The old village on its crag is alive again, but the money that restored it was German, Italian and English; its function - its only function - to receive and entertain visitors. There is no bearded patriarch of the Orthodox Church to attend daily to his flock (there is no flock); no old men playing backgammon in kafenions (there is no kafenion); no old women in traditional dress. But there are restaurants, bars, gift shops and villas.

The lingua franca is English; waitresses are as likely to be Scandinavian or Dutch as they are to be Greek, and raised voices less likely to mean a family argument than possession of a mobile phone. There are few donkeys, but plenty of hired motor scooters in this (literally) high altar of the tourist trade.

And yet... I have stayed here twice, happily so, in consecutive Septembers, and would not rule out going again. The time of year is important. For anyone seeking the traditional island virtues of peace and seclusion, high season may be a challenge too far. By September the crowds have thinned, the temperature dropped from broiling to merely hot, and quietness returned.

Most of the tavernas are still open, and only the pernickety kind of gourmet (not a species well understood in Greece) will find much to complain about. More primitive fish- and meat-lovers, for whom paradise is fired by charcoal, will find Alonnisos nibbles at the margins of heaven.

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A communications glitch one night brought to the table double portions of lamb chops, pork chops, pork belly, sausages and meatballs, all on the same dish with side orders of chips, cheese and salad, and all just for me. It was a forlorn battle, but one which - at the approximate cost of an English ploughman’s lunch - I could well afford to lose. Greek island food is local, not local, but still often low-cost.

The real attraction, though, is food for the eye. From any viewpoint – boat, bus, taxi, beach or balcony - Alonnisos is a stunner. It is for the pedestrian, however, that notions of beauty may have to be revised. One of the greatest pleasures is the island’s network of footpaths.

These are clearly shown on a widely available 1:2,500 hiking map, which (by Greek standards) is unusually detailed and accurate, though another of the local myths is that the routes are conspicuously waymarked and that the paths themselves are obvious and easy to follow. They are often not. If the trail does go cold, over bare rock or in an olive grove where sheep, goats and their keepers have worn lookalike trails in every direction, you will usually - if you work at it - find a helpful dab of paint left by some previous traveller.

Your reward if you make the effort is as close to prehippie, mythical Greece as it is possible to get. Early one morning, heading uphill towards the forest and Alonnisos’s spectacular west coast, we are greeted by the last person we’ll see for more than two hours - an elderly man exploiting the recent rainfall, hunting snails. The classic Greek recipe for these involves tomatoes, olive oil and redwine vinegar, but it’s not something you’ll find on taverna menus (goat is now about as folksy as they get), and it’s hard to imagine any future generation enjoying this prototypical convenience food.

Next come some small, well-tended vineyards with hyper-sweet fruit turning to raisins; an immaculate tomato plot; a ramshackle farmyard where we raise a cacophony of dogs and geese, but no people; an evidently well-used spring; and then the great billow of pine forest with its prickly scents and sudden, startling vistas of the sea. Many of the trees have been tapped and cupped - one resin-tapper apparently is still at work on the island, supplying the retsina industry, but all these have the look of long-term abandonment.

The path brings us eventually to a rocky ledge where two tiny clifftop churches command one of the most spectacular views in the Aegean. One thing remote Greece now has in common with urban England: both doors are securely locked. A short, steep descent through the trees leads to a tiny cove where we find, draped among the rocks like a stranded seal, a solitary Englishman reading a biography of Laurence Olivier.

One of the ironies of this kind of travel, in which a good part of one’s purpose is to reconnect with something lost, is that one can contribute to its survival only by subscribing to the very force that threatens it. Tourism is the reality. There is no alternative, and one cannot wish people to return to a peasant economy. The consolation in Alonnisos, as in others of the smaller islands, is that the British holiday companies generally behave respectfully and leave only the lightest of footprints.

Travel details: Ionian & Aegean Island Holidays (020 8459 0777, www.ionianislandholidays.com ) has five villas on Alonnisos. The two-bedroom Vatelis Villa, near the Chora, has a shared pool and terrific views over Patitiri. A week’s holiday, departing on October 3, costs from £559pp, based on two sharing, £399pp for four. The prices for June 2009 are from £849 and £629 respectively. The package includes flights from Gatwick to Skiathos, transfers to and from Alonnisos by boat, and car hire throughout.

Or try Sunvil (020 8568 4499, www.sunvil.co.uk ) or SunIsle (0800 091 1601, www.sunisle.co.uk ).

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