Wednesday 26th October

Another sunny morning after what is becoming the norm in a chilly start.  Having had enough of fighting our losing battle with the dreaded long rooted Charlie we decided to go off on a venture in the car and drive, see if we could get lost (which we managed quite easily) and see some of the villages in the foothills of the Troodos mountains.

It was a lovely time and for four hours we just drove slowly taking in the views as Lillian tried to track our route on a not very good tourist map which clearly does not have all of the roads marked they we travelled along.  Each village seems to have its own church and some are just huge in comparison to the size of the village.  'Our church will be  bigger than your church' must be the mandate.  Some are perched right on top of a hill, whilst nearer to God we wondered how on earth they built them and who actually attends them?

Border look outs on Turkish side

Having lost our way and nearly ending up back into Larnaca we turned north on the old B road towards Nicosia (Lefkosia) to a village called Lympia.  There you could see the watch towers of the Turks at the border in the north whilst in the south there were soldiers with machine guns, hard hats etc.  It must be so boring on duty looking at each other all day.  The picture here was taken using my new telephoto lens and considering the distance I was away from the subject i am really pleased with this shot.

Once through Lympia we stopped at Dali where there are some old ruins that date from 400 BC.  Looked a pile of stones to me but Lillian, as ever was interested and ventured into the museum whilst I sat in the sun playing with my camera.  The curator was delighted to see someone and made her sit and watch a video presentation! From Dali it was on to the village of Tseri who enabled us to head up into the mountains as a route back south to the coast.  The road was narrow and winding with some stunning views. We stopped and looked, sighed and thought this would make an interesting trip for visitors.

As our journey was coming to an end we passed through a little village called Pano Lefkara which it would appear is famous for its traditional lace making.  There were a number of small shops in little side streets which all seemed to have an old lady sitting there 'lacing' if that is the word.  Lillian bought a runner for the  sideboard in the 'pool' room which is a fabulous piece of work.  The shops also had a predominance of silver jewellery made locally and I treated Lillian to a bracelet which was very pretty.  Much to my surprise she accepted it without her normal protests.  Played that all wrong LOL.

It was about 1630 when we got back home having driven some 80 miles in all.  So after some checking of work emails and strolling the garden we went to Tony's Grill and Bar (400 yards from us) to eat.  Not a great place but the food is good.