Editor

Car Rally – a team players viewpoint:

A superb turnout for the car rally assembled at the Darling’s home for coffee and home made cakes on Saturday 27th May.

When registration was complete, by 09.30 the 51 participants headed off in 16 vehicles to try and find The Kolios Winery in time for lunch. We all had in our possession a Route/Directions and Answer Book

Andrew Darling had clearly spent a substantial amount of time setting the two courses, logging the distance in kilometres and trying to find ways to challenge us all with clever clues round the course. There were two different courses – one for 4x4’s and one for saloon cars. The challenge was on.

We set our Speedo to zero as instructed and the convoy set off at two-minute intervals. Our first problem arose very early on in the course when our digital reading didn’t match with the first 2.2 km checkpoint. We had a 0.5 km discrepancy before we turned on to the main Troodos road!

Ho hum, not a very good omen. We had travelled only 19 km when the first typo showed up in the directions, and it skipped from 19.4km to 30.0km, then back to 21.3km. Should we reverse? No, we’re Scottish, not Irish or Italian; let’s see if we can find the E802 as instructed. We could – and did.
29.4km into the journey – according to Andrew’s Speedo - the saloon cars had an alternative route to follow while the 4x4’s went off road.

We just had to hope the next checkpoint at 29.8km was wrong, as we should have been in Kato Paphos! Perhaps a red herring thrown in by the devilish Darling?

By now we were well off the written distances by about 2.5km, and the small detour we had to make while having a heated discussion about which turning to take added a bigger discrepancy.

The navigator – Colin – made a suggestion to reset the Speedo and added to the excitement by having to do some complex subtraction. Fine by me – I was driving.

By 48.6km (18.1 on ours!) we reached the Picnic area as planned for our coffee break and the re-assembly of the group. The Best laid plans of men and mice?

We found out then that your Editor of the Glen and the lovely Liz had in fact managed to get lost as they left Andrew’s driveway! Instead of turning left out of Kalergy Street toward the Troodos Road, they chose to turn right toward Limassol. One out of sixteen isn’t too bad really.

We thought that the wise Watsons would just head straight for the winery; after all they had been there the week before. But no, the Watsons (dare I say, “I presume”?) would not be beaten. They eventually arrived at the picnic point. I don’t know when, as we had headed off on the final leg before they arrived.

It was a beautiful drive through hills and valleys we would never have seen and the weather couldn’t have been kinder. We had travelled around 10km and had stopped for a Kodak moment when we realized that we could see a huge stretch of the road we had been on across the valley, and there was not another car in sight!

Were we on the wrong road? Surely not – we had located the fire hydrant number, found the Gefyri Roudia, bridge, stopped and listened to the Nightingales as instructed and spotted the sign – with phone number – for Vretsia Village Taverna. We had to be on the right track.

We decided to keep going and maybe have a quick pit stop at the Taverna for a cleansing ale. No such luck.

Andrew has a rotten sense of humour. The whole village was derelict. Our bottled water was a poor substitute for a cold beer, but onward ho.

We found Statos, Ayios Photios, the church, followed even more complex hieroglyphics, found Statos, Ayios Photios, the church. Devilish Darling is having a laugh! We eventually put the map in the glove compartment and found the main road.

As regular diners at the Kolios Winery, we knew where to go once we got on the main road. We arrived at two minutes to one, first there! By 13.40 there was still no sign of our Chieftain and his lady, or the wily Watsons! They were eventually contacted by mobile phone. In convoy they had managed a hair-raising drive hugging the hillside, praying the road didn’t come to a dead end.


They navigated along single lane tracks barely a cars width with sheer drops, ending up in Kykkos Monastery.

So the Caledonian Society members had a beautiful lunch at Kolios while the major part of the committee dined on trout x miles away! Just as well we all paid at the start of the day!)