Just from the book’s title, one can see that Wild Abandon: A Journey to the Deserted Places of the Dodecanese is not your usual Hellenophile-penned tribute to Greece, just like Jennifer Barclay (Falling in Honey, An Octopus in my Ouzo) is not your ordinary travel writer.

After being raised in a village in Britain’s Pennines, Barclay went on to study at Oxford and travel extensively. Since 2011, she has permanently resided on Tilos.

She and her four-legged friend Lisa dedicated five years of their lives to scouring the Dodecanese in search of hidden treasures in these touristed isles, buried under the dusts of time: ghost villages, abandoned buildings and remote landscapes of untouched beauty are the places that draw her, while her protagonists are authentic islanders who keep memories alive, along with a vanishing way of life.

“This project of exploring the abandoned places of the Dodecanese started with a thought I had while on Nisyros in spring 2015, when I first saw its almost deserted villages on the rim of the volcano, and the churches built by islanders who had emigrated to America,” she writes. “I began thinking about how much changed, and how dramatically, over the course of a century in most cases. I set out to learn more by exploring different islands, and revisiting places I already knew to look deeper.”

This bizarre and frightening summer, given the profound impacts the pandemic is expected to have on our way of life, Barclay’s solitary wanderings, her constant contact with nature, her teleworking, and her attachment to simplicity and freedom render her book exceptionally timely.

The places and stories you describe are a far cry from the over-promoted, touristic side of the more popular islands. How do you feel about the way some of them have been developed tourism-wise?

It’s not for me to judge – mass tourism in Rhodes and Kos supplied me with cheap flights here years ago – but personally I prefer places not dominated by hotels and tourist paraphernalia. In recent years I’ve noticed a quiet protest among local people against the big all-inclusive hotels, the over-tourism that takes their island away – though tourism sometimes provides the only available jobs – and the sunbeds that have taken over the beaches. However, a few months of small-scale summer tourism can support a winter of farming and charcoal-making, so it’s a question of balance. Tilos, where I live, has got it about right. Also Arki, the smallest inhabited island in the north of the Dodecanese that is serviced by regular ferries, has just a few tavernas and rooms that provide a market for fishermen and cheesemakers.

More than a travelogue, your book is the chronicle of a deeply personal journey. Has this 5-year long exploration revealed to you something about yourself, or even changed you in any way?

My first years of living year-round on Tilos had already changed me – in my previous book I called it “living small and thinking big”. After I became captivated by the idea of exploring the Dodecanese through its abandoned places, I started hiking and wild camping and swimming well off the beaten track, obsessed with the stones left behind on the landscape, poking my nose into ruined houses with hand-carved wood and bamboo ceilings… And I’ve found that the more wild and remote my experience, the more I can handle and crave. Sometimes I’ve scared myself by pushing too far, such as on a long walk in the empty hinterland of Halki when I was saved by an old cistern, but I’m happy to get a few scratches if it means discovering somewhere amazing.

Can you share with us the most moving experience from your book?

I was constantly touched by the details I found: the humble cemetery behind the cottages built for Muslim Cretan fishermen on Rhodes; in a dilapidated house in Kos, an empty trunk with a handwritten address in New York.

I was profoundly moved by the remote village of Olympos in Karpathos, clinging to its traditional way of life; where I found myself welcomed in to a community of hard-working women who help one another because they have always had to; where Kalliopi showed me the photo in her kafeneio of a group of men including her husband playing music together, and indicated with a flick of her hand that they were all now dead.

The most moving encounter, though, was with Sami in the deserted Jewish quarter of Rhodes Old Town, who told me how 1,673 people including his family were forced onto ships and taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

What are the most essential items you carry in your wanderings?

A bowl for my dog, a sleeping bag for late ferries, and of course a notebook and pen.

What are the 5 spots you would recommend to someone who wishes to explore the Dodecanese as you did?

• The abandoned settlements of Mikro Horio and Gera on Tilos
• Volcanic Nisyros, the semi-abandoned village of Emborio and empty buildings of Pantelidis Baths and Loutra
• The harbour of Vathy in Astypalea with its lime kiln and deserted houses
• The villa for Mussolini and the old Fascist headquarters at Eleousa, Rhodes
• Olympos in the north of Karpathos, with a walk to Tristomo

What’s next for you? Another book of exploration?

I’m not sure yet, but I know I’ll continue exploring and writing about the islands.