top of the world, ma

Riding eastwards and then northwards, we follow a river into the Troodos mountains.  Big blue skies and a warming sun on our backs.  We climb steadily up the valley.  Immediately after lunch in the shade we cross the river and climb steeply up onto the steep hillside.  Granny gears engage.  Little by little, inch by inch, upwards and upwards we climb, through the dry landscape.   Small villages perched up on the valley sides.  A dash of bougainvilea, tin pots of geraniums.

  A small church and a crowded graveyard.  The village fountain isn't a decorative feature- it's a tap with a small marble sink.  Where there's people, there's water.  First night's camp is outside a village where the road splits - left descends back down into the valley bottom and right continues climbing up to the next village on the mountainside.   We shelter behind pine trees below a farmer's vineyard.  Dogs bark and bay at the full moon.

We change our minds - instead of heading down we decide to stay up and follow the 'green' road on our map - the scenic route - traversing the mountainside and then climbing further up the next mountain.  The road splits again but one way is impossibly steep, so we take the longer 'easier' route, winding around a ridge through pines and past ocasional ledges with fields.  Old terraces cascade down steep slopes.  We find a roadside water fountain built with a white marble porch which provides shelter when the rain comes.  It pours down.  The steep road becomes a shallow river.  The puddles grow around us.  After a few hours of this Gayle decides to check out a camping place and tramps off into the rain.  She returns after a long while with a suggestion of a terrace back down the road.  It's late afternoon and the sky is still dark with rain, so we pitch in the long weeds, just out of sight of passing cars.

The young man who walks past in the morning doesn't look surprised.  He nods a hello and continues up the track with a bucket.  We guess he's taking food for a dog we heard barking in the night.  The  farmers often leave dogs tied up at sheds and outbuildings.  The farmers mostly live in the villages and drive out to their land.  We begin again up the road in our lowest gear.  It's a hard way to start the day. Inch by inch we climb.  By midday we have reached Promodos, the island's highest village.  We have pushed to get up some stretches of the road and cheered with joy at the sight of switchbacks which promise an easier gradient.  At one 45 degree bend we can look down the vertical short cut which we passed the day before.  It's a 2km distance down to the junction below.  We have taken a 24 hour detour to avoid it.   Mount Olympus, the island's highest, is over to our right lost in the cloud. We lookdown over the land we have just cycled through and we feel like we're on top of the world.

No smartphone. We have a map but can't read the very faint gradients.  So our arduous afternoon ride up and over towards Kakopetria turns out to be a full-on descent down and around the mountain instead.  It's a shock.  It's cold going down and there are signs of snow from the rain the night before.  Wanting to avoid arriving at the town at the wrong time of day we pull up and camp on a ledge behind an excavated pile of rock and earth.

copper island

I think we cycle about three hundred metres from the airport terminal before we stop by some large bushes.  How about here?  We're still in the airport grounds.  Waiting for a couple of buses to pass and a taxi.  Crashing through the knee-high hedge out of the street light and into the darkness.  Invisible to passing vehicles.  We put the tent up and go to sleep.
  

Riding into Paphos town the next morning we stop at a cafe in a village.  A double espresso and a cup of mountain tea. Is that sage?  We look at the shops across the road.  A swish new hairdresser and an old-fashioned barbershop next door.  As we watch, the old barber appears, hangs a sign on his door, locks up and walks off.  The local church is a sunken byzantine affair in the main plaza.  All around is modern landscaping.  The sandstone blocks of the church are honeycombed fromage. Honeycombed cheese?  No, honeycombed from age.

Our airbnb appartment isn't available until 2pm so we ride into the old town of upper Paphos and park at the parador - a promenade at the top of a cliff - looking over the lower town where the tourist hotels are.   As we watch, a steady stream of Europeans emerge from the steep road up to the parador and head over to the covered souvenir market.  Fat men gather at a cafe in their Newcastle United Away Kit - no shirts - all pot-faced and red-bellied - supping beer and lording over the view.  Two taxi drivers try to tempt tourists into their cars.  One of them greets an English couple by name.  They've been shopping.  They chat to the two drivers.  "It's not like the high streets in England" she says, "it's all changed nowadays."  The taxi drivers nod knowingly.  "The blacks" one of them says.  She doesn't blink or skip a beat. "The internet.  Everyone buys everything on the internet".  The taxi drivers nod knowingly. 

The old town feels empty of people, of life, of commerce.  There are streets of closed up and dusty shops.  Rusting locks on supermarket doors.  Sun-bleached signs.  Empty rooms peer out through dirty windows.  Then we find the tourist pedestrianised streets with new shops and seats and newly planted tree-saplings.  It still looks empty.  Low-season.

In the lower town, down by the harbour are the ruins of several Roman villas excavated from a plateau.   Outlines of walls and rooms with large swathes of mosaic floors.  Along the shore are the Tombs of the Kings - a series of cave complexes built as a necropolis and later used for accomodation. 

Paphos was recently a European Capital of Culture.  The workmen are still finishing off the 'beautification' of the town.  New plazas, tidy public spaces.  A restored minaret on an abandoned mosque in the old town.  Further up the hill is the real town where most of the locals live.  We find a Lidl (European Capital of Supermarkets) and overfill our panniers, ready for the mountains.

to blog or not to blog

Jonathan Raban wrote about travelling:  

"When the true and sincere traveller pulls the front door shut and turns the key in the lock, he casts himself adrift in the world.  For the foreseeable future, he'll be a creature of chance and accident. He doesn't know when - or if - he'll be back.  From here on, he submits himself to the current of things, dog-paddling with the stream and watching where it takes him.  If he's wise, he'll have made no appointments and will carry no letters of introduction.  Trying to keep appointments wrecks the natural rhythm of a journey, and letters of introduction nearly always introduce you to people who don't much want to see you and whom you would sooner not have seen anyway..............."

and about writing about the journey:

"... actual journeys aren't like stories at all.  At the time, they seem to be mere strings of haps and mishaps, without point or pattern.  You get stuck.  You meet someone you like.  You get a rude going over in a bar.  You get lost.   You get lonely.  You get interested in architecture.  You get diarrhoea.  You get invited to a party.  You get frightened.  A stretch of country takes you by surprise.  You get homesick.  You are, by rapid turns, engrossed,  bored, alert, dull, happy, miserable, well and ill.  Every day tends to seem out of connection with every other day, until living from moment to moment turns into a habit and travelling itself into a form of ordinary life.  You can't remember when it wasn't like this.  There is a great deal of liberating pleasure to be had from being abroad in the world, continuously on the move, like one of Baudelaire's lost balloons, but a journey, at least as long as it is actually taking place, is the exact opposite of a story.  It is a shapeless, unsifted, endlessly shifting accumulation of experience."