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As I was flying out late afternoon, I had time in the morning for a quick tour of Paphos. First of all I had to hit the shops to get a gift for Emma, don’t want her being disappointed. Luckily that didn’t take too long.
Once the pain was over, my aunt took me to the Paphos Archeological site, where we looked at the Roman (and earlier) mosaics at the House of Dionysos. These are some of the most awesome mosaics I have ever seen, the detail being amazing considering the materials that were being worked on.
It was interesting to see the animals, some of which seemed a little out of proportion, no surprises since they had no source materials such as photographs to work from, and the artist had probably only ever seen a dead board/tiger/leopard.
The second really interesting thing was the portrait of one particular gentleman (OK, I thought it was a woman with really big eyebrows at first). It was not so much the portrait itself by the small square columns surrounding it, created with perspective, something I believe the Romans were the first to depict in their art. You can see a photo of this on my flickr.
My flight back was with First Choice, and apart from the chaos in Paphos airport, it was pretty dull. Thanks to my dad and Babs for picking me up from Glasgow.
Today I did a big loop to Polis and back again, in the opposite direction to that which I had done before. I also made a small detour to take some pictures of the concentration camp at Polemi. My unkle thinks this may be a relic of the 50s, now out of use. Why keep it though, and have a massive sign on the front of it?
The rest of the ride was fairly regular, apart from the last few days of riding starting to take it’s toll on me. I was getting twinges of pain in my right knee, no doubt due to the low (60-80rpm) cadence up the steep hills.
The bike is all packed up now, ready to go home. It’ll definitely need a wash when I get back.
Today I pedaled into the foothills of the Troodos Mountains. The high point of the day was 1000m, far higher than any roads in the UK.
My target was Panagia, a small town in the foothills of the Troodos mountains. The ride out there was interesting, after I had climbed up the first 600m I descended almost 300m before yo-yoing up and down. Only the last 200m was a straight climb. The most interesting thing I saw was what looked like a small army barracks with a watch tower (manned by a dummy) with a massive sign on it saying ‘Pagia Concentration camp’ (Need to look some of the spellings up on the map later). A film set perhaps?
Once I got up to Panagia, it started raining. I sat under some trees for a while, but the massive thunderstorm that was going on at the same time was starting to spook me out a little, so I headed back to a small chapel for shelter. I was there for almost an hour before the rain stopped, and I headed off again.
Ahead of me lay 15miles of almost uninterrupted descent, loosing me most of my 1000m gains. I had been thouroughly looking forward to this, but had to take it easy on the first 5 miles due to the rain making the roads greasy, and the wind chill factor whenever I got above 25.
Once in the dry again I took my jacket off, and was pushing 40mph on the straighter pieces of road. I ended up almost at the airport, and had only one steep climb back up to Tala.
A nice day, but not the best to leave my knee warmers behind!
Only did around 35miles today, but with about 1500m of climbing. Legs felt a little tired at the start, but I paced myself up the first few miles of climbs and felt better later on.
I did an anti-clockwise loop to almost the same place as the ‘short-cut’ I did yesterday. Just short of that point I took another steep little climb directly into Kithikas, slightly steeper and higher than yesterday, to the point where the 39-25 was beginning to become a struggle.
Just outside Kithikas I spotted a sign for a donkey and bird sanctuary, odd combination.
As a descent back towards Paphos I took the Pegeia road which I had come up yesterday. This proved not to be as good a descent as it was a climb, since I ended up stuck behind traffic going down the little narrow streets.
I climbed back up through the Orange plantations again, this time feeling slightly faster than yesterday. It is a harder climb than I had first appreciated, and continues for almost three miles before you get to the last half mile which is a lot steeper.
Not bad for an easy day.
Today I did a 50mile ride from Tala to Polis then back again. On the way out I descended down to the coast, and went up the climb to Pegeia and Kithikas. The first section to Pegeia was pretty steep, I was down in 39-25 for most of this section, averaging about 10mph. The Upper section towards Kithakas was a little easier, I could ride this at about 13mph. Once on the top of the ridge the going was a lot quicker, although the descents were slightly dodgy due to the high winds from the west (my left).
On one of the sections I came up to a massive quarry and concrete batching plant, which spanned both sides of the road for some considerable distance. A concrete lorry had just exited from the left spilling a large amount of concrete on the road. I had passed it in the opposite direction further up the hill, struggling with what remained of it’s load. As I crossed the patch of concrete I punctured, so I pulled over to the side and quickly swapped the tube out.
The descent continued to Polis, where I waved to a trio of guys on road bikes just starting the climb up. After a short detour around Polis I the Paphos road south again, then headed up a ‘short cut’ back up to the ridge I had seen on google earth. This ‘short cut’ turned out to be a 3mile climb running from about 100m up to 600m. This was very tough, I was down to 8mph at some sections grinding away at the lowest gear.
From there I climbed back up to Kithikas, catching a slow moving lorry at the top of the climb. This lorry was a tipper loaded with finishing stone for the outside of a house. These were loosely placed by hand, and several looked like they might fall out at any time, so I wasn’t keen on going to close to the back of it. As it crested the hill I took the opportunity to pass the truck, making up enough time in the next mile to stop and put my jacket on for the descent without it catching me again.
On the last climb back up to Tala from the coast I bonked while climbing slowly through the orange plantations, but luckily I got my act together before the steep section of the climb.
My flight out to cyprus was great. I saw the Eiffel Tower and the Champs Elysees as we flew over Paris, a large electric storm to our north over Italy (We were above the cloud, was an amazing sight) and flew through a smaller electric storm as we got near to Cyprus.
On my first day here the temprature was a lovely 22C, but it rained. I didn’t fancy the greasy roads very much, so was given a small tour of the surroundings. We went up and down one climb which has about 500m of climbing in less than 4km!! Looking forward to going up that.
The pic was taken at a small beach we visited. Obviously the Cypriots are not keen to have wolves on their beaches, but dogs should be fine.
At the moment I am sitting in Gatwick Airport waiting for my connection to Paphos, Cyprus. It is interesting the difference in atmosphere between Edinburgh and Gatwick. Edinburgh seems fairly relaxed, with just a few police officers patrolling and small queues to get through the security. Gatwick on the other hand, is patrolled by firearms officers wielding MP5s and massive queues to get through security. As well as the usual security measures such as a clear plastic bags for liquids and the like, they scan your shoes, and swab the occasional laptop. I have no idea what this is supposed to achieve, maybe they were suspicious about my white Macbook’s cocaine habit.
The flight down was nice an smooth, and hopefully the next flight will be too. Already delayed by 25minutes…… :o(
