Day 5

Day 5: Saturday  November 17th Platania Camping Site, B9 Road to Panayia tou Araka

Antonis the Spartan!

Today we say goodbye to the Semiramis and our kind hosts and are driven by the girls to Platania. Waiting there is Omiros and his 9 year old son Antonis who will accompany us as far as they are able to. The company is welcome but I suspect that given the youthfulness of Antonis, this will be a short visit – I did not realise that he was a Spartan in disguise.

 We set out at 8:02 and by 8:30 we are lost again having gone full circle and ended back at the start. The moufflon are partly to blame. Opposite the Platania camping site is a moufflon enclosure – one of two that I know of on the island. Given the alternative name for our walk it would not do not to pay our respects to these very shy creatures that are venerated as the nation’s symbol.

It may look like a sheep with horns – which it is – but the moufflon are in fact the ancestor of all modern domestic sheep breeds. Cyprus has its own sub-species – Ovis gmeini ophion. There is no way to know how many there are in the wild on the island given how shy they are but it is not thought that they number more than a few thousand. A couple of handfuls can be seen in the enclosures so that we can recognise the national symbol – although that is not entirely necessary given that the moufflon appears on the national carrier, Cyprus Airways, and on a number of coins. It is also the symbol of the Cyprus national rugby team.

 Having circumnavigated the moufflon and discovered our mistake we set out again on the E4 ignoring the siren calls of the caged moufflon. Our walk today to the village of Lagoudera will be remote by the standards of our walk so far – no villages, no tourist spots or picnic sites or kaffeneia or any other landmarks – we would have to concentrate and hope that Nathanial’s warning about the E4 signage was Cypriot exaggeration.

 To help us we introduce a competition between old and new technology – I interrogate a paper map while Len operates his ViewRanger. This dual arrangement does not prevent us from getting lost an hour later.

We are following a trail that goes around a steep mountain side. After a while we notice that our track is gradually separating from the E4 on our maps – and yet we had not seen a sign or an alternative path. How could this be? Soon our path is clearly not the one we should be on and so return to retrace our steps and find the right path. There is no sign of it but the VieRranger is telling us that, at one point, the E4 has departed from the path we are on and heads up and over the mountain ridge. But where is it?

Luckily we have Antonis – our own moufflon lamb. We figure that the E4 is above us but we cannot see it. But how can we test this theory when the slope there is too steep for us to climb? Before we have finished this thought Antonis turns into a mountain sheep and scrambles up the hill through dense undergrowth. Antonis defies gravity and our cries for his immediate return. Shortly after having gone out of sight  we hear Antonis claim success – he has found a path and it heads in the right direction.

Now for the rest of us  - through a mix of human pulley systems and footholds and grabbing onto secure undergrowth, we make it up one by one. At the top we high-five and vigorously slap our own moufflon hero on the back and on the head. Antonis is beaming and soaking up his hero status. Throughout that day, whatever the terrain, Antonis would rush around like a Tasmanian devil, exploring anything that caught his eye – I don’t think he is motionless for a second. We fear he will exhaust himself and speculate when his father will have to carry him on his back. That moment never came. Antonis says that his origins lie in the mountain village of Agros where we are due to rest that night – I am not so sure; for us, he is our Spartan.

Although there are no landmarks on our route today, we do not have the trail to ourselves. The great weather has brought out a small army of mushroom hunters. We pass several parties, armed with knives and buckets. We stop and chat – it would not be Cypriot simply to nod recognition – we watch and we learn. Naively we think that the odd white mushroom that pops its head up is their target. There do not seem to be enough of these to attract so many hunters and fill so many buckets. We learn that these little pop-ups are part of a massive fungus flourishing underground all around us. We also learn that the best mushrooms are red not white and are hidden in the undergrowth. The skill is to spot the signs where the larger specimens are lying just below the surface of pine needles and shrub, and then to manipulate the knife in order to bring them to the surface whole. There are many, they are spread across the mountain side and we are told they are delicious. Buckets full the parties head back to their respective villages, some many miles away.

The route is relentless – constant ups and downs with barely a 100 metre strip of flat or flattish land. It is not the miles but the rolling inclinations that are getting into our legs. Most of the time we are walking through dense pine woods, but occasionally we break out into the open and enjoy a magnificent vista.

On one of these we catch a view of something special to me. To the north and far below us we can make out the north west coastline that comes from the west and then sweeps north to make Morphou bay. Near that coastline, in flat land a few miles back from the coast, is the town of Morphou, now named Guzelyurt by its Turkish occupants. This is the town where my wife was born and grew up and, at the age of 16, from where she fled following the Turkish invasion of the island in 1974. She left everything behind – her home, her clothes, her possessions, her school friends and her memories. Since then she has been a refugee. She has returned twice to the home where she was born and raised - but this is the subject of another story.  I take a photo for her – difficult to make out the town so far away gyrating in the afternoon sunny haze.

Our destination is the village of Lagoudera, specifically the church of the Panagia tou Araka. Cyprus probably has the most religious sites per square mile than any other country – from chapels to churches to monasteries to abbeys and mosques, they literally can be found anywhere; in a village or town; on a remote road in the countryside; in secluded locations out of man’s eye; on top of high peaks; in caves or carved out of mountain rock; and on beaches standing alone away from the tourist spots. Yet this church is among a small elite group with an elite status.

10 churches, all in the Troodos mountain range, have been designated Unesco World Heritage sites. They are designated such not for their architecture or even their stature in the Cypriot orthodox church. Some are monasteries, most are simple churches like Panagia tou Araka – if you didn’t now it was there you could quite easily drive past it. Their status is a result of what you see once you walk through the front door. Typically covered wall to ceiling with frescoes of such beauty they are considered as works of historical and artistic significance. Depictions of events and people of significance to the orthodox faith, they crowd the often limited space, created by names that have in many cases been forgotten. Light is often limited inside which adds to their impact as they flicker in candlelight. Many date from the end of the byzantine period nearly a thousand years ago, the youngest dates from the 17th century. A number are small churches in small villages – just like this one in front of us. They open only on certain dates and times and the priest lives somewhere offsite – if you want to see them when  they are closed you have to ring the number on the front door and hope that the priest or guardian is not otherwise engaged and is nearby. Normally they are happy to show off the magnificence of their church.

Panagia tou Araka was once the church (katholicon) of a monastery built here in the 12th century. From the outside it looks like a Swiss mountain house with its large sloping roof and today it is locked. In fact the whole village feels as if it is in lockdown – we see nobody here other than the odd elderly person sitting at a front door or slowly making their way to a neighbour. The 2011 census says that Lagoudera had a population of 84 – from today’s evidence that is another Cypriot exaggeration. We visit the famous 700 year old tree in the village which we have to ourselves.

Despite the E4 signage, which is not fit for purpose and guarantees to get you lost if you rely on it, we arrive in good time. The next section is a 7.5 km stretch over steeply undulating demanding terrain with no place to be picked up other than at the end. We sit and rest and take a vote whether we should try and take on this stretch today or tomorrow. Antonis’ hand is the first to shoot up. However, there is not unanimity – and we are a team - so at 1:30 pm we call the girls and ask them to pick us up from the village centre and take us back to our hotel for the next section – the newly refurbished Rodon hotel in the nearby village of Agros.

Omiros’ family are from Agros. This becomes very obvious as we stroll around the village – everybody knows him. That evening he suggests that we eat at the nearby Pezema restaurant. Given the time of year there are only a couple of other tables with guests. Omiros is well know to the owners who, with his family, work the restaurant. The  fare is traditional Cypriot cuisine – but the tastes are exceptional. Flushed down with lots of excellent local wine we spend far too long in the restaurant, eating and exchanging stories late into the evening with the owner and his staff.

We are so impressed we book a table for the next evening. The owner says he does not open on a Sunday but will bring out his family to provide us with private service in honour of Omiros – in Cyprus it’s not what you know…

Our route today should have been only 9.3 miles long – given our detour at the beginning we made it an over 10 mile walk. Our starting altitude was 3600 ft. Our altitude at the end was 3517 ft – flat, right. The undulating terrain is such that we climbed that day the equivalent of approximately 1800 ft. You could not tell this if you looked  at our Spartan as we enter the Rodon.

 Day 5 stats: Distance 10.2 miles (16.4 Km), total miles 46.5 (74.8 Km)