I think it was early June when we made this journey, though I might be mistaken. This will explain the slightly greener hue to the landscape than what you expect to see in late July. Though for a real green and pleasant land, you should look back at some of the blogs published in winter. It never ceases to amaze me how much the landscape of Cyprus changes throughout the year.

Not all changes are as drastic as this one though. Past Kidasi, the old road up the Diarizos Valley has been washed away. Whether this happened last winter or earlier I have no idea. I do know though, that a few months ago, this river was full.

Anyway, we had hoped to drive along the bottom of the valley to get to the monastery, but it was clear that this wasn't possible. So we continued up the hill on the right, towards Kedares.

As we neared Kedares, we took one of the many farm tracks that veered left down the hill, towards the base of the valley. Actually, we took several of them. Most of them ended in fields. But with a lot of perseverance, we found one that looked like it was going somewhere with a purpose. That led us to a tantalising view...

This is a zoomed-in shot. Most of the monastery has long ago crumbled to dust. You can see a few scattered ruins to the left, behind and to the front right of the main building, but other than that, our main focus of attention is the church.

This made me laugh. At some point, there used to be a farm track here. There is a Dead End sign in the middle of the field, where the track used to run. The thing is, all this growth could easily have happened since winter. There has been that much rain, it is impossible to say whether the track was last used 5 months or 5 years ago.

Needless to say, we didn't attempt this particular route.