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.