A Mystery Tour of Inea...

 Mmmm so Autumn is officially here because today we swapped a sheet and throw for the 4.5tog duvet - this was at John's request - not mine, because I have my internal hormonal central heating at night and he does not!  Fresh Hay tonight or as my friend Sally-Anne Michie says Clean Straw!

We were up early today because at long last we are getting the outside of the house painted. Tony is coming this morning at about 9.00am armed with shedloads of Magnolia - can't wait to have the house looking fresh and clean once more.  Five years has taken its toll on the paintwork but to be fair it is only looking grubby - there is no other damage than that so Tim did a good job when he painted it before we moved out here permanently.

It being Friday I had arranged a walk with Diana and Elena although at the last minute Elena had to drop out but hopefully she will join us next week if the weather is kind and we do it again.

Poor Diana had to tackle Cardiac Hill before she got anywhere - we arranged to meet at the houses where Savvas the tyre man lives and then walk up to Drouseia Castle and collect Elena and then down to Inea.

The first house as you pass from Droushia into Inea has the most fantastic display of Datura (Brugmansia) outside - mainly orange ones but underneath there were couple that were pink. These are related to the moon-flowers that we have growing in the garden and wild the otherside of the wall.  These are poisonous and should you ingest you might have some pretty nasty experiences as a result because apparently you might suffer from a complete inability to differentiate reality from fantasy!!!

Inea is an interesting village - even more rural than Drouseia if that is at all possible!!!

There are hundreds of old buildings in various stages of neglect and even some of those which are inhabited are graced with unusual outside decorations like an old bath!!!

John and I often cycle out from Drouseia and down to Arodes and through Inea then back home - I thought this was going to be a little too far this morning particularly as John and I were off to Paphos this afternoon plus it was really rather warm and Diana hadn't checked the temperature before she stepped out and was rather over-dressed for the occasion!!!  The trouble is that Inea is full of little roads and it all looks rather different on foot so we kept walking up roads and then we weren't too sure where they were going!

We passed this donkey early on - he looks like the one that used to be tethered up near Marianna's house but there again donkey's all tend to look the same to me!!!

Walking around the village we came across a house where they had all their olives out on the floor drying.  We went olive picking a few years ago and we are still using the olive oil that was produced!

Elena had organised for people to go to her fields olive picking earlier this week - I would have liked to have gone but it was on Tuesday when we go and see Mum and Dad.  Apparently it isn't a good year for olives this year as they are not yielding the amount of oil that they would normally - we still have quite a bit left over and Mum's neighbour Effie have us some last week.

I don't know if Tesco feels threatened but a new supermarket seems to have opened up in Inea - I don't know what the building used to be but there doesn't appear to have any windows!!!  Still I shouldn't knock it because there are probably loads of older people in the village who rely on a shop like this - we don't use the one in our village very often but we would miss it if it weren't there.


In several of the gardens the Birds of Paradise plants are in flower (Strelitzia)  Not that I am jealous but I planted one of these about four years ago and it produces nothing but a couple of leaves which get shredded by the wind in the winter. It isn't that you can't grow them in Drouseia - my neighbour Savvas has some stunners in his front garden it's just that my plant is clearly substandard - actually thinking about it I bought it from that funny nursery on the other Polis/Paphos road where he breeds rabbits for eating and it wasn't in flower when I bought it so it might not even be what I was expecting it to be!  Time will tell I guess!!

We eventually made our way back to Drouseia, going past the donkey and coming in at the top of the village past where we saw some pretty kittens the other week (one is still in the same place so I guess it is living under the abandoned van the other one may well have gone to meet its maker).

We took a detour across a field to take a look at four fairly newly built villas three of which are empty and displaying some worrying looking cracks - they are in a cul de sac but we couldn't for the life of us work out how you actually got to them from a main road.  Across from the four was another house with a rather sad looking Alsatian keeping guard of some rather old and unused agricultural equipment.

As we continued back home we suddenly encountered a calf in the middle of the road - not something you usually come across!!

It was having a wander away from the others - a bull and two or three cows who were in one of the nearby fields.  Diana wasn't keen on a close encounter of the bovine kind but this little one wandered off before we got close.

When we got back to our house both Tony and John were hard at it - painting!!!  Diana and I retired to the safety of garden - it was a beautiful morning and it is nearly November!!

As we got ready to go to Paphos the cats were assembling in the kitchen waiting to be fed.  John was having a bit of pate on toast for his lunch and he decided to give the boys a little taster of the tiny bit of pate that was left.  We have found that if we need to give them medication and we hide it in some pate they will eat it - this is so much easier than having to wrap them in a towel and try and shove a tablet down their throats.  No medication this time just getting them excited about pate in readiness for the next time! Minnie is missing - she is no fool - hiding tablets in pate isn't going to fool her!!