Like your geography lessons simple? Okay. Between Turkey and the Greek island of Ikaria (Icarus, sun, problem with wings, fatal crash) is a little archipelago of 12 islands known as Fourni. The archipelago’s main island is called Fourni, and this island’s capital is known as, er, Fourni.

The name might make you think of fornication — the island does have more than 30 stunning beaches; some of them deserted and suitable for that sort of caper — but, according to a 16th-century Venetian geographer called Bordone, it derives from fornelli, meaning small ovens.

Small ovens, not because the place gets bloody hot in summer (which it does), but because the port (that’s the port of Fourni) is concave and reminded someone of a small oven.

So what kind of people live in a small oven, where everything is called Fourni? Strange people, you might not be surprised to hear.

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It doesn’t take you long to notice that the men are not tall — just over 5ft is a good height here. For a prosperous few, it seems to be a good waist measurement, too. The women are also small, with a tendency to roundness — and to wear black stockings, but not the kind that tend to turn a man on.

The stockings, the women, and their foghorn voices, owe far more to Nora Batty. An unkind soul might also mention that the men of Fourni seem to be furnished with ears that are placed a little low down. An unkinder one might mention inbreeding.

The fact is that this tightly knit — and tightly bred — community of about 2,000 islanders is based on just four founding families. No wonder, then, that you sometimes find yourself doing a double-take. A lot of people look like a lot of other people.

Fourni is a backwater in the backyard of Ikaria, itself a relative stranger to mass tourism. It’s 10 times smaller than Ikaria and a hundred times quieter — partly because it’s a long, tangled haul of flights and ferries to get there. (The island has no airport and, one hopes, never will.)

Approaching by water, you see a hodgepodge of small humps lumped together in the Aegean, like the bits left over after the proper islands were made. And, when you land, the first thing that strikes you is that nothing strikes you — apart from the fact that you may have made a terrible mistake.

It’s hot, dusty and colourless. Nothing is imposing. The place isn’t done up like an old Greek fishing harbour; it is an old Greek fishing harbour.

There is no obvious tourist development: no shops selling pointless knick-knacks, plastic beach crap and silly souvenirs. Yet you become aware almost immediately that this place welcomes you.

The islanders may be a trifle peculiar, but I can’t remember visiting anywhere friendlier. Everyone says hello; everyone makes you feel that this is where you’re meant to be.

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