Still fit for a king

IT’S a great headline grabber for the Cyprus tourist board: the king of England, Richard the Lionheart, married right here in Limassol in 1191.

All the tourism/hotel brochures mention it, most of them in a suspiciously brief manner, but our Cypriot tour guide can’t help but embellish the story with chat about the Royal “honeymoon” in the Troodos mountains and the type of wine the warrior king he might have guzzled on his big day.

He stops short of getting out copies of the 800-year-old wedding invites and table plans with names crossed out in felt-tip. No matter, we get the picture – Cyprus is indeed blessed with lots of history and there’s no need to give it the Hello! magazine treatment.

Visitors need only see the mosaic 
floors at Kato Paphos Archaeological 
Park to feel a sense of awe at the island’s great past. The intricate mosaics, depicting scenes from Greek mythology, date from the 2nd century AD 
and were discovered after a farmer stumbled across the first villa in only 1962.

The four Roman villas belonged to noblemen and the floors are considered masterpieces of mosaic art.

After the impressive mosaics, our history-loving tour guide takes us to a cave carved out of bare rock by a hermit and writer by the name of Neophytos, later made a saint for his devotion, though in life he probably just wanted to be left alone.

The cave contains various icons which pilgrims kiss before they squeeze out of the tiny exit. Among the objects is the monk’s skull, or part of it, housed in a silver case. For non-believers the experience can seem a little unusual, although there is no shortage of coach parties, all armed with cameras and camcorders as they make their way along paths lined with bougainvillia and pomegranate shrubs.

Absorbing so much history can bring on hunger but a fish meze at Seacrest in Latchi harbour soon solved that problem – and could have done three times over.

Those dishes just keep coming; too many to list but including mussels in white wine with feta (top notch for tastiness), swordfish, tender octopus (softened up by being placed in a cement mixer for an hour, we are told), and spinach with prawn, a clear favourite on our table.

Not so popular is the post-lunch Cyprus coffee, served in a tiny cup and tasting of “hot mud” according to one fellow diner who bravely downed the lot.

It’s not always wise to drink before you think, as four of my companions discovered on the first night when they mistook a bottle of complimentary ouzo for drinking water in their hotel room.

Post meze lunch is a visit to the Baths of Aphrodite – just a pool of water, if you ask me. The water is said to restore youth and so the ladies in our party spend time lowering bits of themselves into the brackish water, but to little effect.

Cyprus, as any wealthy visitor will attest, does luxury living very well. A look around the Elea Golf Course, with its upmarket clubhouse, might draw gasps from those not used to such opulence.

The club’s marketing boss, New Jersey-born Pauline Gabriel, says Brits – tourists and ex-pats – are its biggest customers; Cypriots are not into golf at all.

Though the Elea did lose some bookings during the recent euro 
crisis, business has now recovered, she says. Back onto our historical trail, our next stop is Kourion, an ancient and impressive amphitheatre where even the most feeble-voiced wannabe thespian can throw a mere whisper to the back row thanks to impressive acoustics.

Wine and vineyard tours make a refreshing change of pace. At Zambartas Winery, Dr Akis Zambartas oversees vineyards with 65 centuries of wine growing behind them.

Most of his award-winning reds, whites and roses are sold to hotels and restaurants in Cyprus.

The euro crisis forced the winery, which is north-west of Limassol, to choose more carefully who it supplies to because of a rise in the culture of “paying late”, according to his future daughter-in-law, who is from Holland. Viewing is by appointment.

During wine and cheese tasting our guide cannot resist another mention for Richard I. His wedding guests enjoyed commandaria, the world’s oldest sweet dessert wine still in production, she says.

I make a mental note to look up the Lionheart later. It’s true about his wedding in Limassol, and commandaria was indeed served at his 12th century wedding. But the glossy brochures don’t mention that it was a marriage of political convenience and that he stayed with his bride for only a short time before continuing his war-making and Crusading.

The Royal pair returned from the East separately; Richard was imprisoned and returned to England after his release but was not joined by his wife. Historians are still debating if he was gay – he did once spend a night in the same bed as Philip II ofFrance.

This is possibly not the kind of story to tell the bride on her big day in Paphos.

Our final day of our mid-May break is spent in sunshine and the low 20s centigrade at Taverna Tochni, in Tochni village, in the company of Sofronis Potamitis, who rents out traditional Cypriot houses, among other things.

Like many Cypriots, he is upbeat about the island’s economic future.

“The financial crisis has made people more friendly,” he jokes. “And now tourists get better value for money. Tourism is now more important to 
us. And there is a chemistry between English and Cypriots. We speak 
 English, we know what they like. It (the euro crisis) is good for Cyprus in the long term. It will filter out the bad things.”

Getting there

Andrew Robinson flew to Larnaca, Cyprus from Leeds Bradford Airport with Monarch.www.monarch.co.uk

He stayed at the Almyra in Paphos (www.thanoshotels.com) and the Columbia Beach Resort in Pissouri Bay (www.columbia-hotels.com)

For further information go to www.visitcyprus.com