Completing the Birthday Celebrations...

The weather for Green/Clean Monday and the following two days is not good so we had our fingers crossed for Jane and John that today, Sunday, they would be able to complete the birthday celebrations and do their horse ride with Caroline at Ride in Cyprus - this time with the addition of Mike their guest who is staying with them for a week.  They were in luck as the day was perfect!

To make sure they found the stables they came to us first and followed us to Lyssos - this is a beautiful run and particularly so when it is springtime as everything is so green and lush and the countryside and views are spectacular.

It took about an hour to get them all 'tacked up' instructed and ready to go.  John was allocated the gargantuan Megatron who turned out to be a gentle giant but we were a bit concerned because John has fairly recently had a hip replacement and we just hadn't taken this into consideration - as it happens he was fine - his only problem was when Megatron wanted to eat grass he just lunged at it and in so doing John's knuckles got a bit of a battering!

Jane's horse was much smaller - much to her relief and although she seemed a little wary to begin with Caroline got her sorted and then once Mike was on his mount they were ready to go.

We reckon that the horses are all so well schooled that they would follow Caroline sedately wherever she wanted to go so we knew that Jane, John and Mike were in very safe hands, plus they had the addition of the beautiful Endaxi keeping them company en route.

They were going to take the route we had thought about walking with them last week but Caroline had been keen to take them on the horses.  It takes in the abandoned Turkish villages and some of the most beautiful scenery on the island.  Caroline said that there were orchids flowering there now and they would see them on their travels.

We stayed with them long enough to see them disappear into the distance and were so glad that they looked like they were enjoying themselves.

We made our way back home happy in the knowledge that the birthday celebration was about to be concluded successfully.

We text them around the time we thought they might be finished and invited them to come back to us for coffee so we could hear how it all went - good job we did because they had managed to take a wrong turn leaving Caroline and were heading to Pelathousa and weren't sure where that would take them.  Fortunately it is en route to Polis so they would soon recognise where they were.  They eventually arrived full of stories, John with sore knuckles and Mike with a sore bum!!!

We were all getting together again for Sunday dinner - at the appartment where Jane, John and Mike are staying.  Jane is always good enough to cook for us even though it is rather a snug kitchen and nothing is hers.

We had organised to all contribute so Mum had provided the starter, duck and orange pate with lettuce onion and orange garnish with Finnish thins and cranberry sauce mmmm mmmm a good way to start the meal.

Jane cooked a very nice pork casserole with potatoes and beans and I provided a bread and butter pudding made with mum's own lemon curd.

It was a lovely evening even though I failed miserably with the dominos!!!  Can't believe their month's holiday is just about over as they leave on Wednesday - shame the weather doesn't look like it is going to be kind.