Alektora valley, Cyprus - "Recying another walk.

Jimmy is leading a walk for the Saturday walkers in about a months time and so we reconnoitered it today. He has, embarrassingly, got lost while leading a walking group and gets a lot of friendly abuse for that. Now he always makes sure he has checked it out and sometimes puts markers on trees to remind himself.

We only drove about 15 minutes away from Pissouri and were in a peaceful, fertile valley.

We had parked the car in the parking lot of a large farm complex. The equipment shed was huge, with tractors, sprayers, wagons and trailers but we saw little evidence of that kind of mechanization as we walked the tracks between fields.

There had been orange and grapefruit trees where we parked but the valley was predominately grape vines

and olive trees.

The valley is definitely a snug little micro-climate. There were far more flowers in bloom here and we were down to t-shirts and sweating in a short time.

Mostly yellow flowers, like this gorse bush.

I find grapevines compelling, something about their twisted, free form trunks and branches,

in contrast with the orderly, straight rows.

Most,

but not all, have been pruned.

Of course there were lots of pink, purple and white

Anemones,

and one solitary red one. It looked like the others, had the same foliage and when I looked it up I found it is called a Poppy Anemone and is usually found in Central Cyprus.

As we made our way around the valley, we could see, in one direction, the Pissouri heights with the water reservoir and the communication tower and on the opposite hills, wind turbines.

At the half way point we walked along the edge of the village. The sign is most impressive, the village, just a scattering of houses.

I dismissed this plant as just a stunted version of the ones you can see behind it

But when I blew it up on the computer I realized it was an orchid. 30 different wild orchids are native to Cyprus.

A house on the edge of the village had this massive Geranium hedge

with leaves as colourful as the flowers.

We saw a number of these signs

and plenty of spent shell cases on the ground. Jimmy said that hunting is permitted from November to March on Wednesdays and Sundays. "What do they shoot?" "Anything that moves"

We had seen quite a few Almond trees in bud but this one, in a sheltered spot, was beginning to blossom.

In one area we were walking on rock that looked like it was made up of crystals. There was more beside the road. Although it looked delicate it didn't break off as we walked on it. I did a quick google search and went down a few rabbit holes, I guess there are a lot of crystal formations in Cyprus, but I didn't find any pictures like this.

Nearing the end of the walk was a field of goats

but they were pretty skittish and took off as I approached to take pictures. Maybe because there were so many kids.

When I asked Jimmy about the metal band around the tree he said it was put on the female Carob trees to deter the rats. I am never sure when he is kidding so looked it up ;

The variety of black rats, locally known as "pontika" or "big rat" because of its size, apart from feeding on carob pods, gnaw at the bark of the trees, exposing the inner wood and causing the trees to gradually dry up and die.(from forestry.gov.cn) The article continued to outline the use of snakes and owls to keep the rats numbers down and that the Carob tree is now a protected species in Cyprus.

The walk took us just over 2 hours and Jimmy thought it was about 9km. Mostly flat, on farm tracks and some cement roads, it was lovely, peaceful, warm and surrounded by spring growth.