One day to go before I leave and I took the car down to the car wash where it was cleaned, inside and out, while I had a coffee in the cafe. Very civilized. I then looked up on Google Maps (GMs), 2 sites that I had seen mentioned on Facebook (by Cyprus Life that appears to be trying to sell you their app). Both the ancient olive press and the ancient sugar mill showed up on GM so off I went. Well GMs doesn't seem to differentiate between roads and farm tracks in Cyprus. I turned around once, not willing to drive under the A6 in a tunnel that was pitch black.
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More farm tracks and a wrong turn though a citrus orchard but I eventually found the right track which ended at a fallen tree and a metal fence.
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The weeds around were high and it looks like one other person had pushed themselves through them this spring (perhaps the person who wrote the Facebook post)
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Built at the location ‘Styllarka’ is an olive-oil press, whose three
basic operational parts consisted of two fenestrated monoliths, the
presser and its five tanks. It is one of the few olive-oil presses which
have been well preserved and it has been declared by Unesco as a
protected monument and world heritage. From kouklia.org.cy
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Well I guess those are
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fenestrated (have perforations, apurtures or transparent areas) monoliths
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Making olive oil involved (and still does) several stages of crushing
and rinsing to extract the oil. The olives were harvested by hand or by
beating the fruit off the trees. The olives were then washed and crushed
to remove the pits. The remaining pulp was placed into woven bags or
baskets, and the baskets themselves were then pressed. Hot water was
poured over the pressed bags to wash out any remaining oil, and the
dregs of the pulp was washed away.
The liquid from the pressed bags was drawn into a reservoir where the
oil was left to settle and separate. Then the oil was drawn off, by
skimming the oil off by hand or with the use of a ladle; by opening a
stoppered hole at the bottom of the reservoir tank; or by allowing the
water to drain off from a channel at the top of the reservoir. In cold
weather, a bit of salt was added to speed the separation process. After
the oil was separated, the oil was again allowed to settle in vats made
for that purpose, and then separated again. From thoughtco.com
Next I went looking for the sugar mill. It too was on GMs. Off I went down farm tracks again and, again, came to a halt by the highway. A man working in the field nearby came over when he saw me looking at my phone. "You ok?" "I don't want to go under the highway" "Yes, it's fine""Is it wet?" No, it's a culvert, it's fine" (Pretty good English...a culvert!) "Is it bumpy?" "Go slow, it's fine" and it was, just a cement culvert big enough for a tractor.
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Another dead end track, another metal fence, but here someone had cut the grass or perhaps let the goats eat it down.
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Vestiges of rooms,
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| cellars, |
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mill stones and
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a row of pits,
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with an exit
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to a room behind.
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Looking it up, it seems the growing of sugar cane and production of sugar came to the Mediterranean with the Arabs. First cultivation in Cyprus around the 10th century. The workforce was largely African slaves and production moved to Madeira when a new system of crushing the cane was developed there.
Both these sites had been excavated, had some restoration work done and a building erected to protect them. However there was no signage on the road that passed them and little indication that anyone visited them. No info boards! It was as if there had been money provided to get that far and then no-one, or no governmental department took any responsibility or interest in them after that.
