Frank and Joan's news for 21 February 2010 in Northern Cyprus

Frank and Joan's Adventures in Northern Cyprus

Our adventures in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus continue....

Next weekend is the annual charity walk for the cancer fund, so we thought we should get some practice in before. This morning was a clear bright sky so Joan and I had an early BLT then drove out to Getikoy Village which is about 15 minutes away. You can park outside the village and then walk all around the reservoir. There are some quite steep sections but it is a lovely walk which you can find if you follow the arrows, providing always of course that somebody hasn't taken them away as souvenirs.

It really is a lovely walk around this area but be prepared for some steep; and at this time of the year some muddy bits. Only a couple of months ago this rese

rvoir was drained completely, so it is great to see that there will probably not be a water shortage this coming summer. All along the paths and up the banking areas there are hundreds of wild flowers which have really done well after the rains and now of course encouraged by the warmer weather. We even saw some wild fennel which had what looked like a pair of baby ostrich growing out of the centre. High up the mountain you can see the various rock strata and as a result of the rains some rock pieces had clearly come tumbling down. This particular piece had some super etched markings. We had also noticed that in all the pine trees there were what looked like nests, formed around the actual cones which must have served as an anchor. These looked as if they had been woven by spider threads and were clearly too small for a bird. Further on, in a warmer sunnier spot, the mystery was solved, caterpillars. Dozens of them coming of of the base of this particular nest, so I suppose we can expect swarms of butterflies in the near future.

It took us around 2 hours 15 minutes to traverse the reservoir and at one stage we had to find stepping stones over a small ravine like stream, where water was still flowing quite well to continue the topping up. It did start to rain just a little but not enough to dampen the spirits but an enjoyable morning.