Skopelos — the name of an island and its principal town in the Sporades archipelago of the Aegean — is not so much unspoilt as never improved. My wife and I have been enjoying its rough charm for a long time, and hope to be back soon now that Greece is sending positive messages about welcoming the vaccinated this summer. Last year, as the pandemic took hold, we were warned ‘there’s no oxygen on the island’. The medical centre is primitive. A deterrent, we found. Skopelos is a giant green eruption in blue water, one of the peaks of a submerged mountain range. In his 1964 book Hellenic Traveller, Guy Pentreath reported it to be ‘unvisited’. That’s not quite true today, but it is a giant rock with nowhere to build a landing strip. The lack of an airport and want of any decent hotels do have a filtering effect.