Like many days out in Cyprus, we hadn’t meant to end up where we did. Today we ended up in the abandoned village of Old Paramali, where Goobie found some exciting things.

I’m hungover. I had one too many cocktails with my aunt and uncle in Paphos last night and fancied some fresh air today to clear my head. We attempted to do the cliff walk over Cape Aspro, near Pissouri – the views are supposed to be amazing. But I had a humiliating attack of vertigo when the path narrowed to 30cm next to a 100ft sheer drop. Never do that walk with a hangover. I felt so dizzy, Matt had to come and prise me off the cliff-face. Don’t do that walk in flip-flops either. And definitely don’t do the walk with a child who finds vertigo attacks hysterically funny.

We gave up on the walk for today and had a quick look around Pissouri’s Christmas market. I wasn’t quite ready to go home and had the idea to have a look around Old Paramali. I love abandoned places and it wasn’t that far away. As you drive into the current Paramali village (from the direction of Pissouri), turn left down the road just before the humped zebra crossing. If you pass the mosque, you’ve gone too far. The road will take you past posh villas on the left and the big car park next to Yianni’s restaurant on the right. Keep following the road under the motorway bridge and through farmland. It bears right over a bridge and then bends left. You’ll end up at Old Paramali eventually.

Goobie was in a strop. He said he was never going on a drive with us EVER AGAIN. Bizarrely, me shouting ‘Dang Bot!!’ during a heavy silence lifted his spirits. He nearly puked laughing. Once we got to Old Paramali, he threw himself into exploring the crumbling ruins of the village.

Old Paramali was a Turkish Cypriot village, abandoned in 1974 when the Turks invaded and the island was divided into the Turkish Cypriot North and the Greek Cypriot South.  The village used to be called Cayonou but the residents took the name with them when they fled north.

Today, Old Paramali seems to be used as a military training ground. Glassless windows are stuffed with sandbags and there were metal bullet casings on the floor. Apparently Prince William was once on an exercise there.

As I walked through the ruins, I kept an eye out for bullet casings to give to Goobie, but he was more interested in the used batteries he found. That was until he found something far more exciting. Dinosaur bones.

We found ribs, vertebrae and some other random bones. We started looking for a skull. I didn’t expect to find one, but as Goobie was exploring the very end ruin, he found a little skull among the rocks. I was about to suggest that it was a goat’s skull, when he announced solemnly ‘It’s a dinosaur.’

I think that skull is going to give anything Santa brings next month a run for its money. Finding a dinosaur doesn’t happen every day. Particularly when that dinosaur happens to be a Giganotosaurus.

The sun had set and it was getting dark, but as we were driving back down the track, I spotted a large cave in the cliff opposite. Finding caves is ridiculously exciting to me. Matt sighed.

We drove up a little farm track that wasn’t made for low-lying Toyotas, and winced every time a big rock scraped up the underneath of the car. But there was a cave ahead, so of course we carried on. Goobie and I hopped out of the car to look at the cave while Matt tried to figure out how the bloody hell he was going to turn the car around.

The cave was a respectable size. Well worth a small amount of car abrasion. It looked like it had been naturally-formed. Maybe. It wasn’t a tomb, anyway.

As exciting as the cave was, for Goobie there was an even more exciting discovery. Scattered around the cave entrance were bones. And just by his feet, another skull, bigger than the last.

‘Mummy, this is the best day of the year.’