Grand Designs indeholdt villa, stor privat pool med panoramaudsigt over havet

Jane and Robert's love affair with Zakynthos began forty years ago, touring the island's chalk mountain roads on motorbikes and being stopped in their tracks by the Ionian Sea. They vowed to come back one day.

In 2000 they found their piece of land on a hillside in the quiet north with sea views all the way to Kefalonia. They spent the next years designing and building Maistrali from scratch with an English architect friend. Jane managed the project herself, living on site for nine months to see it through. In 2006 the house featured on Channel 4's Grand Designs.

They have been sharing it with guests ever since, and what they most want visitors to find is exactly what stopped them on those motorbikes four decades ago, the extraordinary natural beauty of the north, the unhurried pace of Volimes village, and the warmth of a part of Greece that hasn't changed much and, with luck, never will.

Greece has been part of our lives since we were students, the people, the light, the sea. We brought our own family back year after year, and in 2000 a holiday on Zakynthos changed everything. We found the north of the island which is an EU-designated area of outstanding natural beauty, and understood immediately why it has been left largely to itself.

The combination of mountains dropping to sea, the views across to Kefalonia, the ancient olive groves and the unhurried villages of the interior: it is as quietly extraordinary today as it was when we first drove those chalk roads. We built Maistrali here because we couldn't imagine building it anywhere else. The north of Zakynthos rewards the people who find it — and very few of them leave without wanting to come back.

Almost everything about Maistrali is one of a kind, but a few things stand apart.

The position. The villa sits on a hillside in the quiet, unspoiled north of Zakynthos, entirely private and not overlooked. Views sweep over the Ionian Sea to Kefalonia, across the Mediterranean landscape falling away down the hills to the water. Every bedroom, every terrace, every morning coffee faces that view. It stops people in their tracks the moment they walk through the garden wall.

The west wind. The climate in spring, summer and early autumn is close to perfect, warm days, cool enough to sleep well at night, with a refreshing westerly breeze off the Ionian. Maistrali was designed around that breeze. The traditional stone wind tower, the architectural centrepiece of the house channels cool air naturally through the living spaces all day, keeping the villa comfortable through even the hottest Greek afternoons without air conditioning.

The north. There is no mass tourism here. The beaches are unspoiled and uncrowded, the restaurants are run by families who have been there for generations, and the local people are warmly, quietly welcoming in a way that feels increasingly rare. Guests arrive and decompress within hours. That feeling of total privacy, silence and space, with everything you need meticulously taken care of is what brings so many of them back.