Escape to Ikaria

A Scotsman Travel Book of the Year: A Welsh family's story of running off to a lush Greek island in the 1970s, and the new life they found there.


Leaving their Welsh hill farm behind, Nick Perry and his family arrive on the little-known island of Ikaria in 1978, having impulsively boarded the first ferry leaving Athens. Escape to Ikaria tells the story of how they become involved with the islanders and their way of life. Nick tries his hand at anything to get by: night fishing out in the Aegean, unloading the potato boats from Samos, mixing cement for wayward house-builder Datsun Jim, and tending the gardens of the old monastery where a solitary nun, Sister Ulita, controls the village's water supply.



Vivid and moving, this memoir is "a tale of risking all to pursue a dream . . . The story is told with disarming aplomb, packed with characters and incidents, and exhibiting much that is good in human nature" (Scotsman).