Britain’s legacy in Cyprus was evident as soon as I turned out of the airport. The busy road was lined with signs urging “Drive on the Left!”
“We’re part of the EU, so people think we drive on the right here. You wouldn’t believe the number of accidents on the road from the airport – we call it death row,” Giorgos at the car hire company told me.
A British protectorate from 1878 to 1914, occupied from 1914 to 1925 and finally a Crown Colony, Britain relinquished control over Cyprus in 1960. As a condition of the handover, however, they kept two Sovereign Base areas: Akrotiri and Dhekelia. Covering roughly three per cent of the island, they are among the 14 surviving British Overseas Territories, alongside the likes of Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands and (for now) the British Indian Ocean Territory.
“They are in our country but they have their own laws, their own schools – they even have their own police force, reporting to the UK’s Ministry of Defence,” Cypriot friend Vassiliki explained to me the following day as we drove past miles of barbed-wire fence separating us from Akrotiri, with its golden beaches and salt flats flecked with pink flamingos.
Pink flamingos on the salt flats around Akrotiri – getty
Surprisingly, there was no checkpoint to enter Akrotiri, on the southernmost tip of Cyprus. “You can’t enter the military areas, though,” Vassiliki warned.
In contrast to Limassol’s skyscrapers, glittering like knives in the bright sunshine across the bay, this enclave, inhabited by British military personnel and their families, along with several thousand Cypriots, reminded me of Lewisham in the 1980s. British flags hung limply above Indian restaurants, pubs bore garish facades, and there were rows of shuttered shops.
“Our clients are really intrigued by this little-known British territory in the Mediterranean with its red postboxes, riding clubs and British supermarket chains,” Morgan Bourven of YPT, a British company that leads tours of Akrotiri and Dhekelia, told me.
Red telephone boxes can be found throughout the British territories in Cyprus – Peter Alvey /Alamy Stock Photo
According to local newspaper The Cyprus Mail, some 40,000 British citizens – mostly retirees – live in Cyprus. I was staying in Paphos, a seaside resort which is home to around 20,000 of them. Unlike the downtrodden Sovereign Base areas, Paphos was a busy jumble of brand new apartment blocks, many with plunge pools and pocket-sized gardens.
At the sandy beach opposite the city’s Tombs of the Kings, a subterranean necropolis where local aristocrats were buried from the 4th century BC, I met Rob and Jules from Birmingham. They have lived in Paphos for the past two years and adore it. “They speak our language, drive on our side of the road. It’s hot here most of the year, and they even have chippies – what’s not to like?” said Jules.
Paphos is one of the most popular areas for both British holidaymakers and expats – iStockphoto
A short drive from the ice-cream vans circling the yacht-studded harbour of Kato Paphos, Vassiliki showed me another remnant of British rule. Built in 1958, Polemi Concentration Camp occupies scrubland near the village of Stroumpi. It is where the British incarcerated – and allegedly tortured – Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston (EOKA) guerrillas during its uprising against colonial rule. A watchtower survives, the entrance gate yawned wide, and grass grew wild around a lone Nissen hut housing a crude model of the original camp, along with black-and-white photos of internees.
“You could say it’s a little-known piece of local history – one that most Cypriots don’t want to remember, and many British want to forget,” Vassiliki said as I flicked through the dog-eared pages of a visitors book where Magadalena from Liverpool said she “couldn’t believe this shameful episode in British history” and Cliff from Kent scribbled that it was “amazing that the Cypriot people still like us”.
Polemi Concentration Camp, where the British incarcerated EOKA guerrillas – Alamy
In Nicosia, Europe’s last divided capital, I lunched at Giagia Victoria. Celebrity chef Paul Hollywood is said to be a fan of this vintage café, with its 1950s décor, which backs directly onto the city’s buffer zone, still filled with barbed wire, anti-tank ditches and minefields.
It was an odd sensation to sip treacly Turkish coffee roasted over hot coals in a briki (copper pot) and chomp syrupy semolina cake politika, while gazing out over acres of empty buildings, their walls riddled with bullet holes and their roofs sprouting grass. They were abandoned in 1974 during the Turkish invasion.
“My home was over there,” waiter Andreas said, pointing to a crumbled apartment block with a tree growing through the middle. “We took what we could and left in the middle of the night. We were never able to go back. From 1974 up until 2003, when the first crossing opened, we could not even go to the Turkish occupied side. I was going to be married to a Turkish-Cypriot girl – I never saw her again.”
The Buyuk Han is a restored Ottoman caravansary in Nicosia – alamy
A short drive away in Nicosia’s bustling suburbs, I visited a prison where EOKA fighters were kept in dark, cramped cells. “Some were executed, but in order to avoid provoking riots, they were buried secretly near the prison in a tiny courtyard, now known as The Imprisoned Graves,” the guide explained.
Just as in India in the days of the Raj, the British in Cyprus also had their hill stations where they went to escape the summer heat. Lieutenant-General Sir Garnet Wolseley established the first such outpost in the 1870s. Sometimes called “the Simla of Cyprus”, Platres sits in the foothills of the Troodos Mountains.
Leafy Platres was once a magnet for celebrities and royalty – Alamy
The leafy streets of this colonial relic are lined with an eclectic mix of architecture, ranging from chunky alpine chalets to no-nonsense brick bungalows and whimsical turreted follies. At the height of its splendour, this high-flung village was a magnet for celebrities and royalty, including Egypt’s King Farouk, for whom the Brandy Sour was invented, and Daphne Du Maurier, who wrote Rebecca, her dark study of suppressed desire, at the (soon to be refurbished) Forest Park Hotel.
Over dinner in the wood-panelled confines of The New Helvetia, one of the oldest hotels in Platres, I got chatting to a Canadian couple. “This village is a real timewarp,” I remarked. Brian from Toronto chuckled, before replying: “Just like the British in Cyprus!”
How to do it
EasyJet has flights to Paphos from £174 return. Luxury golf resort Minthis has suites from £275 per night, including breakfast. Young Pioneer Tours operates tours of Akrotiri and Dhekelia. In Nicosia, book a private tour of Northern Cyprus with Cemal from Get Your Guide from £420 for a group of four.
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