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        We went on organised visits to on orange packing plant, the copper mines near Morphu,  to Famagusta and Salamis, to the Keo brewery in Limassol and for a meal in Platres.

        The visit to the orange packing plant was in the late autumn when the crop was ready for picking and our trip started in the plantations of citrus trees. We were told that oranges and lemons were popular with the local population and people would pick fruit from roadside trees as they passed. On the other hand grapefruit were a fairly modern invention and had not caught on so when possible they tried to plant grapefruit trees next to a road. The oranges were picked before they were fully ripe because they still had a sea journey in order to reach their market. In the factory the fruit was inspected and went down a sorting system that delivered it to a number of packers who wrapped each in a tissue and put it into a shipment box. The boxes were put into an air tight chamber and gas was pumped in. I think sulphur dioxide was the gas used to kill off any insects that had got that far and also to help with the ripening process. The pictures show the wooden crates and a number of us spent quite a modest sum to send one home for Christmas.

    We finished the trip drinking glasses of fresh squeezed orange juice on the verandah of the owners' house. However the bottom line of the story is that oranges ripened on a sea trip do not taste anything like the real thing straight off the tree.

    The copper mine we visited was an opencast one, close to the shore on Morphu bay, that every so often uncovered tunnels of the original Roman workings. They had even devised a method of reworking the the Roman spoil heaps because the original extraction methods still left enough copper to make this viable. I recall large sloping tables with water running over them which I think was part of the process. Our visit must have been at a week end or holiday as nothing was actually working although the mines had not yet closed. There was an aerial ropeway that went out on towers carrying buckets of ore that were tipped into waiting ships. (The picture of the ships being loaded by barge was taken on a later visit to the area.) We each picked up a lump of the ore and the crystals had the look of gold about them and we were told it was in fact known as fools gold.

    The visit to the Keo brewery in Limassol showed a number of contrasts. The beer was brewed in large stainless steel vats and there was not much to see. The thing that left the most impression was the maturing of the brandy. There were wharehouses with huge wooden casks each containing hundreds of gallons of brandy that was left there for upwards of ten years. It was too dark to take a picture and the only one I have is of the KeoVita bottling plant which was a soft drink they produced.

    The trip to Platres was during the winter in order to have a meal there. There are several pictures taken in the snow as this was the only day while I was there that I saw any. I am grateful to Hercules at the Forest Park for discovering that the four people in my picture are actually standing outside the Minerva Hotel so this is where we must have had our meal. The hotel was rebuilt in the early sixties and the background to the picture vanished then. The conditions were decreed too bad for the bus to attempt to make it to Troodos at the top of the mountain so it was later, when we had our hire car, that we went there.

    I remember the trip to Famagusta and beyond went via Dekalia as this was the only time we saw the army camp there. It looked much more "regimental" than Episcopi with huts set out in regular rows on a flat area. On the road going into Famagusta we overtook a camel train and stopped to take pictures. I gather this was then the last one left on the Island but it kept going into the early sixties. Despite the low volume of traffic I heard people moan about the hold ups that camel trains caused. We saw it again inside the town so I suppose it was carrying something for export down to the docks. We spent most of our time in the old walled city. This had only two ways into it, the land gate and the sea gate. The sea gate led onto the docks area but there was also a main road that went round the town and led straight to the docks. I suppose that unlike a motor vehicle the camel train took the route through the narrow town streets because it was the shortest route and thus quickest.

    The old town is dominated by the Cathedral of St Nicholas built about 1300  in gothic style  by the Lucinians when there were French knights here during the crusades.  The towers at the front were damaged during the Turkish bombardment and after their occupation in 1571 it was recycled by adding a minaret and became the Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque. Outside is a type of fig tree said to be 700 years old and the oldest living thing in the Island. We visited Othello's tower which is in fact the fortified Citadel, just outside the walls of the town, overlooking the docks. Othello is Shakespear's fictional character and the play refers to the fortifications of a seaport in Cyprus.The building, built by the Lucinians and rebuilt by the Venetians in 1492 ( hence the winged lion of Venice over the doorway ) is claimed to be the location described.