Crossing the causeway that joins the small fortress island of Monemvasia to the south-eastern Peloponnese, with the Aegean glittering on either side, I thought of Yiannis Ritsos, among Greece’s most admired 20th-century poets. Ritsos lived here in Monemvasia, in a home now turned into a museum beside the ochre-coloured castle walls. One line of his stayed with me: “The voyage is neither a leave-taking nor a home-coming – an ethereal bridge …”

My own journey into the far south of the Peloponnese – through Messinia, the Mani and Laconia – belonged somewhere between those two thoughts. My mother’s family comes from this part of Greece, making the trip a tentative kind of return, one I had wanted to make for years. With summer finished and a desire for solitary adventure growing stronger, I hired a car in Kalamata, the leafy port city that serves as the region’s gateway, and followed the coast.

Autumn reveals a different Peloponnese. This is not the whitewashed, blue-domed Greece of the Cyclades. Mountain hollows are covered in pines and wildflowers, while rustic limestone homes sit among vast green slopes. With the harsh heat finally gone, villages mark the harvest with lively celebrations: wine, oranges and chestnuts in Laconia; figs in Messinia; olives around Kalamata. It is the Greece remembered by the diaspora: the chorio, a word that immediately evokes grandparents, country life and family villages. Here, the air feels cleaner, meals are shaped by what grows nearby, and tavernas are filled with residents rather than passing visitors. In the quieter months, temperatures are ideal for long hikes, yet at around 25C the sea is still inviting.

The two-hour road trip to Monemvasia began at the Taygetus pass, where the road curled through villages and tunnels cut into cliffs while golden eagles circled over the fir trees. Beyond the mountains, Mystras appeared, a Byzantine archaeological site rising in layers up a hillside. I walked up to the Palace of the Palaiologoi and its chapels before heading down, hungry, to Parori. At Taverna Ores, I ate syglino, the region’s smoked cured pork, with an okra stew. I tried out my unreliable Greek on the waitress and her mother, who stirred the cooking pots while glancing at a television quiz show.

Afterwards, I stopped in Sparta, home to both the legendary ancient city-state and its modern counterpart. Beneath Taygetus, among the silent olive groves, stand the remains of an acropolis and agora, with little else surviving. Still, the setting has a strange force, and the pause feels essential. A statue of Leonidas, the hero of Thermopylae, looks out towards the modern city, leaving the ruins behind him.

This remains a land deeply connected to its Spartan past, and local pride in that inheritance runs strong. Monemvasia has its own dramatic origin story: around AD600, a bishop is believed to have led Spartan inhabitants to the rock, where they could defend themselves from invading groups. Within the castle walls, a town climbs the slope through narrow lanes and past medieval Orthodox churches. It offers a striking glimpse of Byzantine architecture, with reminders, too, of Venetian commerce. The sweet fortified wine known as malvasia was once among its most valuable exports. My guesthouse, Kelia, had originally been monks’ quarters overlooking the sea at Chryssafitissa Square.

Leaving Monemvasia, I diverted south towards the golden dunes and beaches of Elafonisos. The island is reached by a short ferry from Pounta. In the off-season, the bright turquoise shallows of Simos beach were almost empty, providing a welcome pause before the hour-long drive north-west to Gythio. This working harbour has pastel neoclassical houses and waterfront restaurants supplied by local fishing boats. It is also the beginning of the Mani.

“Victory or death” is written on the Maniot banner, above the Spartan saying: “With the shield, or on the shield.” The region is known for a conservative character that may seem out of step with modern Greece, yet I found it compelling. Much of the Mani’s appeal comes from its isolation. An hour’s drive towards Vathia brought me to rugged mountains crowned with maze-like stone tower villages. Maniot families built these fortified settlements to protect themselves during clan feuds and conflicts with the Ottomans. Some stand abandoned now, while others have become guesthouses.

It was Gerolimenas, however, that a Greek friend urged me to choose for several nights. This small seaside settlement makes an easy base for exploring both the western and eastern shores. On the eastern side, I walked to Cape Tainaron lighthouse, mainland Greece’s southernmost point, then took an unplanned swim. The water in the Mani is so clear that boats seem suspended in the air above it.

The Akroyiali hotel opened in the 1970s, before many of the area’s roads had even been built. It stands directly on the shore in Gerolimenas, and I fell asleep to waves breaking below and the conversation drifting up from the hotel taverna, where the owner, Mr Theodorakakis, and his family welcomed their guests.

“The Mani changes in its own time,” Theodorakakis told me. “It is a rare place, but we cannot remain hidden from the rest of the world forever.” Most Greeks preferred coming outside the high season, he said. “You can explore without being scorched by the heat. Just watch for the north-eastern wind. It goes straight through you.”

From Gerolimenas, I drove half an hour north on the western coastal road to the busier town of Areopoli, where I bought hand-collected sea salt and wild oregano. Limeni and Kardamyli, once home to the British writer Patrick Leigh Fermor, receive many of the day-trippers travelling from Kalamata. Even so, autumn made them quieter. Around every hairpin bend, the road opened on to another view of sea, flowers and pale limestone cliffs.

I was eating lunch with a view over one grassy headland when the taverna owner mentioned a local woman who knew miralogia, the mournful Maniot funeral songs now heard only rarely. After two days of asking around, I found Kaiti Braimi in a small chapel, where she agreed to sing. “In some ways, they are not needed as much now,” the octogenarian said. “There are no more vendettas.”

The solemn rhythm of the miralogia stayed with me as I left the Mani and crossed into Messinia, passing through Kalamata again before heading west. Here, the villages seemed to be in celebration. Clarinets played in taverna gardens during Sunday family gatherings, while relatives linked hands to dance the kalamatianos. People walking past stopped to clap, and some were quickly pulled into the circle.

During the hour-long drive from Kalamata to Pylos, my base for the next stage, the severe Maniot landscape softened into thick woodland. Wildflowers lined the road. Yet within Messinia’s broad green countryside are signs of much older worlds, including the Bronze Age Palace of Nestor, north of Pylos.

I took a detour to the Polylimnio waterfalls. Messinia encourages detours: there are unspoilt beaches, including Tsapi on the southern coast where mountains seem to spill into the sea, as well as places for cycling, kayaking and canyoning. After a short hike, I swam in clear pools enclosed by pines, mostly alone except for an Athenian couple. “We came for my birthday,” the man told me. “Messinia is Greece’s best place for outdoor adventures.” They suggested a canyoning route north of Navarino Bay, giving me a reason to return.

That evening, in Pylos harbour, just an hour from Kalamata where the journey had begun, I stopped for an ouzo in a kafenion. A group of young men were watching Greece play Germany on television. Every missed chance prompted their own theatrical lament, but when Greece won, the cafés around the harbour erupted.

I looked back on the drive through the deep south of the Peloponnese, a journey that had uncovered the rural Greece I had heard romanticised in family stories and feared was gradually fading away. But it was still here. Across the mountains and coastlines of Messinia, the Mani and Laconia, I found a Greece that belonged to every season.