It is Thursday - for all the negative things that lockdown has brought there has been a massive positive - walking!!!! Dad walked - right up until he passed away and he would have been so amazed that I have finally come to appreciate the joy in putting one foot in front of the other. I have been blown away by the beauty that is right on our doorstep. Today on the third anniversary of his passing I was walking and I had decided to walk almost the same walk as I did on Tuesday with Nicky but as I was walking with Liselotte I had added an additional loop which extended the distance and the amount of ascent - in fact we covered 11km with a total of 438m ascent and it was pretty hard going. The majority of the ascent was on the new loop where we encountered a very steep hill which just seemed to go directly up for as far as the eye could see and the surface was very loose so we had to take it carefully.
This was a most unexpected view of Lara Bay and what is even more surprising is that the white blob in the middle is not a boat but, if you zoom in, a very large bird in flight!! Even more suprising was the fact that Liselotte had not walked on this particular track before and it was stunning. We were walking along and chatting and she was saying how much wildlife she has seen on her walks but that she never saw any cows. I was surprised because we always have cows up in Droushia - they are big with a dark hide and what looks like a curly ginger wig between their ears - she didn't believe me!
As we rounded one corner we became aware of the fact that we were being watched - there were two creatures in the distance just stood there staring at us but not moving - initially we thought that they might possibly be young mouflon (the very rare, shy, native wild sheep of Cyprus) but on closer inspection we think they must have been two goats that had possibly escaped from a nearby farm.
Rounding another corner blow me if we didn't encounter cows - many of the dark skinned ginger wigged Droushian variety - big ones and small ones spread all over the countryside - it was amazing and almost as if I had ordered it. Their farm was in the middle of absolutely nowhere somewhere between Inea and Lara Bay at the end of a rough old road - hats off to the farmer who farms here.
We completed our walk in two and a half hours. It is fair to say that by the time we got back to Inea I was knackered and it was beginning to get very warm but I had a tremendous sense of achievement. I so want to do that walk with John - I don't think he will begin to visualise the views we encountered today.
Di and Rob had very kindly left a plant for us to take - theirs is the striped petunia on the left and we bought a copper coloured osteospurmum which is in the pot on the right.
When we know that the rains have finished for the season I need to go down and re-black some of the lettering on the marble. I think I should go down with a Sharpie and a bottle of Red and keep him company and give him a spruce up.
The cemetery was peaceful and the sun was shining and the birds singing - no shipwrecks and nobody drownded as he would say.
Mum drove us back home and we then had lunch together, nothing fancy but it is about the company rather than the food and we only had a limited amount of time before she had to return home. It is also Jack's birthday today - this is Mum's great grandson and my great nephew. Boy he is growing up - this year he has had a guitar for his birthday and Kaye sent us a video, normally I would say that Jack looks like Elena's side of the family and in particular Kaye's younger son Michael but now Jack is the spit of his dad, Andy!!
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