Day 2
Day 2: Wednesday November 14th Timi to the Diarizos river crossing above Kidasi
An early start after yesterday’s half day. We look forward to getting off the B6 and start the climb up to the top of the Troodos range. But first another 2.3 miles (3.7Km) along the road to hell.
The Troodos range rises over 6000ft out of the Mediterranean Sea. Over the centuries river valleys have been carved out of the mountainside, many of these through the Paphos region. These valleys provide a number of options for a hiker aiming to climb to the peak of the Troodos Mountain. My preferred option had been for some time to follow the Xeropotamos Valley, tracing the valley floor through fields and orchards, criss-crossing the river bed, passing the recently renovated Panayia Sinti monastery nestled magnificently at the valley bottom, and taking in the remains of ancient mills and bridges, before, high up the valley, meeting the Venetian Bridges trail. Having reconnoitred this route, about 2 miles short of the Venetian Bridges trail the ground became swallowed up by thick thickets and steep cliffs. I tried to find the missing couple of miles from the Venetian Bridge side but only found steep, impassable cliffs. Regrettably, I had to abandon this beautiful trail.
So as not to risk the completion of the overall trek, we chose the Diarizos river valley with its direct route to the mountain top. Shorter than the Xeropotamos route, it would mean tarmac walking all the way to Pano Platres – not our preferred option.
The B6 meets the Diarizos valley at a road junction marked by a mobile café. It is to here that we head from the scene of yesterday’s disappointment at Timi; single file, quick marching, eyes wide open, alert to vehicular threats to our project, at times impersonating Spanish matadors evading 4 and 2 wheeled versions of enraged bulls determined to turn us into road kill.
The mobile café stop provides us a chance to celebrate our road survival skills and saviour the beginning of our 2 day walk from the coast to the top of the island some 35 miles away. This felt like the real beginning of our walk, what we had been looking forward to for months as we imagined our challenge, traversing a beautiful, rugged landscape, passing villages and ruins that lie scattered across the island that mark its history and reflect its culture and way of life over the millennia.
The Diarizos valley today stands testament to the social demographics of much of the island. The valley bottom in its lower region is home to sheep and goat pastures and mandras, which turn to ploughed fields and orchards as the valley bottom rises. Small villages lie up and down and along its slopes. Historically these villages were populated by both Greek and Turkish Cypriots with mosque sitting neighbourly alongside church.
Today they are sparsely inhabited by small communities of Greeks only. Some, like Souskio and Prastio, are abandoned, reflecting the division of the island in the 1970s. Souskiou is a particularly sombre testimonial to the division of the island that has left its deep mark on the country.
There is little traffic on the road and little activity in the villages and fields. It is a pleasant and peaceful walk through nostalgia, with the Troodos range gently rising in front of us, its mountain peak always in view in the far distance.
What road traffic there is has supported a couple of roadside cafes. We rest at one of these, well known to cyclists, going under the grand name of Extreme View. Although not Extreme, there is a great view up and down the valley, and across the river bed to the small abandoned village of Prastio and an unlikely crag of rock that rises out of the river bed. We are the only customers when we arrive. The owner, in traditional Cypriot style, comes out to chat and find out where we are from and where we are going. We tell him what we are doing but it must have sounded so absurd and unlikely that he gave no reaction.
Instead he wanted to make a proposition to us – it felt like we were not the only ones to have received this offer. He informed us that his café, with a small number of rooms for lodging attached, was for sale. Apparently someone had made what he clearly regarded a derisory bid of a e150,000. Drawing on evidence that there were properties in Limassol going for millions of euros, he asked with apparent deep sincerity how we could allow him to let his property go for less than e2 million. We sympathised with his fantasy economics, paid for our coffee and left.
Along the route we hear a sound that would become a common accompaniment along the whole walk, north and south. The pop-pop of hunters engaged in Kini, out with their double barrelled shotguns, with their hunting dogs chasing out game for their masters to blast. Cypriots have few indigenous sporting pastimes in which they engage in numbers, but kini is a long and deeply rooted cultural ‘right’ that is pursued with passion and commitment and represents a key continuity of rural Cypriot life, especially in the mountain regions. In an early warning, Nick gets a little too close to a pop-pop from an out of sight hunter. This near miss keeps us on our toes for the rest of the journey – no untimely end to our challenge please!
A little further on from the Extreme café the road passes through a narrow gap between two rocks. This is known as the Hassamboulia Rocks after highly notorious bandits who roamed these river valleys 130 years ago. The Hassamboulia gang’s roots lay in Mamonia village that we passed earlier in the day lower down the valley, the home of the Turkish Cypriot brothers who led the gang. The rocks were the site of a gun fight, rooted in true Cavalleria Rusticana vendetta, between the elder brother, Hassan, and a relative of one of his victims. A woman and an affair of the heart was at the root of this particular confrontation, but much of the violence administered by the gang over its 9 years of terror throughout the great valleys was nothing more than brutal murder and kidnapping, including spectacular shootouts with police on two occasions. Eventually betrayed, the gang were all captured, killed or sent to prison in Nicosia for hanging.
Today the rocks are a peaceful place for rock climbing enthusiasts, very few of whom I suspect know of its more sinister past.
A little further up, past the largely abandoned village of Kidasi, the road we are on crosses the Diarizos river bed before rising up the other side to leave the valley and head towards Platres. It is at this crossing point, before the steep climb out of the valley, that at 14:45 pm we end our walk for the day. We wait for the ladies to recover us and return us to our house in Aphrodite Hills for our last night of rest here before changing base and moving onto mountain accommodation.
Day 2 stats: Distance 16.0 miles (25.7 Km), total miles 24.0 (38.6 Km)