Pissouri, Cyprus - too busy to blog

Yesterday the walk was around Elidio. Jimmy wasn't going so I had to find my own way there. The GPS App on my phone started me out  OK, but, as I turned off the motorway, it stopped talking to me and no longer showed me the route on the screen. In hind site I may just have been going through an area where the phone couldn't pick up the signal or something. Anyway I made a couple of educated guesses and then pulled over and re imputed the village name. One way or another I ended up on a "charming" single lane road through a deep valley which I would have thoroughly enjoyed had I not been worried about being late for the start of the walk. I pulled into the parking lot at the same time as most of the group and was glad to get off 4 wheels and on to 2 legs.

We started by walking up to a look out at the top of the village.

Across to the mountains,

down to the Almond orchards and

the village church.

There were a number of covered "sink holes" in this area

made by water seeping through the sparkly, crystalline Gypsum.

This walk circumnavigated the hill on paved roads and dirt tracks.

Much of the Almond blossom had fallen and leaves were coming out.

This was billed as a "Orchid walk" and here they were. The walk leader said they were "Naked Man Orchids" named because of the phallic look like the one in the foreground.

However this image from the internet shows a more likely explanation.

I have been seeing Orchids on the walks for about a month now but just individuals or small clusters.

Here they were scattered across the hillside.

Mostly this variety

but this variety was also still in evidence.

Such delicate flowers. Now I have enlarged this photo for the blog, I can see the naked man.

The only part of the walk not on a track was through the herb garden. I think, from picking and smelling some, it is oregano.

Bordering the tracks are feathery fronds of Wild Fennel with its tall (3' - 4' high) flower stalks. The walk wasn't particularly long, only about 5km but took us a couple of hours as it was steep in places and there were 24 of us. A larger group gets strung out and then we have to wait to get bunched up again.

Afterwards we went to the Cheese Shop Taverna and had a Meat Meze. Everything is made on site and comes from the family farm. The Haloumi was the best I have tastes (not as salty as some) as was the yogurt and the lamb chops were absolutely delicious. There is a butchers shop attached to the taverna.

I again put my trust in the GPS App and it took me back along the same 1 lane road. I enjoyed it more this time. I met Nikki and John at their "local" in Timi and after a drink we drove up to their house. A quick shower, change and tour of the house and we were off to a British Pub that was holding a fund raiser for the Hospice charity that Nikki volunteers for. The Frog and Toad holds a Bingo every week to raise money for the Hospice and Nikki and John were there to receive the money and make appreciation speeches. While there I also met Rob and Chrissy and their dog, Tammy, who I will be walking with for the Walkathon on Sunday (also in aid of the Hospice).
I stayed overnight at Nikki and John's. We had hoped to have breakfast out by their pool but awoke to a miserable, rainy day. So breakfast and chat in the house and then I drove home.

Seemed like a good day to play with the other Olive tree painting.

I decided to just play with this one, not take it too seriously, so using one of my sketching pens I outlined the high lights and the shadows.

Then I treated it like a "paint by numbers", doing very little blending.

Next, I played around with trying to get the right

techniques and colours for the branches and leaves. I quite like this technique of letting the colours run down the page and then adding some leaves

But I settled on this, though on my next Olive tree I may amalgamate these 2 approaches.

I topped the tree I had been working on and should have just left it at that

but, not knowing when to stop, I added some more pen to add bark texture and outline a few leaves.

My Olive tree study.

I have a photo of an Olive tree that I want to paint but it may need to wait until I get home and have a larger piece of paper to work on.
It has been raining all day, thunder stormed this evening and the wind has picked up (pushing the chairs around on the balcony and on the patio). It is supposed to gust up to 80km hour tonight so I am going to go out and try and put them somewhere more secure.