country, later by path. Most local hikes , however, head more gently north or east, many of them on waymarked paths, though you'll have to stay overnight in the area to enjoy them. The easiest option is the ninety-minute walk back down to Dhiafáni, beginning just below the two working windmills. The way is well marked, with water en route. It eventually drops to a ravine amidst extensive forest, though the last half-hour is mostly over bulldozed riverbed. You could also tackle the trail north to the ruins and beach at Vrykoúnda ("Vrougoúnda" in dialect), via sparsely inhabited Avlóna , set on a high upland devoted to grain. Rooms Olymbos plans to open an annexe soon at the edge of this hamlet, but it's best to take food and ample water to make a day of it, as it's just under three-hours' walk one way to Vrykoúnda, which offers traces of Hellenistic/Roman Brykous, the remote cave-shrine of John the Baptist on the promontory and good swimming. Trístomo, a Byzantine anchorage in the far northeast of Kárpathos, can also be reached on a magnificent cobbled way beginning above Avlóna; the return is by the same way. There's also a fine ninety-minute marked path from Avlóna down to Vanánda beach.

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