Winter in Cyprus
by Pat Lloyd
Eleven members of our Thursday Riders Club had decided to help the winter pass by flying to Cyprus in January for what was laughingly referred to as a training camp. The previous day had been fairly strenuous so the rest of the group had very sensibly opted to go walking rather than join Fred and me on a traverse of the Besparmak mountains. We took the main coastal road west out of Kyrenia and after a coffee stop at the Citrus Tree turned onto a minor road through orange groves to Lapta, where a map mounted on a wall showed us where were at that moment but wasn't very helpful at showing where we wanted to go. Luck was with us and ignoring the many unsignposted turnings in the town we managed to find the dirt road to Karsryaka, where we turned left at an advert for Monte Pearle holiday complex. We were now back on tarmac, very broken up but not too bad and passing lots of wild anemones just starting to flower.
The road wound steadily upwards, rideable but very warm work. We were looking for a T junction where our map showed a road coming up from further along the coast. This never materialised and we eventually reached the ridge at a cross roads where a rusty signpost pointed straight ahead for Selvili Tepi 5km. Something wrong there, as that was the name of the mountain way over on our left. While we were tossing up whether to go on a bit further we heard a vehicle approaching and flagged it down. It was a taxi delivering bread and the driver pointed to the dirt road going to the left as being ours and told us to keep going straight up. Up being the operative word. We thanked him and bought a loaf of bread which looked like a large Chelsea bun and cost 1000,000 lire. This holiday being the only time we're likely to be millionaires with 2,000,000 lire to the pound.
The track was very muddy and deeply rutted and climbed upwards in a series of hairpin bends, too steep for us to ride. We passed some miniature narcissi, the first we had seen growing although we had noticed children selling them by the roadside. After walking for some way we decided to stop and eat the bread while it was still warm as it had got to 12.30. We perched on some rocks, looking over the central plain to where the Troodos mountains still had snow on the slopes and ate the bread and some apples, then set off again riding some and walking the steeper parts with Kivanc Tepe at 960 metres towering above us on our left. Eventually we came to a small quarry with an abandoned generator and digger and just after that the track divided where some large caterpillar tracks were lying at the side of the way. We were now on the other side of the mountains and looking towards the sea and also overlooking the owner of the caterpillar tracks. A tank had crashed down the steep hillside during the war of 1974 between the Greeks and the Turks and now a flight of concrete steps led down to it and a notice board in Turkish described what had happened. We opted for the left hand track as there was a blue arrow painted on a rock which seemed more promising. Some circular water tanks were presumably the water supply for Karsryake although how the water got into them was a mystery.
From here the track was pretty awful and riding the bikes was like being in charge of a muck spreader with mud flying off the tyres in all directions. We had passed the 1023 metre Selviti Tepi and had been cycling for what seemed ages when we arrived at a crossroads which was actually shown on our map. A sign pointing to the left advertised a restaurant which we knew was near Lapta so we were undecided whether to drop back to there as we were running out of time. It was now 3.30 and it would be dark by 5 o'clock so we needed to be off the mountains fairly soon. We decided that it would be shorter to continue along the ridge to St Hilarian Castle as the surface of the track had improved, so we kept straight on looping round a shallow valley where several roofless buildings had been left over from forestry work. A stone fountain seemed to have been the water supply but we didn't stop to find out if it still worked.
After climbing out of the valley, signs appeared ASKERI BOLGE GURTMEZ. These showed that we were approaching a restricted army area where no stopping or photography were allowed. I had got ahead as Fred was still feeling the effects of a chest infection caught on the plane and should have waited where a road went off to the left but as it had a red triangle showing that it was banned I kept straight on. I also ignored a road to the right also with a red triangle and kept going down a terrific descent to St Hilarian Castle. This was one of the three castles built by the Crusaders to give warning of Arab invaders and we had hoped to have spent some time looking round, but it closed at 4 o'clock and it was now 4.15. From here the road passed other army installations and we had been warned that only cars and buses were allowed to go through, but a book of walks that we had bought showed a footpath dropping down from the castle to Karaman and starting near a disused limekiln. While I waited for Fred I checked out the limekiln and found the start of the track with a battered sign with Orange Route to Karaman. I waited and waited but no sign of Fred - perhaps he had punctured. I toiled back up the terrific descent and found Fred who hadn't ignored the red triangles and had ended up at some communications aerials. Once back at the limekiln we started down a good rideable track, too good as it wasn't the correct one and headed back into the hills. We retraced to try again and ended up in a gravel pit, the next track petered out and we were about to risk the banned road when we spotted another path that we had ridden past earlier - eureka! After a hundred yards we found a faint orange paint mark and were able to ride a short way before the track plunged steeply downhill on a rock shoot between cliffs. We slithered and skidded down a corkscrew path and finally reached a good gravel road which brought us to Karaman for 5 o'clock, just in time to switch on the bike lights. Once the sun went the temperature dropped so it was into long trousers before zooming down the long descent to the main road, reaching the apartment for 6 o'clock in nice time for a shower before the evening meal at 7 o'clock timing. Being gluttons for punishment the next day we rode back to Karaman and left the bikes in a disused church and walked back to the castle, wondering how on earth we had got down with the bikes. From high on the castle walls we could see where the army had a rifle range on what had been the Crusaders jousting field. The custodian of the castle said that we would have been all right cycling past as long as we didn't stop, a bit too late in the day to find out. At the moment there are 30,000 Turkish soldiers stationed in the area with army installations all over the place, none of them marked on the maps. We ended up at a NATO camp on one ride and had to turn back.
The two maps we had had no indication of scale. The one provide free by the tourist office was the more accurate but had places of interest shown in large blocks which obscured the roads. The one from The Green Jacket Bookshop in Kyrenia showed roads that didn't exist and missed out ones that did. Any maps bought beforehand had the place names in Creek and as all the signposts were in Turkish were not much good. There were lots of off road tracks made more interesting by a complete lack of signposts. The weather was perfect for cycling, sunny but not too hot and we had a most enjoyable four weeks and wished we had stayed there when we found what the weather in England was producing.