Good news awaits the explorer intent on following this route. This is a walk, not too challenging physically for those who might have indulged themselves over-enthusiastically at Christmas and the New Year.
It also combines a fine mixture of new and old, of industrial architecture and traditional Cyprus town houses, of tourists’ areas and evolving city landscape. Have courage, there are things worth seeing here, and the walk has been devised at least to begin and end pleasantly.
Start at the castle. The area has a distinctive ambience, with tourists & locals mingling outside the small bars and tavernas, while Cyprus craftsmen work at their forges in workshops that can hardly have changed in the past fifty years. The route indicated on the map takes you toward the old port where pelicans and other pedestrians dice with death at the roundabout.
Turn right past a number of small engineering workshops, before taking a right turn that brings you up behind the big mosque. A dry streambed runs along the road, with small houses and workshops on either side. Follow the road inland for a few hundred meters, crossing a footbridge into the former Turkish Quarter. A dying area, many of the buildings here are derelict and the place, once pretty and ethnic, now has a sad and abandoned feel about it.
The natives are friendly though and soon you pass through into an open square with kafenions where the usual students of life drink their leisurely libations and observe the world go by. From here you make your first sightings of the Keo sign denoting the first of four major wineries in the port area.
You pass a football stadium and Moeses Pottery and walk through a small refugee housing estate before emerging onto the now much improved Franklyn D Roosevelt Avenue opposite the new Shell station. Nearby the Limbas workshop and shop is worth a visit for good quality attractive casual wear at competitive rates.
Now follow the Avenue westward for a hundred meters or so, turning seaward just before the Limassol Water Board offices. You will pass a flourmill where grain imported and stored at the New Port is processed, and the Loel winery. The old slaughterhouse, whose functions have been trans-located to the Larnaca road, now acts as a warehouse.
On reaching the end of the road, an apparent dead end, continue left pass past an incredible collection of abandoned green bottles onto a muddy parking area. This overlooks the small-boat building and repair strip. Smart new boats under construction lie alongside ancient hulks that look ripe for the scrap yard.
Out at sea, trading ships lie off giving the impression of the open roadstead that Limassol once was, while to the west the cranes of the New Port are silhouetted against the Akrotiri skyline. From here go left, an Old pier runs out to sea from a beach of strangely weathered red pebbles, formed from the debris of the brick and tile factory.
Thus, you will come to the Veterinary Station and the Public Works department, which sports a fine display of pipes, timber and scaffolding.
Back on the main road turn right and a short stroll will bring you to the intricate white structure of Ayios Andronikou. The route here heads back seawards where a collection of fine fish taverns survive in spite of the excavations. Look back at the church to see the minaret of the mosque peering over its bell tower with the massive whaleback of Troodos in the distance behind.
A way through can be found in the direction of some derelict warehouses and via the Hanseatic Training School to the Old Port. At last you are on terra firma again. Walk round the harbour for fine panoramas, west to the New Port, (magnificent at sunset) and back across a harbour scene backed by palms and the distant hills.
From out here even Limassol’s high-rise frontage makes an attractive perspective with the palms and laid out walkways in front. In the harbour fishing boats and pleasure craft rock at anchor and on the breakwater barnacled seamen and fat ship’s cats go about their business.
If you have had enough, the way back to your car is directly opposite the entrance to the port. If you want to walk further the promenade can be reached by turning right on the Port as shown on the map. On leaving the promenade you will join the power walkers at their daily devotions.
Walk as much of the promenade as you fancy, but a good place to leave and cross into St Andrew’s Street is by the street with Salamis Tours on the corner. This puts you amongst some fine old buildings with ornate balconies and inner arches housing workshops, carpenters, printers, tailors, and a fine antique shop.
On reaching the pedestrianised part of St Andrew’s Street past Marks and Spencer’s and the main Church, taking the right fork onto a lane. This takes you past the old Turkish Baths, some wine cellars, a small market, the Great Mosque of Limassol, and to the Castle.