Back Running in Wales

Last night I thought I'd try to get back towards some degree of racing fitness with a quick four to five mile gallop up the first section of the Foel Fras race. This was the Aber Dash at the Aber Falls, Abergwyngregan, part of Mike Blake's Tuesday night race series. Not really a fell race as such as there was lots of road and track but it was a testing course all the same! Great turnout of competitors from far and wide and I managed to win an Easter Egg for being first over 60 in a time of 42.37. Bit cooler than Cyprus but perfect conditions for running - the only downside was that I ran through a knee high forest of gorse on the way down and I'll be picking out bits of gorse out of my legs for a couple of weeks.

Goodbye Cyprus

Well that's it, Cyprus done and dusted, just a mention of a couple more highlights and promise that we'll go back (perhaps to do a race - the only event we could find while we were there was a possible 5K in Nicosia, I e-mailed the organisers but got no reply and it was a long way to go on the offchance.)

We've already mentioned the monastery that we visited on top of a mountain. Cyprus is also good for churches, we went to Larnaca to see the church of St Lazarus's together with his bones and the Church of the Holy Cross in Lefkara, which also has a piece of the Holy Cross. (There's a fair bit of this Cross been divvied up round Cyprus.) But quite remarkably, up in the hills on one of our long long walks, we came across a very well maintained but remote chapel dedicated to St George within a tumble down abandoned village. This is Drapeia, it had quite  a haunting feel to it and no one in Kalavassos or on Google was able to tell us anything of the history of this forlorn deserted site.

This picture doesn't really give you an idea of the extent of Drapeia - it's a little like one of those deserted villages on Salisbury Plain that were taken over by the military many years ago, the inhabitants being relocated lock stock and barrel, probably to a council estate in Swindon.

Having been faced with the choice of Keo or Carlsberg for many days we were thrilled to find that there are a couple of other breweries on the island. One of them is way up the other side of Paphos. this is the Aphrodite's Rock brewery and judging by the website it looks well worth a trip, http://www.aphroditesrock.com.cy/

however it was a bit late in the day to arrange to go there. But we did locate some bottles of Prime beer made at Apia Napa. We sampled the Gold, Pale and Amber, all at 4.5% and all very tasty after going round in circles in Limassol to find the bottle shop.

Finally we have to recommend the Library Hotel! We hadn't done much homework on this - we just wanted somewhere away from the big beach hotels and we certainly found the antithesis of the package holiday deal. With only a dozen rooms and plenty of personal attention form the three lovely sisters who run the place (Anna Maria, Katherina and Lydia - hope I've spelt these right girls!) we thoroughly enjoyed staying here, would recommend it highly and would certainly come again!

Warbling monks

Cyprus has plenty of monasteries so we thought we should visit one - this is the Stavrovouni Monastery on top of a steep mountain. (Colder higher up hence the jumper.) This is far as we got because they don't allow women in!! But guess what? I was able to go through the gate (despite the sign saying 'no shorts' - mine were already below the knee and I loosened my belt and dropped them another couple of inches) and head on up to the building at the top. The chapel contains a piece of the cross that Jesus was crucified on but unfortunately, although I looked all over the chapel, I couldn't find it!


We're getting plenty of good walking each day and running every other day with not a soul to be seen for miles. Lots of birdlife over here - tons of swallows and house martins, magpies and sparrows but also partridges on the mountain and jackdaws nesting in cliff faces - we spotted some of these mobbing a medium size brown hawk but we're not sure of it's identity and it wouldn't own up. Most of these birds need to keep an eye open for hunters who seem to blast out at anything that moves during the hunting season, the trails are littered with shotgun cartridges! It's supposed to be the close season now but we have heard the odd shots being fired in the distance.

And here's our ornithological find which I hope Jon and Victoria will be impressed with - at first I thought I'd spotted a Dartford Warbler up in a bush on the mountain, this is a fairly rare little thing (someone saw one in Dartford once!) I then looked it up and initially identified it as a Cyprus Warbler but now Vicky and I are sure it was the more common Sardinian Warbler which has in recent years taken over some of the territory of the Cyprus Warbler. This is not my photo - we weren't quick enough with the camera.


And here's Smurf having lunch with us in the village of Tochni - Vicky had Afelia which is a rather tasty traditional Cypriot dish and I had the Cyprus sausage.

Driving in Cyprus and Neolithic man

Cyprus is, as you'd imagine, very laid back. Things take time and when we get back to Wales it'll be a bit of a shock for meals in restaurants to arrive within half an hour. The Cypriots are very easy going and don't rush around at all....until they get behind the wheel of a car! On the motorway we we're overtaken by everything.  Ancient L200 twincabs are everywhere, there must be 20 or 30 of them in the small village where we are staying. Mitsubishi did a very good marketing job around 15 to 20 years ago, they were probably too good at this because once everybody had an L200 they all just kept it going and there are very few more recent models.

Kalavasos, the village where we are staying is home to the Tenta, a huge tent which protects a neolithic settlement from the elements. This was inhabited 9000 years ago by neolithic people (homo sapiens) not neanderthals (homo neanderthalensis) who lived 30,000 years ago! Not sure what era Smurfs came from but there's one in the picture below somewhere!

Inside the tent!

The Neolithic 5 star bedrooms!

And just to show you that we do like to be beside the seaside this is Zygi beach, not sandy but full of lots of different coloured pebbles, including some nice flatties for skimming across the waves - oh what a life!

Running Cyprus

Yes we're getting some walking and running in - this is at the top of a peak within walking distance of our hotel. Here Vicky has just started building a cairn, they don't seem to have them here. In the distance are the Troodos Mountains , we went there yesterday lunchtime but you can't quite get to the top (nearly 2000 metres) cos it's a military radar installation.




Cyprus has lots of history and for many thousands of years they have mined copper here, in fact the Romans gave copper it's name because their principal supplier was Cyprus ( a fact that chemistry teachers know but their pupils forget - if we brought them over here they'd be able to see that some of the rock in this slightly enlarged cairn have got coppery streaks in them) 
Oh and Smurf made it to the top with us as well:

 

Running up the mountain for the second time along rough tracks I came across hundreds of bee hives at quite a height. They seem to go for the big yellow flowers you can see in the picture which are a type of wild fennel. Running off track is something I haven't attempted as most of the foliage seems to be extremely prickly and spiky and we've seen interesting pictures of the snakes that patrol these here hills!

And this is not Salt Lake City but a huge salt lake near Larnaca Airport which used to attract thousands of flamingos (mostly gone due to the noise) and was mined for salt (until they found residues from aircraft exhausts!)

Yup there's plenty to do and see without sitting on a beach! We'll keep you posted.

Cyprus

And now we're in Cyprus!

Good legroom with Monarch Airways but got to pay for everything - £2.50 for a cup of tea!!

Beer in Cyprus is Keo lager and Keo lager...oh and Carlsberg (brewed by Keo!)

Kalavasos is a nice village - and it's got some hills!

Northern Ireland - The Donard Challenge

MC descending from the claggy mountain

This weekend started badly! We'd tried to book our seats about 8 hours before the flight to find that we could only print boarding passes for the return. On reaching the airport Easyjet told us we were on standby numbers 2 and 3 - the plane was overbooked, standard practice for Easyjet apparently. After anxiously waiting at the gate we managed to get on board in cramped seats two rows apart (lesson learned - check in as early as possible!) This poor start was made up for by a hire car upgrade from a Clio to a Merc (chap on the desk recognised my name from over 10 years ago!) and an upgrade at the hotel to the honeymoon suite!

Trip to Ireland was to meet with our George and his fiancee, the lovely Fiona, who are both dentisting over there and also to run in the British Champs mountain race the Donard Challenge. Slieve Donard is a gnarly mountain, at 2790 feet it's the highest peak in the north of Ireland. I ran the British Champs race 14 years ago on a sunny day. This year was far from sunny and as soon as we got out of the forest things started to go wrong! Visibility was down to less than 10 metres for the rest of the race and of 252 starters only 224 finished. I felt quite fortunate to finish 159th in 1.45.43 and also pleased that my knee held out! Oh what fun.

A very nice lunch in a classy restaurant on the seafront with George and Fi followed (thanks George!) and by the time we'd finished - guess what? The cloud had lifted and we could see the mountain!

Very few pubs with real ale in Northern Ireland - half of them are
Wetherspoons and we found a nice one in Carrickfergus.

And here's Smurf in the honeymoon suite:

Malta Half Marathon - February

This is a bit of a test for us. First post referring to the visit to Malta in February. My 3rd attempt and Vicky's first at the Malta half marathon. Two year's ago it was just me, last year it was me, Mary,  Duncan and Lyndall and this year there were twelve of us! Trying to post pictures of us running but in the meantime here's an all action photo of the midday salute at Valetta.

 

And here are the other photos - OK I know we shouldn't post lots of photos on a blog but there are some of the key runners plus a team shot and the all important Smurf photo (Smurf is travelling the world with us!) 

Not much in the way of beer in Malta - Cisk lager is ubiquitous - made by Farson's (we ran through the brewery in the race) - the alternative is Carlsberg, also made by Farson's!

Travel to Malta was with Air Malta - no charge for luggage and meals and there was plenty of leg room! (Unlike Easyjet.)