Karpathos has many trails. But only one makes you feel like you're literally standing on top of the island, with the Aegean Sea on your right and the Carpathian Sea on your left, as far as the eye can see, at the same time. That trail is the route between Olympos and Spoa, and once you've done it you understand why the hiking guides always put it first.
The village of Olympos is already, on its own, a place out of time: built on a mountain ridge, clinging to the rock, with women who to this day still wear the traditional dress on feast days. From here begins a kalderimi — a stone-paved mule track that the Karpathians used centuries before roads existed — which drops down towards a fertile valley, passes through cultivated terraces and abandoned farmhouses, crosses a fragrant pine wood, then climbs back up towards the ridge and starts to rise again.
The full route to Spoa is about 16 kilometres, with an elevation change ranging between 260 and 670 metres and a duration of 5-6 hours at an easy pace. The difficulty is moderate: you don't need to be a mountaineer, but you do need proper hiking boots, at least a litre and a half of water, and a minimum of training. In some stretches the waymarking is patchy — the odd red blaze on the trail, but nothing systematic — and bringing a GPS track is a good idea.
The most scenic part is the ridge crossing: the trail follows the northern spine of the island touching Mount Kouloura and Mount Kefala, with 360-degree views that on clear days reach as far as Crete on one side and Rhodes on the other. Then you descend towards Spoa, a quiet village that feels almost suspended in time, where a bar with a terrace waits at the end of the route as if it already knew it would be needed.
You can also do the route the other way round, from Spoa to Olympos, with the same effect. The difference is that if you arrive in Olympos on foot, the first thing you do is sit down at one of the café tables in the square and look out over the valley below, knowing you got there on your own two feet. It's worth doing at least once.