A high mountain lake at 800 metres on the southern slope of Mount Helmos — the monastery of Saint George, fir-and-poplar shores, three working tavernas, and one of the great inland drives in the Peloponnese.
Lake Feneos sits at 800 metres in a wide upland basin between the Corinthia and Achaia mountains, ringed by Greek-fir forest and small farming villages. It is one of the most beautiful and least visited corners of inland Peloponnese.
Feneos is a reservoir, but a deeply natural-feeling one — a long, narrow lake in a basin that has held water on and off since antiquity (the ancients tried to drain it through a famous network of katavothres, sinkholes; it has flooded and drained repeatedly across two millennia). The current reservoir was completed in 1958. The dramatic feature is the Monastery of Saint George of Feneos, perched on a rock outcrop above the lake’s western shore — Byzantine foundations, 16th-century church with surviving frescoes, working community, peacocks in the courtyard. Three or four good lakeside tavernas (Limni, Trofonios, Acherontas) on the south shore serve simple grilled meat and local fish (carp from the lake) — they fill up on Sundays with families from Corinth and Patras. Walking trails run up into the Helmos and Killini mountains; the Lake Doxa (a smaller, prettier reservoir 20 minutes west) is the most photogenic stop. Best as a long lunch on a half-day drive — combine with the Helmos cave or the Cogwheel Railway from Diakopto in Achaia. Stay overnight only at one of two small lakeside guesthouses; otherwise sleep in Loutraki or Nafplio.
A Sunday lakeside lunch.
From Loutraki, 90 minutes through the Geraneia and the Killini foothills.
Thirty minutes.
Twenty minutes west — a photo stop.
Two hours at Limni or Trofonios.
An hour on a marked trail above the lake.
Ninety minutes to Loutraki.
Within an hour.
Twenty minutes west — smaller, prettier reservoir.
Ninety minutes north-west (in Achaia) — Cogwheel Railway, ski resort.
Sixty minutes south. Detail on the Vytina page.
Fifty minutes north-east. Detail on the Sikyon page.
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