Skyros is home to a native breed of tough and muscular diminutive pony standing about 1m, or 10 hands high. They're struggling back from the brink, partly helped by tourist interest. In the old days, before mechanisation, the early harvest was threshed by laying the corn out in a circle, rounding up some ponies and driving them round in a line of three of four.

John took us on a trip around the island, and by luck we found a display of the technique. Several of the participants were wearing traditional dress. The driving is a skilled job, as the ponies roam wild across the hills and see little of humans the rest of the year. They're too small for anyone but children to ride, but you do see other ponies being trekked. That would be fun in the cooler months of the year.

The trip also took us to Rupert Brookes' grave, away to the south. The simple marble is enclosed by an low iron palisade, and the base is engraved with lines from 'If I die, think only this of me'. The grave sits in an grove, under trees, with a trickle of admiring visitors but otherwise presides over a setting of romantic nostalgia befitting the man's poetry and beliefs.