Recently, Andros has had the opportunity to receive significant publicity, through public and private television broadcasts.

We have heard and seen a lot about our island, but it was not heard that our Andros has over 500 km of paths, of which 240 km are mapped, waymarked with European standards and permanently accessible. They have been maintained regularly and uninterruptedly for 15 years, by the volunteers of the Andros Routes project and paid workers from sponsorships.

100 km of them, in fact, constitute the continuous exciting hiking route of Andros that extends from north to south under the name “Andros Route” and has received since 2015 the European quality certification Leading Quality Trails-Best of Europe from the European Hiking Federation.

All this laborious and expensive certification work has been implemented entirely by the Andros Research Center, which created and has been coordinating the “Andros Routes” project since 2009, with the help of donations from individuals and businesses and many hours of volunteer work by a group of people. These volunteers are accompanied by workers in the cleaning work, who are compensated by sponsorships and subscriptions collected for this purpose and by sales of items with the Andros Routes brand.

We note that if regular inspections are not carried out at least 5 times a year on each path, it is certain that they will become impassable.

Andros is the only island in Europe that has a route with such honorary certification and one of the two hiking routes nationwide that have managed to maintain it to this day. Thanks to this distinction, our island has become known around the world as a top hiking destination and its pths are often mentioned in articles in the prestigious international press, such as the recent one in The Guardian. It should be noted that it is particularly difficult to achieve and even more difficult to maintain such a certification with re-inspections every 3 years.

The fertile land of Andros, as well as natural disasters, leave no room for non-compliance with this strict cleaning and maintenance program for our paths.

Warm thanks to our volunteers and donors, without whom none of this would have been possible, which is why we consider it is our obligation to remind of this valuable work, which this year marks 15 years!