We seem to have spent a lot of the time walking along the beach. The weather is hot now, and it is all very glorious. The sea is the colour of dark blue opals, and on Sunday we came across what seemed to be an abandoned hotel or resort.

 White villas in luxurious gardens, a ‘moonlight bar’ sitting out by the sea, and we wandered around wondering what had happened. Was it a casualty of the 1974 invasion? Had the owners gone bankrupt? We wished we were millionaires or had even an iota of knowledge of how to run a hotel. All just delicious daydreams. Walking back along the walkway, I was suddenly stopped in my tracks by a metre long black snake darting out from the shrubs. Aaaaargh. It may not have been poisonous, but it could have caused a heart attack! Now, I will have a renewed respect for the odd bushes in the countryside that might serve as nature’s ‘facilities!’ We later learned that the resort is for the workers of the local Casino. Lucky croupiers!

On our walks we have befriended a couple that laze outside their campervan parked by the sea. They spend idyllic days, sometimes cycling, mostly sitting admiring the sea and slicing up beans and feathery greenery. The man introduced himself as being a Cypriot, he is in his 60s and has long grey hair, a complexion the colour of toasted almonds and the most gorgeous grin. He fled Cyprus in 1974, and has lived the past 30 years in London. Now he works making TV programmes and lives in a house in Guzelyurt with the sweetest grapefruit trees in his garden. We were presented with two each. ‘I like to get away on Sunday and drive up to this coast and stay here with my love (and he leaned over and took his partner’s hand), and relax until Thursday then we go back for work on Friday.’ Aaaah.

These pictures were taken in Kyrenia, when we went to visit the house in Bellapais where Lawrence Durrell wrote his book, ‘Bitter Lemons’.

We took a notion to visit some properties for sale, and were quite bewitched by Mehmet (our estate agent) who spilled all the owner’s secrets as he showed us around. The poor lad that was selling the very plain, traditional village house in a large plot of land had come home to find his wife in bed with the neighbour. He had punched the bedroom door and the wardrobe door in rage, but Mehmet gossiped away in front of him, assuring us that all would be fixed. The guy just wanted to get away from the village and buy a flat in Famagusta. I am so glad he didn’t understand English.

Today we were to go back and have another look… but the phone just went and Mehmet was rushed to hospital last night. So… maybe life in a Turkish Cypriot village is not to be our fate after all. I did love the fields, the mud brick walls of the garden, the distant Kyrenian hills… but the house was rather reminiscent of a Scottish But n’ Ben. If only we could have had the second house with the arches on the same piece of land.

Now that was stunning but needing hundreds spent on it. We discussed it with our TV programmer friend on the beach, and he said, ‘You must live now, my friends, plant some grapefruit and I will visit you next summer!’

But now we are all packed up, the sheets are drying as I write, and soon the taxi will be here to take us to Larnica. We plan to visit the southern part of Cyprus before heading back to Edinburgh next week. I will head off with a black eye. I didn’t realise John had shut the glass door to the balcony last night, and I marched bang into it. Tears but no blood!