MAY I start with an apology to the old men of Argyrades, a lovely little village on a hill in southern Corfu, with a centre whose streets are too narrow for through traffic.

They were sitting out in the cool of the jasmine-scented evening in the cobbled main square, quietly conversing about the olive harvest and the size of this year's tomatoes, when we came thundering through on our quad bikes.

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When I say "thundering", I don't mean that we were going fast, quite the contrary, but the narrow alleys of Argyrades were like echo chambers, bouncing the engine noise back and forth, so it sounded far worse than it was.

Although the centre wasn't pedestrian-only, I felt like we were trespassing on local space, which made the noise seem even worse.

To cap it all, I hooted three times as I sailed between the group.

I had intended to indicate but my thumb stabbed at the wrong button and hit the hooter instead. So I'm very, very sorry, Argyrades; we didn't mean to shatter your peace.
We're not really like that at all.

Our intrusion apart, Argyrades is one of the few places in southern Corfu that has kept its cool in the face of the tourist invasion. This narrow tail of the island hosts some of the best beaches and its worst examples of the British tourist at play.

The resort of Kavos, on Corfu's southern tip, is well up there in the league of Mediterranean party towns: throbbing during the night and then throbbing again through most of the following day. It's a place of foam parties, of poseur gyms, of stags and hens, of doctors' surgeries and of very cheap booze.

There's quad bike rental galore there too but mercifully most of the denizens of Kavos spend all their money on vodka chasers.

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We got our bikes from George, in the resort appropriately named Saint George (Agios Georgios), although presumably not because of its quad bike supremo.

Only eight miles up the island's western shore, close to Argyrades and mainly British in clientele, Agios Georgios is very different in ambience to Kavos.

The overwhelming impression was of small apartments, hotels and supermarkets, where Mom and Pop took it in turns to look after the place and did so with some pride.
There was just enough in the way of cocktail bars and late-night dancing to keep our teenagers Thomas, 17, and Rhena, 15, from thinking it was an old folks' home and it had an element of proper local life that I found reassuring.

Moreover, the fields on either side of our simple but comfortable self-catering apartment were properly worked, full of tomatoes and fruit trees.

Thanks to the (very inexpensive) quad bikes, we were able to get an insight into island life. While the west coast, with sandy beaches, was busy with tourists, the east coast, mainly shingle and pebble, was predominantly local.

Getting across the spine of the island was an entertaining 20-minute drive via zigzag roads and olive groves, watched by patient donkeys tied up in the shade.
The beauty of the little-visited eastern shore was the generous cover of olive and cypress trees, local tavernas at local prices, the glassy calm and crystal-clear water and the sense of exploration.

At the fishing port of Petriti we exchanged greetings with the sleepy crew of the brightly painted trawler fleet, who fished by night and slept and mended nets by day.
In the hilltop village of Agios Dimitrios we were rewarded with views of both coasts, of distant Albania and the Ionian Sea.

THE PLACE we liked to return to though was our secret paradise, a little taverna in fabulously lush tropical gardens, with a small bay and pretty much the only bit of sand on this part of the coast.

Panorama Villas apartments and restaurant on Notos beach was the creation of a family who had combined hard work with creative flair: the upper terrace was slathered in flowers, the lower terrace in vines, the shoreline and jetty dotted with little statues.

We went there only twice but it didn't take us long to get all territorial about it, so when a boat heaving with day trippers arrived at the Panorama's jetty and the place was suddenly invaded with camera-toting people like us, we got all sniffy.

Feeling our little discovery had been invaded, we got on our quad bikes and took to the hills only to eventually, ourselves, shatter the peace and quiet being savoured by those old men of Argyrades.

GETTING THERE:
Olympic Holidays (0844 576 2386/ olympicholidays.com) offers seven nights at the Eleana Apartments in Agios Georgios from £259pp (two sharing), self-catering.
Price includes return flights from Gatwick and transfers. For June departures.
Greek National Tourism Organisation: 0207 495 9300/ visitgreece.gr