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The forest of Moggostos is a beautiful oak forest spreading over an area of 7,185 acres between the villages of Souli, Megalos Valtos, and Throfari in the Northern Peloponnese.
The drive from Athens to the Moggostos forest only takes about one and a half hours making it the perfect destination for an easy hiking day trip from the Greek capital.
The forest consists mainly of oaks, Aleppo and black pine, Cephalonian fir, holly, cedar, heather, and the characteristic koumarias and is protected as part of the Natura 2000.
Late fall and early winter is certainly the best time to visit the forest in all its colorful autumnal glory. But even in early November when the leaves just barely started to turn yellow, it was amazing to walk under the lush green canopy of trees enjoying the peace and quiet all around.
How to get there
The drive to the beginning of the trail from Athens took us only about one and a half hours and was pretty straightforward.
We followed the highway to Patra via Corinth until Kiato. In Kiato, we turned on a regional road towards Stymfalia and Ancient Fenaeos leading us uphill among vineyards and fields.
We passed a village called Souli and arrived at the trailhead some 6 km later. We parked our car at a small parking lot near a large crossroad and continued on foot from there.
You can find the driving directions to the trailhead on Google Maps HERE.
Maps, signposting & difficulty
The circular trail through the oak forest of Moggostos has approximately 10 kilometers in length and 250 meters of elevation gain. It is marked by red signs and plastic strips tied to the bushes with a few colorful wooden signs pointing in the right direction.
It follows a mix of clear and comfortable trails and wide forest roads which makes it quite easy to follow and not very physically challenging.
I didn’t find any paper map of the area so instead we followed a Wikiloc recording which proved useful multiple times on confusing crossroads (you can find ours HERE).
Overall the hike through the forest was easy, ideal also for beginners or as a family trip.
The forest of Moggostos
At the beginning of our hike we followed a dirt road ascending gently among a couple of vineyards. There was no obvious sign at the trailhead but it wasn’t difficult to find with the help of our Wikiloc recording.
Soon, the dirt road turned into a trail and after about 1 km we finally reached the oak forest. At the beginning of November, the leaves just barely started turning yellow but the forest was still stunningly beautiful and quite an unusual sight in this part of Greece.
We walked through the forest for another kilometer or so following a well-defined trail until we arrived at a wooden sign pointing towards a detour to the caves of Chouni.
A narrow path took us out of the forest and onto the edge of impressive cliffs overlooking a deep canyon. We spent some time exploring the unusually shaped caves carved into the cliffs and taking photos of the beautiful scenery before returning to the crossroad in the forest.
We continued our walk through the forest for another approximately 500 meters until we arrived at the highest point of our hike (953 meters) marked by a trigonometric column.
At this point, the forest gave way to low, shrubby vegetation and we were treated to amazing views across the canyon of Chouni and toward Mikri and Megali Ziria shrouded in dark autumn clouds.
From the top, we returned to the trail, turned left, and started our return back to our car. After about 800 meters we come onto a dirt road and turn right. For the next approximately 4 kilometers we followed the wide forest road with a few brief shortcuts through the forest along the way.
The last crossroad of paths in a left-hand turn of the road was slightly confusing but after a bit of aimless wandering, we joined the left-hand trail. It took us out of the forest and across a couple of fields and vineyards back to the beginning of the trail.
