Anyway, I wanted to film this route, but to do that, I really had to start at Statos. You get a more interesting film going downhill I think. So I decided to drive up the route, taking pictures as I went, and then come back down with the film camera running. This is why you are seeing pictures of knobbly hills, rather than the view straight ahead. I think this works better.

This reminds me of The Little House On The Prairie. If you are old enough to remember that show, you may not know how it finally ended. Believe it or not, all the townspeople got together and they blew the entire village up. It was to thwart some tyrant or something, but it seems a bit of a drastic way to end a show. Apparently they did that because they were contractually obliged to return the land to its original state once they finished filming, or something.

There you go. You learn something new every day. I bet you didn't think it would be that.

We are approaching Lapithiou now. I blogged about it a while ago so won't spend much time here now. This village is mainly abandoned, though some life does appear to be creeping back. Lapithious is actually fairly unusual in that it is TWO abandoned villages. They abandoned it once and moved a few hundred metres to this location. It was abandoned again after the 1974 invasion.

I'm not sure of the status of some of the buildings here now. There are lots of ruins, but some look inhabited still. Perhaps they are seasonal, holiday homes? There is also an active farm here.

Alex thinks these are walnuts. All I know is that they aren't conkers. I used to love collecting conkers as a child. Hoofing a stick up into a tree until an angry home owner would come out and tell us to bugger off. Those were the days!