Keen hiker Tatyana Leonov tackles the famous Samaria Gorge walk on the island of Crete.

It started with a casual conversation over cheese and wine with a few friends. We were all travelling to Europe for a wedding and chatting about post-celebration plans. A couple in the group raved about Crete — specifically the Samaria Gorge hike. The gorge is one of the longest in Europe and located in the only national park on the island. At the end of the 16km trail is the stunning coastline and aquamarine waters of the Libyan Sea. If you’re in Crete, it’s a must-do.

And so, a couple of months later in Crete, we find ourselves setting our alarms for 5.30am, planning to start walking early to dodge the crowds. Although the picturesque trek is predominantly downhill, hikers are advised to prepare for five to seven hours of trekking.

We aim to catch a bus from the resort town of Chania (where we’re staying) and be at Xyloskalo (the starting point) by 7.30am. Our plan is to take our time to admire the views, sojourn for a long, leisurely lunch and enjoy a swim before catching the ferry-and-bus combo back to Chania.

About half an hour into the journey, our bus spits and sputters, then stops. We sit and wait … and wait … and wait. An hour later, we’re still not moving.

My husband eats one of his lunch rolls while I nap. Eventually a replacement bus arrives. It’s 9.30am when we begin our hike, surrounded by chatter in a multitude of languages.

The first leg is the most challenging— a stone path that steeply coils its way down. We see a young lad ahead of us almost land on his face hurrying, so we take cautious steps to the first rest spot, where my husband has his second and last lunch roll (he’ll regret that later!).

After another descent we reach my favourite part of the walk — a rolling trail that bypasses clear rivers where we refill our water bottles and spot some Cretan goats (kri-kris) dash around between foliage. With the sides of the gorge and cypresses shading us, we don’t feel the middle-of-the-day heat so much and get into a groove of walking, sometimes chatting and sometimes just listening to the rustle of the trees and the sound our feet make as they crunch down on the rocks. The crowds have scattered now and the trek finally feels like an escape into nature.

After a lunch break in the abandoned village of Samaria, the next section of the hike sees us tackling a pebbly riverbed before reaching the narrowest (and probably most photographed) part of the gorge. We find the crowds here again and wait our turn to get the obligatory photo posing with the narrow part of the gorge in the background.

Finally, we reach the end of the national park and only have 3km left to the end. Three kilometres doesn’t sound like much considering we’ve already hiked 13km, but this last stretch drags on — especially for my husband and his grumbling tummy. There are mini buses picking up those who can’t go on any longer for a small fee, but we persist, knowing that our swim will feel even more rewarding after this last effort.

And it is — we arrive at the small village of Agia Roumeli hours after we began, and within minutes, we’re on the famed black-pebble beach and diving into the cool water, soothing our sore feet and jelly legs. From the sea, I turn back to look at the steep mountains and, despite the adventure we’ve just had, feel utterly relaxed.