Cocks crow, pigeons coo, dogs bark, not all at once, and not exclusively at dawn, but that’s as noisy as it gets at Archondiko Angelou, unless you count the ping of a berry falling from a tree and bouncing off a ceramic cup in an impressive display of precision bombing.

This is how we’d begin our days, eating breakfast in the front garden,  watching the occasional butterfly skimming over the hibiscus and geraniums, bordered by olive and other bigger trees, (apologies for not knowing their names); the lower trunks of which are painted white to protect them from insects.  Sometimes it’s chocolate muffins, other days it’s small pancakes with Greek yogurt, every day it’s freshly baked bread with home made jams (fig, orange, and some made from unidentifiable and untranslatable fruits which are so delicious that even my notoriously picky daughter suspends her usual sense of suspicion and slathers them on with gusto).

Marianna, the owner, appears from the kitchen, looking fresh and unflustered even though she rises every day at 6am to cook for her guests - a group of mostly Athenians and Italians.  She takes us under her wing, and we quickly become friends.  Our children are the same age, after a few days people even begin to comment that we look alike.  Her name opens doors in Leros because her family has owned the hotel for several generations; she is loved and respected here.  It looks like a boutique hotel but it feels like a family home -   this is an old Greek villa, no white walls or blue-framed windows here.  It’s not entirely dissimilar to the type of grand old house you see in French seaside resorts like Arcachon.

I’ll be honest, I worried my over-stimulated London kids might be bored. Two weeks with no pool?  No tv?   But there was also a nostalgic side to me that hoped for a holiday that was a little more simplistic, a little more like my childhood in Malta where we’d jump off rocks and hunt sea-urchins, eat ice creams, pull legs off dolls, deface my brothers’ Action Man etc.  I was determined to organise nothing besides swimming in the sea, the occasional boat trip, perhaps we’d hire bicycles.  I tried reading them “My Family and Other Animals” by Gerald Durrell, yes I know it’s Corfu, but hey, that’s close right?  It’s a little old for them still.   Bicycles were never going to work as soon as I saw how hilly Leros is, and more to the point, how deadly the traffic is (literally-  three road fatalities in the two weeks that we were there). And yes, I did pack the portable DVD and the DS and the i-Pod, I’m not that stupid…

But we adjusted to the pace and found our own amusement.  Leros has a castle on a hill that is no more than a ruin, but it has a museum beside it stocked with rare icons including a black Virgin Mary.  It has a dark history of prisons and sanatoriums that is rarely mentioned (unless you count the taxi driver who gleefully pointed out building  as “CRAZY hospital!”).  Greek chapels, prettily painted white, with bright blue interiors seem to be placed obligingly within walking distance of tavernas or beaches. There is an impressive war museum, set in one of the many tunnels that worm their way through the island’s rocky innards.   Marianna even took us once to see a working fish farm, which the kids adored.  Lost on me - I don’t eat fish or seafood.

Within days my fingernails were crystal clear, the tips bleached clean from swimming in the sea.  My wrinkles had disappeared into brown (yes, I know they’ll be back with a vengeance when the tan has faded). My children slept until 10 every morning and went to bed at midnight.

We felt we knew everyone on the island: Savvas, whose Viking- white blonde hair made him a suitable captain for Barbarosa, the pirate-like boat you can take from Aghia Marina to islets with whiter than white pebbles and crystal clear waters.  We’d make up names for the rest:  the Moaning Woman, who seemed to crop up everywhere, a rather rotund Greek woman who never shut up, while her ever-patient husband and bored teenage son trailed around after her looking miserable; the Missing Son of Michael Jackson (a waiter whose widely spaced eyes rimmed with black eyeliner gave him an uncanny resemblance to MJ).  There was Supermarket Man, who one morning said to me, “Every day you look more nice and more sexy…”  A charming chat-up line, until he repeated it the next day, and the one after, and the one after…

Most of all there was Marianna and her gorgeous children, Aristomanis and Loukia, who kept mine entertained by playing backgammon and boules with them, or showed them how to fish off rocks with hooks, strings and pebbles.  I cannot thank them enough for their warmth, kindness and great sense of fun.

(Practical notes on getting there -  if you’re interested - take a cheap charter flight to Kos or Rhodes, then take the hydrofoil (Flying Dolphin) or catamaran to Leros.  Build in enough time for cancellations - our flight was changed on the way out so we had to overnight in Kos, and the catamaran was cancelled on the way back, but luckily we still had enough time to catch the flight back from Kos. Alternatively you can fly direct to Athens and take the overnight ferry to Leros, or another flight to Leros but these get really booked up very quickly.

You can book Marianna’s hotel through i-escape.com, or email her your enquiry directly:marianna.angelou@gmail.com)

I’m going to leave you with some pictures!