Does it ever get cold in Cyprus?

Before we moved to Cyprus, we had a vague idea that it might sometimes be 'a little chilly' at nights. So, as we arrived at the end of October, we did ensure we had a few sweaters, light-weight jackets, a couple of blankets, and our thin duvet.

Overwhelmed at what seemed, at the time, the exhausting heat of  ::shock horror::  26C in the shade, when the UK was about to experience the first frost of the season, I was pretty sure we weren't going to need even that light-weight warmth. When our landlady showed us how to use the kerosene heater, I couldn't believe we would ever need it.

Experience, and a measure of acclimitisation have taught us otherwise. We breathe a sigh of relief when the weather cools to a 'pleasant' 26C by the end of October. And while we don't get frosts at sea-level in Cyprus, the nights can feel really quite cold in the winter (approximately December, January and February) and since houses are designed, primarily, for the summer with tiled floors and high ceilings, it can often feel colder inside than out.

So we were very pleased to discover an effective central heating system when we bought our house seven-and-a-half years ago. I already wrote about how cold it suddenly became, early in December, when our heating unaccountably didn't work.  Thankfully it is now working, although the weather has become somewhat warmer; but the heating still comes on first thing in the morning, and during the evening. We set our thermostat to about 15-16C and wear several layers of clothes indoors.

Sophia, who has taken to sleeping in my beanbag much of the day, is always pleased when she finds it close to a warm radiator:

One advantage of winter is that there aren't too many mosquitoes, and we don't see cockroaches at all. A disadvantage is that we're much more likely to catch colds. Thankfully we only had minor ones over Christmas: a bit of a sniffle, a slight lingering cough. Nothing compared to the long flu-like colds and coughs we suffered from a year ago, thankfully. 

But in the past week we seem to have developed a different kind of cold; Richard wasn't well at night, a couple of times, and couldn't sleep. Tim totally lacked energy on Wednesday, and took a long siesta when he arrived home from work; he cancelled most of his commitments on Thursday, and is only really feeling like himself again today. I was coughing more yesterday, and felt exhausted and drained... not so bad today, but rather brain-fogged. 

An advantage of having a relatively mild winter with no frosts in Cyprus is that bedding plants do well during the winter months, and geraniums produce a terrific display:

I'm not a fan of pink in general, but I do like it on these amazing plants.