What four hours ashore actually buys you

Cruise passengers are sold the whole island in an afternoon. It does not fit, and the people selling it know it does not fit.

Here is what four hours actually holds, with the driving times that make it true. We have been meeting ships at Corfu port since 1978, and the single thing that ruins a shore day is not a closed site or a wrong turn: it is a plan that never had room in it.

Start from what time you really have

A ship alongside from eight until one is not eight hours ashore. Take off the queue to disembark, take off the walk to the terminal gate, and take off the forty-minute cushion you want before all-aboard. Four and a half hours becomes three and a quarter of usable time.

Every plan below is built on the smaller number. If a plan is quoted to you on the bigger one, ask what happens if the tender is slow.

The honest driving times from the port

These are real, in traffic, in August, not the optimistic figures.

• Corfu Old Town: 10 minutes. Effectively next door.
• Achilleion Palace: 25 minutes each way.
• Paleokastritsa: 45 minutes each way. This is the one that catches people out.
• Kanoni and the Mouse Island viewpoint: 15 minutes.
• Porto Timoni: 55 minutes each way, plus a 20-minute walk down and a harder walk up. Not a shore-day trip. We will tell you so.

The three plans that fit

Old Town and nothing else. Walk in, take the fortresses at a human pace, eat somewhere with a tablecloth, walk back. It sounds unambitious and it is the plan most people say they enjoyed most.

Achilleion and the Old Town. Fifty minutes of driving in total, an hour at the palace, ninety minutes in town. Tight, comfortable, and the only two-site plan we recommend without qualification.

Paleokastritsa and back. Ninety minutes of driving buys you an hour and a half on the most photographed coast in the Ionian. Worth it if that view is the thing you came for. Not worth it if you also want the town.

What does not fit, whatever you are told

The island tour that promises Achilleion, Paleokastritsa, Kanoni and the Old Town in four hours exists. It is sold on the quayside every morning of the season. What it delivers is four car parks, four photographs and a driver watching the clock.

You will have seen Corfu the way you see a country from a train.

The one thing to insist on

Whoever drives you, agree the all-aboard time before you leave the port and make them repeat it back. Not the sailing time: the all-aboard time, which is usually thirty minutes earlier and is the one that matters.

A driver who does not ask you for it has not thought about your day. We put it on the booking, the driver's sheet and the confirmation email, and we build the return around it rather than around the itinerary.

If the ship is late

It happens, and it is not your fault. Tell the office as soon as you know. We would rather reshape the afternoon than run it compressed: a shortened plan you enjoy beats a full plan you spend watching the time.

The question we are asked most

"Can we swim?"

On a four-hour call, honestly, not comfortably. The nearest beach worth the drive is twenty-five minutes each way, which is fifty minutes of the three and a quarter you have, and then you want an hour there for it to have been worth going. That is most of the day gone on one stop, and you will not have seen the town.

On a six-hour call it works, and it is a good way to spend one. On eight it is easy.

If swimming is the thing you came for and the call is short, the honest answer is to do the Old Town properly and swim at the next port. We would rather say that on the telephone than sell you a plan that ends with everybody damp and rushing.

What we do with the four hours

Every plan above is one of ours, and all of them are on the shore excursions page with the all-aboard guarantee written into them rather than added as a footnote.

If you want the shortest plan that still leaves the town behind, it is the four-hour private day. If your ship is anchored rather than alongside, the arithmetic changes and we have written that out in what a tender day changes.