On the beach...

Is there anything better than spending a couple of hours of your working day away from the office, out in the fresh air, but still working?

Today my job took me to a beach, to interview the RAF Kite Surfing team who are in Cyprus training.

You could not wish to meet a nicer bunch of guys and gals, happy to chat about their sport and show off the moves they have been learning.

Cyprus is THE place to kite surf and they kept asking if I'd had a go yet. So maybe I might just have to try before the summer is out...

The corn seller

We have a new dog walk on our list, it's a five minute drive from our house, along a bit of natural coastline, a few hundred yards from a tourist beach. As you drive towards the sea there's a fruit stall and a family selling barbecued corn.

The corn is cooked for you while you wait over hot coals with a hair drier to agitate the fire, seriously a hair drier! Meanwhile the rest of the family tear the leaves of the raw corn ready for the next customer.

As we waited for the corn to cook we watched the family chat, and work, and smoke a cigarette, and chat some more. They probably make a killing in the summer and I bet its quite a nice life.

Bella took it all in too, hanging out of the back of our car and breathing in the smell of the corn cooking...

They served them up with butter and salt. They were delicious...

And the dogs enjoyed their sunset walk too...

How was your weekend?

I've been Habit-ed!

I've been a big fan of the Habit blog since I discovered it when we were in Canada. It's an American based blog that features inspiring photos from guest contributors around the world with short descriptions of moments in their day. This month they've created a Flickr pool and are featuring photos from the pool on their blog.

It's been a long standing ambition of mine to get a photo on the blog, so I leapt at the chance to contribute to the pool, and low and behold, after adding my first photo to the pool yesterday, I've been featured on the blog! I'm chuffed to bits...

If you fancy it, why not have a go too...

The English summer

I'm back in the UK, for what has ironically turned out to be the hottest weekend of the year so far, fortunately its still a good deal cooler than Cyprus!

It's been 4 months since we last visited, and I've been struck not only by how green everything is (which is ironic in a drought) but also how long the days are. It gets dark in Cyprus very quickly at about 8:30pm. In the UK it is light until 10pm and the lovely half-light of twilight lasts for about an hour. Apparently it's all to do with your position on the globe, but I confess I don't know the science!

Of course being back home has also meant more of my mother's home cooking... just look at those brownies!

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep...

This afternoon we headed for the Troodos mountains, we were in some bad need of greenery and cooler temperatures. It was 37c when we left home on the coast and 30c when we reached the highest point on the island an hour later. 7c difference may not seem a lot, but with lots of shade and lower humidity it was heaven.

There's a good reason why most of the Cypriot population shut up shop and relocate to the Troodos for most of August, and after this afternoon I could happily join them. The lower ground of Cyprus is very brown at this time of year, but the hills are alive with trees and shrubs, and if you squint a little, between the pine trees it looks a little bit like Canada.

The cooler temperatures in the mountains also make it one of the few places we can take the dogs to during the summer and the walk to Kaledonia Falls alongside a stream, is doggy heaven.

When we reached the falls Macy won the heart of a 6 year-old boy who (with his parents) walked with us all the way to the car park holding her lead, admring her tail and feeding her treats, a rarity for her, as it's normally the Little Dog that children home in on. So a good day for dogs and humans alike...