I was looking forward to our third run ashore in Limassol, Cyprus on the Saga Eastern Mediterranean Cruise. Limassol lived up to the statements I had heard in advance of our visit: it was an uninspiring industrial port and city. However, it is within walking distance of my penultimate British Overseas Territory in the Old World: Akrotiri and Dhekelia. After I wrote this Blog Post in Spring 25, the British Indian Ocean Overseas Territory is in the process of being handed over to Mauritius, so I soon will have visited all of the Old World British Overseas Territories. This is split into two separate locations with Akrotiri being on a peninsula close to Limassol in the South West of the island and Dhekelia being adjacent to the disputed border of Greek and Turkish Cyprus. Both contain UK military bases.
As the Spirit of Adventure was docking, we headed off to breakfast. There wasn't a big hurry, as the ship's team still needed to clear all the immigration checks. Secondly, once the gangways were open, we needed to give a bit of time for those passengers booked on early tours time to get off and as part of the entertainment team, we were expected to give the passengers priority in disembarking. My plan for the day was to walk to Lady's Mile Beach, which was inside the Akrotiri part of the British Overseas Territory. It was just under a two mile walk to the border. I ended up walking over eight miles ashore, as I explored Lady's Mile Beach. It was a bit like travelling in Schengen countries in Europe. There is an open border between the British Overseas Territory and Cyprus, and it's possible to walk across the border without any checks. There is a big RAF base within Akrotiri and there will be checks closer to the base, but I wasn't going to walk that far.
I turned left two roundabouts along the main road, after the above sign, and after a few minutes' walk, I was in the British Overseas Territory. This is my penultimate British Overseas Territory in the Old World, albeit follow the continuation of discussions, started by the tories (which their leader is now denying they initiated) the final Old World British Overseas Territory of Diego Garcia, might end up being returned to Mauritius. However, as the British are looking to retain a military base there, what remains might still be classified as an even more difficult British Overseas Territory, to visit than it is now. Currently, it's only possible to visit on a small yacht, after a lot of paperwork to get access.
The real surprise of the day was seeing a U2 spy plane. I had assumed they had stopped running sometime after the end of the Cold War. But it looks like a couple have been deployed from the Middle East to Akrotiri. Perhaps not surprising with all that is going on in Israel and the neighbouring countries at the moment.
It appeared to be practicing landings and take offs from the base. When I googled U2, I found links to this James May program on the U2. This is well worth trying to find online. I found a bit of the program which described the take off and landings. To save weight, U2s drop the wheels from the wings just after they take off. This helps them to climb to their typical flying altitude of seventy thousand feet. However, it makes landings tricky, as they only have a central pair of wheels and a smaller tail wheel. They need support from ground crew, chasing after them in cars, to guide them to touch down without damaging there very long wings.
There were a few House Sparrows around a cafe at the Northern end of the beach. After photographing them, my attention was drawn to a Yellow-legged Gull in a party of Black-headed Gulls. I didn't bother looking at the Black-headed Gulls, so it was a nice surprise, when I was editing the photos, to find I had also photographed a Slender-billed Gull in the group. I should have looked at the smaller Gulls properly.
We were only heading about fifty miles along the coast to our next destination of Paphos and the Captain decided not to rush our departure. I had enjoyed our time ashore and I was pleased to have visited Akrotiri.
Arguably, Cyprus was also a new country. In 1986, I visited Turkey for three weeks with Mark Ponsford, Nigel Goodgame & Dave Unsworth. When we planned the Turkish trip, we all agreed to go to Turkey to look for Cyprus Pied Wheatear and Cyprus Warbler, with the except of Mark, who had seen both species in Israel. When we reached the port, Nigel & Dave bottled out of going to Cyprus, as we would have had to stay overnight. We had expected to day-trip the island, but we were too early in the tourist season. I caught the ferry to Turkish Cyprus and saw both Passerines, but I only heard Cyprus Scops Owl: which is now treated as an endemic, rather than a subspecies of Scops Owl. Given Turkish Cyprus is an occupied part of the island that isn't internationally recognised by any country other than Turkey, I was reluctant to count it as Cyprus. The Turkish politicians still refuse to take part in the Cypriot parliament, even though the rest of the world considers the island as one country.