I love abandoned places. The best ones give you that pang of poignancy and nostalgia, representing the passing of time and of things once loved and lost. Back in 2016 my pilates instructor told me about an old horse ranch she’d stumbled across on a dog walk in Souni, a village north-west of Limassol. I was desperate to find it.
It turned out that it wasn’t hard to find. Its oval arena can still be seen on satellite images, near the Kouris reservoir.
On our first visit, we walked to the ranch along old tracks that can be reached at the end of a newly-built residential street in Souni. The tracks take you in and out of a narrow valley and up to a stunning view of Akrotiri salt lake at the top of a hill.
We followed the track into a second valley and soon caught a glimpse of the distinctive oval arena. At first we questioned whether it was abandoned. The conifers edging the paddock looked so neat, the paint on the barriers so white and the security fence so tall.
But all wasn’t as it seemed. As we got closer we saw the holes in the fences, the fallen barriers. Still new to Cyprus and unaccustomed to exploring abandoned places, we guiltily crawled through a hole in the fence and began an afternoon that became one of my most cherished memories of Cyprus. The Appaloosa horse ranch remains one of my favourite abandoned places on the island.
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There is very little information left online about the history of the Appaloosa horse ranch. There used to be a Rancho Appaloosa website but this has now been taken down. However, it is still possible to view low-res photos from that website on Google Images that show the ranch as it used to be before it was abandoned in the late 1990s. I’ve gathered other information from hearsay and the Geocaching website. Paphos Life has also written a fabulous blog on the ranch with loads of photos.
The ranch was created by Christos Maximos and styled on the ranches in America. It was dedicated to the Appaloosa, a horse breed developed in America and known for its distinctive spotted markings.
I can’t find any information about Christos Maximos other than that he used to run Maximos Holdings Ltd, a company that has now folded. However, the stories say that the ranch was built by a wealthy business family for their son who was passionate about Appaloosas. Tragically, the son died in a car accident and his bereft family couldn’t bear to run the ranch after his death. Since then it has been left to crumble or be pillaged, a symbol of love and loss.
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The memory of our first visit to the Appaloosa horse ranch fills me with such intense nostalgia. Our childlike excitement about our new life in Cyprus with our gorgeous four-year-old son. That afternoon, the three of us, running around that beautiful paddock. Life was so simple back then.
Five years later, our knowledge and love of Cyprus is deeper, our lives busier, more complicated. Our four-year-old is now a tall ten-year-old and we have a second son who will be four later in the year. For some reason, it felt important to return to this special place as a family of four. Perhaps to mark the passing of time and the huge changes in our lives since our first visit.
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Our 2021 visit started very differently. We reached the ranch using its proper entrance. It’s an imposing gateway just off the road that skirts the western side of the Kouris reservoir. I have passed it before without knowing what it was.
We drove through the gateway and along a road that snakes up the edge of the hillside. Take care! There are open manholes in the road.
At the top is another entrance. And an extraordinary view of the Kouris reservoir.
We drove through the second entrance and followed the hilltop road, taking care to drive around the manholes. Eventually the road leads to an accommodation building that sits on the edge of the hill and overlooks the paddock in the valley below.
Matt and I took it in turns to explore this building, which appears to have been self-catered apartments, complete with kitchens, bedrooms, balconies and living areas. It was derelict in 2016 but we were in for a shock. It has now been totally ransacked, stripped bare.
The halls were now strewn with rubble.
There were massive holes in the walls, perhaps where electrical cables had been pulled out.
Carpets had been pulled up, furniture destroyed, bathrooms smashed.
A gutted lounge led to an overgrown courtyard, vines stubbornly clinging to their trellises.
We followed a tarmac road that led down the hillside and into the equestrian area in valley below.
The road ends at a collection of large stable blocks, barns and other buildings. These photos show how the stables have deteriorated over the years:
Goobie and Herc ran on ahead, exploring the stables. I had a flashback to a similar scene five years earlier, before the fourth member of our family had expanded our lives.
The interiors were much as I remembered them. The external cladding may have been pillaged, but the steel framework was still going strong. I scooted up a ladder and took in the large hayloft.
Despite the looting, I was surprised to find things left behind from when the ranch had been open.
Outside the two stable blocks were a collection of other buildings. I think the small building on the right may have been some sort of office.
This building looked like a veterinary area:
Behind the veterinary area was one of the most memorable places from our first visit. Something I have never seen anywhere else and that, for me, symbolises the love and passion that went into this place. A swimming pool for horses. Was this used for hydrotherapy for injured horses or just for strengthening? Abandoned and covered in graffiti, it looked wonderfully weird.
Next to the horse pool was a lunge arena and a horse walker – both used for training and exercising horses. Here also the love and passion for this ranch shines through. They’d thought of everything. Nothing was too much for a son’s beloved horse ranch.
Our exploration of the buildings complete, we headed to the heart of the Appaloosa horse ranch – the large oval arena in the centre of the valley. It is ringed by tall conifer trees that mark the passage of time more than anything else. These trees were just babies in the original photos when the ranch opened.
The oval arena is the place where I felt the most nostalgia for our visit in 2016. Matt, Goobie and I ran around the arena, marvelling that such a place could be allowed to exist in its abandoned state for so long. If this had been in the UK, the land would have been sold off and filled with countless identical houses, squashed tightly together, separated only by identical postage-stamp gardens. There’s a wonderful sense of freedom to be found in abandoned spaces.
We picnicked in the overgrown arena and I took photo after photo of my beautiful boy with his mop of blonde hair and his little green Hunter wellies. It felt peaceful and idyllic.
Now, as a family of four, we stepped into that arena and I realised that this place had come to represent love and loss for me too. The loss of our simple life as a family of three which I had loved for so many years and had been reluctant to let go of. A life when I only needed to focus on the needs of one child, when there weren’t two beloved children pulling me in different directions. And the constant guilt, the doubt, the exhaustion that comes with that.
We sat down to have a picnic, Matt and I laughing as Goobie and Herc rolled around in the grass like puppies. They adore each other. Yes, life is messier, more exhausting and far noisier than it once was. But being back here made me see that it is richer too. There is more love in our family now. More laughter. Far more mischief. And life feels . . . more alive.
We raced around the arena, pretending we were horses. The tall conifers watched, swaying in the breeze, as if cheering us on. Not everything in this place has been torn apart by time. Some things have grown, become more beautiful. Become stronger.
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