Goodbye to fly and flop

LIKE a true Englishman I always wear my socks when on holiday. But now I'd reached a crisis point and off they had to come. There are beaches galore on the island of Cyprus but I was not on one of them. In fact I hadn't been on a beach all week.

The water, which my newly bared feet had to survive in, was not warm and blue but icy cold.

It had cascaded 6,000ft from the heights of the Troodos mountain range which dominates the western end of the island, and if it came above my ankles I was stuck. The unmade road forded the river here and I doubted that the small hire car would float.

On this fly-drive holiday we'd certainly seen parts of Cyprus that most of its one million and more British visitors never reach. Preferring twisting mountain roads to the traffic on the coast we'd set off to drive the length of the Troodos range.

Cypriot roads are improving, but, unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the out-of-date Cypriot maps which show the twists and turns of every village highway like an aerial view of a plate of spaghetti.

It's pot luck whether the thin blue line you're following is wide Tarmac or, as in this case, an unmade path through the cedar trees. As the sun set in the midst of the Paphos forest with only the lizards for company, it was not the time to be lost.

"Of course it's possible to get lost," says Klairy Soteriou, who presides over the Ectia coffee shop in Platres, a pleasant town on the edge of the mountains, surrounded by pine forest. It looks like a colonial hill station, which is just what it used to be. Not for the first time I'm told that the Troodos, where Cyprus tourism started, tends to be forgotten.

"The locals ski in winter and there is a high-summer season," says Klairy, "but most of the year you can get a hotel room here." Sitting by the pool at the nearby Pendeli Hotel, with its view down to the sea at Limassol, the Panayides family, who first opened a property here in the 1930s, tell a similar story: "The beaches are beautiful but that's only one aspect of Cyprus," they say. And to prove their point I'm sent off to explore with a new map, produced by the townspeople, and showing 11 marked hiking trails.

This caring approach to the visitor means that up here in the hills you're never just another tourist to be packaged and sent home with a suntan. And it is exactly what Airtours is attempting to do with its new fly-drive programmes: break away from the "fly and flop" image and offer more of the island.

We'd chosen the Mountains Fly Drive and, with five hotels in seven nights, our luggage became a holiday companion.

When we discovered that our first hotel (the Henipa, near Larnaka) and the last (the Kanika Centurion in Limassol) were dreary, depressing and used only as they were "near the airport", neither of us was amused.

Bad idea when we could have been bouncing around the mountains enjoying fresh air, freedom and hospitality, even though the zigzag itinerary made us feel like a ball in a pinball machine. A little more thought and explanation of the culture, history, architecture and wildlife with which the Troodos abounds and Airtours will have a product that helps them, the holidaymaker and the people who battle to keep rural Cyprus alive.

Across the mountains in the village of Agros, the typical wooden village bus sets off to the capital, Nicosia, at seven every morning. Nothing unusual about that except that, just as in Britain, most Cypriot villages don't have a bus service.

In Agros the bus is run by the local hotel. But these beautiful Bedfords don't just look after local commuters; they also transport hikers, bird watchers and painters who stay at the Rodon Mount Hotel. Both buses and hotel are owned by the villagers, who show them all off with great pride. It's their hotel that you're staying in - all 155 rooms - and, to some extent, you're their guest.

We pass on the bird watching and painting and opt for a first in hotel tours - a visit to the local butcher. It takes some time to get there as there are other ingredients in this trip. Jams and sweets from the home of Niki Agathogleous, freshly distilled rosewater from petals picked that morning by the villagers, and then smoked pork from the Kafkalia family. Everything made and grown locally is used by the hotel. We stand in the butcher's shop eating ham and talking - feeling as though we've cracked it, we're locals not tourists. Of course we're locals, just like everyone else in the queue we come from north London - after all, this is Cyprus.

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