As an island, we are notorious for the lack of walking we do, and it is certainly one of the top things I miss about living in the UK.
Back in my London days, I never had a car and would walk to the train station to get to wherever I needed to go - a walk that was 15 minutes long. I would also walk to work and back (20 minutes each way), and walk around the area or shopping centre during my lunch break. I would say I probably averaged 60 minutes functional walking a day without even thinking about it, and much more on the weekends. As such, there was no need to join a gym or worry about my fitness levels as they were naturally taken care of in the course of a day.
Where my house is now in the area of Vergina, I couldn't walk anywhere functional even if I wanted to. There are few safe pavements and once you reach the end of my neighbourhood, it is extremely dangerous to try and walk towards any kind of shops or services as you need to pass through some busy/main roads that are completely devoid of any safe routes or crossings for pedestrians. As such, I feel kind of trapped, like the only way out of my neighbourhood is by car, unless I want to risk my life.
But the dangerous car dodging aside, for the most part of the year it is just too hot to walk. Even a trip to the town centre for a walk around the shops can incur sunstroke and is not particularly pleasurable like it would be in the UK. Unless you can get up at 5am to walk before the sun fully wakes then your window for walking is not big.
I do try and go for a walk in the cooler months down the salt lake or in my area, but it seems that walking in Larnaca is a very contrived and ironic experience; you get in the car and drive to the place that you want to walk around! And the nice places for a walk are few and far between as our 'parks' aren't the variety you can enjoy a walk in. When it rains, you risk being soaked as cars zoom through those massive puddles that occur because we don't have a proper drainage system. You just can't win!
I know that people belittle the locals for never walking anywhere and the car culture we have, and whilst some of them take it to ridiculous levels (parking literally outside of where they want to go), I can understand why people don't walk. It's too much hassle on broken pavements with massive trees in the middle, it's too hot and most of the time it isn't safe.
As such, I am really looking forward to seeing the new pedestrian/cycling paths that have been promised once all the major roadworks have been completed. I hope that when it is all finished, I will safely be able to walk out of my neighbourhood to buy a bottle of milk from the peripetro or go to the cinema without having to take the car out for a two-minute distance… let's just hope they get it right this time…
First appeared in The Cyprus Weekly, 28/06/14
