In November 2017, in the Pantazopouleio Cultural Centre of Vytina, a handful of people — hikers, volunteers, a few ministry officials, some European guests from Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg — sat down to talk about trails. It was the 1st Panhellenic Trail Meeting, organised by Menalon KoinSEp, held alongside the 3rd Pan-European Conference of Certified Trail Representatives (LQT). The Menalon Trail had just become the first Greek trail to receive the top European certification, Leading Quality Trails — the 10th in Europe. No one knew then whether the meeting would happen again.
Nine years later, the same meeting arrives in Polykastro, Kilkis, hosted for the first time in Central Macedonia, now backed by the Greek National Tourism Organisation (EOT), the Region, the Hellenic Federation of Mountaineering and Climbing, and two municipalities. It is no longer a gathering of a few insiders. It is an institution.
It’s worth pausing on this journey, because it says something important — not just about trails, but about how our region is changing.
Eight Stops, One Journey
Line up the places that have hosted the Meeting and you get a map: Vytina (2017) → Andros (2018) → Metsovo (2019) → a pause for the pandemic → Xanthi (2021) → Kaisariani, in the heart of Athens (2022) → Pilio (2023) → Chania (2024) → Kastoria (2025) → Kilkis (2026).
A mountain village in Arcadia, a Cycladic island, the mountain capital of Epirus, a border town in Thrace, a neighbourhood in the middle of a big city, a mountain steeped in mythology, the western world of Crete, a lake-town on the border with Albania, and now a plain next to North Macedonia. There is no common geography — and that’s exactly the point. The idea that hiking can be a tool for local development didn’t stay locked into “the mountains we already know.” It travelled somewhere no one would have expected a decade ago: a lowland district of Kilkis that, let’s be honest, doesn’t come to the average Greek’s mind as a hiking destination.
That’s the real achievement of the institution. Not that it grew in size — that it grew in geography, and in imagination.
From a Social Cooperative Initiative to an Institution with Official Patronage
There is a second, less visible but equally important journey: the institutional one. In 2017 the meeting was the initiative of a KoinSEp — a small, local, volunteer structure. In 2026 it is co-organised by a Regional Unit, a Municipality, a national federation, under the patronage of EOT. This isn’t simply “the party got bigger.” It means that something that started as an alternative, almost amateur idea has become a recognised tool of public policy. Municipalities now compete to host the Meeting because they know it brings visibility, visitors, and — most importantly — a story about how a place can develop without building 400-bed hotels.
That is exactly the bet our Network is making too.
Arcadia Today: The Network Exists — Does Anyone Know It?
Arcadia wasn’t just one of the stops on this journey — it was the starting point, and it remains present in it to this day. At the recent 8th Meeting (Kastoria, 2025), Ioannis P. Lagos himself, president of Menalon KoinSEp, personally presented the Peloponnese Trails network as an “emblematic example of Social Economy in action” — and he wasn’t alone: the Arcadian Mountaineers-Ecologists Association was there too.
Why do we stress this? Because there’s a misconception worth correcting publicly — even within Arcadia itself: the Menalon Trail is not the only thing Menalon KoinSEp has built. Since 2020, in partnership with the Region of Peloponnese and 15 social cooperative enterprises, a 1,000-kilometre trail network has been operating — Peloponnese Trails / Mythical Trails: ArcadiaTrail (90 km), ParnonTrail (210 km), SpartaTrail (90 km), PanTrail (80 km), HermesTrail (200 km), and a section of HeraclesTrail (250 km). The project won Platinum and Silver awards at the 2020 Tourism Awards, and it’s still alive — just this past May an event was held in Stemnitsa, exactly at the point where three of these trails meet.
So the real question isn’t “why didn’t we build a network beyond Menalon” — we did, six years ago, and it’s already three times the length of the Menalon Trail itself. The question is why a network of this size doesn’t carry the same international profile. Only the Menalon Trail holds the international LQT certification; the remaining 900+ kilometres remain, for the average traveller — and perhaps for quite a few of us in hospitality — nearly invisible.
Food for Thought
As the Meeting reaches Kilkis this year, a few questions are worth sitting with, as a Network and as a place:
First, as the idea of trails spreads to more and more destinations, how do we avoid what we’re already seeing happen on islands and popular trails abroad — the turning of a tool for authentic local development into just another mass-tourism product? The answer, we believe, lies exactly where all of this began: in local structures like Menalon KoinSEp, not in investment schemes that see the trail as branding.
Second, what would it mean for a hospitality network like ours to connect more closely and more systematically with an already-existing 1,000-km network, instead of building parallel, smaller initiatives? The groundwork is there — the question is whether we, as a network of accommodations, have done enough for the guest sleeping at one of our members to know that the ParnonTrail or the HermesTrail is right next door.
Third, and perhaps most important: the Meeting shows that hiking is no longer “alternative tourism” set against some “mainstream” tourism. It is now a mechanism of national policy for regions with no sea, no major monuments, nothing but their landscape and their history. That is exactly the profile of mountainous Arcadia — and we’ve already proven it, since the story started here. The question isn’t whether we deserve to host the Meeting again. It’s how we make the 1,000-km network we already have just as well known as the name that gave birth to it.
We’ll be watching Kilkis with interest this October.
Arcadia Hospitality Network
