Snow on Troodos 8 February, 2010

Shall we apply another coat?

After a lifetime in Africa, the children’s first experience of ice and snow was on a glacier near Geneva. This week they got to see their first freshly-fallen snow, though they still have to experience snow actually falling.

We joined throngs of Cypriots and visitors on Mount Olympos, the snow-decked peak of the Troodos mountains, and walked, sledged, snowballed (a little) and enjoyed other people’s rather rude snowmen (and girls) – these latter being rather restricted activities as no-one had gloves, or had remembered where they put their gloves.

Cypricicle

We were going to walk the 7km Artemis trail, but fortunately had a couple of false starts and then decided not to bother. Just as well, as we’d missed lunch and it became quite cold once the sun disappeared.

We did find one of the four ski runs on the mountain, though it was only being employed by people with sleds and snowboards. Much more fun for us were the large plastic bags that Jane bought from a local store for 20 cents each, and with which the kids (and Jane, once) created their own downhill course, navigating natural hazards like rocks and ice-burn along the way.

Tomorrow: shots from the downhill event, and the quote, “Who else thinks this is the best thing we’ve done for a very long time?”

British decorative work on the highest point in Cyprus. Tasteful.

A canter up Kantara 13 January, 2010

Room with a view ... a very high view

At the weekend we went to the last of the big Crusader castles on the Kyrenia mountain range that we had yet to visit, Kantara Castle.

Neither as extensive as St Hilarion, nor as eerily precipitate as Buffavento, it is still a fine example of a fortification built high in the mountains, dominating the land all around it. Partly carved into the cliffs and partly built with the same colour rock as the mountain, it seems to have grown organically from the terrain rather than to have been built on it. The product of centuries of additions and changes, then half a millenium of weathering, the image is partly true – the castle in its current form has been here for more than 20 lifetimes, and began as many lifetimes before. It is no-one’s creation. It belongs to the land.

Last refuge for the prudent baron

The story of the castle is becoming familiar to us now. The first fortified construction was in the tenth century or before, when the place was used as a lookout tower. The long and largely unrecorded background gets crystalised in 1191 when English King Richard the Lion-hearted arrives, along with scribes and scholars to document his exploits on the way to the Crusades.

Richard dislodged Byzantine prince Isaac Comnenos of Trapezus, one of the many visitors in history to have proclaimed himself King of Cyprus. Isaac hid out in Kantara for a while. (See also our entry on Buffavento, where King Isaac also spent some of his time on the run.)

Short fat soldiers need not apply

After Richard, the Lusignan royalty took over and worked its magic on the eyrie-architecture, creating a refuge for many a ruler who had come to grief in some Euro-Eastern conflict or other. When the Genoese overthrew John of Antioch in the port city of Famagusta in 1373, for instance, Kantara and St Hilarion gave him respite. His brother James got the message. He did some re-fortifying when he later became king in his turn and got enough peace to do some home improvements. Most of what is still visible is work he commissioned, more than 600 years ago.

The castle declined in the 16th century, under the Venetian rule, as did its sisters on the Kyrenia range. The Venetians took the view that you were better off preventing your enemy landing on the shore in the first place, rather than wait for them to chase you up the mountains. Kyrenia Castle and similar coastal forts must become greater; their mountainous counterparts could be allowed to crumble.

Joel and I did our usual survey of ways to attack the castle. Kantara seems more pragmatic than the other castles, though none of them is a push-over. Kantara can only be approached from one side, and the access is blocked by a sturdy barbican. A cunning arrangement of walls and towers with slitted windows for archers makes the best use of the natural defences. Assuming the bastions and walls have more than a few men to defend them, there is a lot of work to do before you get anyway near the nobles and gentry in the castle itself.

At the highest point is a tower that was used to watch for signal fires at Buffavento, and to return the compliment with signal flares. From here, looking south west, the whole range of the mountains can be seen. South is the Mesaoria plain and Nicosia; north is the coast, and beyond that, over the grey and vaporous Mediterranean, Turkey.

A different part of the castle looks north-east, up the “pan-handle” to the island’s tip, which points to the border of Turkey and Syria. From here both the north and south coasts of this extruded part of Cyprus are visible, even on a strangely smoggy, murky day like the one on which we chose to visit.

Looking north east from the castle ... but not looking down

Being a mountain fortress, Kantara comes in layers. One level’s floor is the roof of another – a strange thought as you walk on a very thin shell of rocks over a six metre fall to the floor underneath, reliant on the artful construction techniques of 600 years ago. The chimney holes through which you can see the rooms below (and down which you could easily fall) were of great interest to the children, along with the ability to walk up to the edge of gut-churning walls which merge with cliffs below. And let’s not forget the mediaeval toilet, a very important topic for children’s contemplation.

Counting rats … 10 January, 2010

… is very hard, when they are all buried in wood shavings, snuggled up together or wriggling round under their under-age mum on a milk-hunt. I can’t definitively fulfil yesterday’s promise of telling you how many of the little critters there are.

How poor little Snowflake manages is hard to guess. She must be being sucked dry. We’re feeding her every kind of food we think will help build milk production – fats, proteins, vitamins high among them.

As to the all-important question of how many rats make a litter?  Six, definitely. Nine, says one close observer. Eleven, says another, though we suspect double-counting. When they move around independently we’ll get a better idea.

Sunset over Troodos, from NE

We’re keeping the rats in the dark, so there are no cute pictures yet.  To make up for that, here’s a sunset over Troodos.

Sunset over Troodos