Limassol the island’s second largest city, is a brash, functional and grittily authentic place , redeemed by a wide range of dinning options and sophisticated nightlife. More than anywhere else in the South, it has acted as a magnet for extensive urban drift from the impoverished hill-villages just north,and was a major focus of Greek-Cypriot refuge resettlement after 1974.
The city continues to expand a hundred or so metres annually to the east along the coast (westward growth is blocked by a British Sovereign Base), and a similar distance up into the barren, shrub-clad foothill of the troodos,whose nearer settlements are now merely commuter dormitories. The most interesting spots, such as Ayia Mavra, Omothos, Vouni and Lofou, are easly visited en route to the high Troodos. Other half-inhabited hill-hamlets, like Arakapas with its fine Italo-Byzantine church, Akapnou and odhou, see few outsiders from one week to the next. Reaching any of these spots requires your own vehicle, as there’s effectively no public transport in the backcountry. Along the coast east of Limassol(Lemesos), you have to outrun some fairly horrific hotel and apartment development before the tower-blocks halt a little past the small but evocative ancient site of Amathus. Just before the coast road veers inland towards Nicosia, there’s access to Governor’s Beach, the last remaining (relatively) unspoilt stretch of sand east of town, though the adjacent bay of Ayios Yeoryios Alamanou is better for dining.
Heading out of limassol in the opposite direction holds more promise. A long beach fringing the Akrotiri Peninsula, home to one of the island’s three British Sovereign Bases, ends near the legend-draped convent of Ayiou Nikolaou ton Gaton . on the far side of the lagoon, orange and eucalyptus groves soften the landscape en route to the atmospheric crusader castle of Kolossi and the clifftop ruins of Kourion- together with its associated sanctuary of Apollo Hylates, one of the most impressive ancient sites in the South. You can swim at the beach below the palisades, but it’s probably best to continue to the more secluded bays at Evdhimou and Pissouri, both favourite hideouts of British expats.
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