I met up with a walking group in Paphos yesterday for a 10km walk through the mountains. Aside from discovering a new route, I could relax and not worry about getting lost(!) and also had lots of time to indulge in another favourite hobby – talking!

I did manage a few conversation breaks to capture photos of a few flowers en route. I could do with some help in identification – does anyone know what they are?

Photo 1

Photo 2 (Not the best focus – sorry – but enough to enable identification)

Photo 3

We also saw lots of gypsum which is a mineral found in marine deposits where large amounts of seawater have evaporated. Amazing as we were over 1500ft up! Apparently these deposits were created by retreating oceans between 26 million and 5 million years ago.

Towards the end of the walk we were all eagerly anticipating lunch in the Periklis taverna in Nata village. We even phoned ahead to make sure the owner fired up the ovens (there are very few tourists around in January in Cyprus so we couldn’t bear to get there and find that he’d sloped off to sip Greek coffee with his pals at the kafeneion).

Then we turned the corner…to meet a rockfall.

Well nothing was going to stop us that close to the taverna. Suddenly we were as nimble as mountain goats.