This article is part of a series called ‘A love letter to…’, where Cycling Weekly writers pour praise on their favourite cycling items and phenomena. The below content is unfiltered, authentic and has not been paid for.
It wasn’t the welcome drink that broke me, welcome though it was. It wasn’t the silver platter of fresh tropical fruit that greeted us in the room, nor the groovy jazz issuing from the Roberts radio, nor even the hand-written welcome scrolls tied with dried flowers. And it certainly wasn’t the centrepiece bathtub standing proud at the foot of the vast bed (“shouldn’t that be in the bathroom?”). All pleasant touches, if you like that sort of thing, but lost on someone like me – or so I thought back then, when I still knew who I was.
In a moment of weakness I had accepted a complimentary four-night stay at the Agora, a boutique, 18-room hotel in the historic village of Pano Lefkara, in the Troodos Mountains of Cyprus – including unlimited use of a bike from its unique rental fleet. It wasn’t that I was determined to resist the hotel’s charms, just that I was confident of being naturally immune to them. My tight-fisted dad was born amid post-war austerity, and his dad, my grandfather, was so mean that he banned the family from eating eggs – despite the fact they kept chickens. A passion for parsimony is in my blood.
I’m not a miser, but I positively enjoy saving money for the things that make a real, material difference to the quality of an experience. The Van Rysel jersey and bibs I brought with me, for instance, excite me for costing £140 while giving away very little in fit or function to my ‘Sunday best’ Alé kit (£315). For similar reasons, a trusty £2k bike has always seemed more companionable than a £5k-plus race machine. Ironic, then, that it was a pricey bike that started to break me. This is how my defences crumbled...
Agora-philia sets in
After a serene breakfast – no squabbling over the buffet here – I’m greeted in the lobby by a suave, athletic-looking 30-something man whom I assume is the hotel’s cycling guide – and I’m not wrong, but he also owns the place. Aleksander Eng is a Danish entrepreneur who struck gold in his early-20s when he became a major shareholder in nascent high street chain Joe & the Juice. After selling his shares in 2015, Aleks found himself with plentiful capital as well as boundless energy, and so threw himself into cycling. While on a training ride in Cyprus in 2018, the globetrotting amateur racer stumbled upon a derelict hotel on the site of what was once the village marketplace – and with that, the Agora dream was born.
Aleks introduces me to the bike I’ll be riding while I’m here, a Factor O2 stunningly custom-painted in the hotel’s white-and-terracotta colours (the discerning choice of Aleks’s partner, Emily). Our very first ride is a revelation. It’s not the £7k bike – well, not at first – but the roads. When Aleks had described them as “well-surfaced and traffic-free”, he was not exaggerating; in 60km, we encounter two, maybe three cars and not a single pothole. It’s only late-April but the sun beats down on us with an intensity rarely felt at home, the temperature soaring into the 30s as we traverse apparently endless, unbelievably empty mountain roads.
It isn’t long before I sense Aleks’s racing instincts rising with the heat, and on the shorter ramps I’ve no answer to his playful yet pinging attacks. As he belts out power worthy of an elite puncheur, I'm left waving a proverbial white flag. But on the longer, steeper climbs, I’m able to get my own back, tapping out a consistent tempo to force my more powerfully built host deep in the red. All the while I’m falling in love with the Factor, guiltily doing the dirty on my own Trek Domane languishing at home. Were I on my bike – a full 2kg heavier than this lithesome holiday fling – there’s no way I’d be having this much fun. It’s less a hire bike, more a high-class escort, rewarding every pedal stroke as if schooled in the art of seduction.
Back at the hotel, it’s time to cool off and get a hold of myself. Rehydrating by the pool with a crisp, ice-cold beer – a specially selected pilsner, Aleks explains, from the island’s only microbrewery – then a Dirty Martini as a suitably decadent chaser, I’m in serious danger of developing a taste for life’s finer things – things I can’t afford. Resistance proves futile when Aleks sends over a brace of Agora pizzas, which are – without exaggeration – the best I’ve ever eaten (and I’ve eaten a lot of pizza). Even so, these post-ride treats, as delectable as they are, are not what’s unmooring me from my penny-pinching roots.
It’s the roads, the warmth and the bike that I don’t want to leave behind, as well as, I have to admit, the slow accrual of small, almost imperceptible pleasures: the peace of the poolside (it’s an adults-only hotel), the tactile teak furniture, the sumptuous bed, and even the way the room door closes with a satisfying clunk like that of a luxury car. The enchantment only intensifies after dark when, returning from a mooch around the village, we find a jazz trio playing beside the glowing turquoise pool, backdropped by the glinting bikes – it’s like a David Hockney painting come alive.
Over the next two days, the rides only get hotter, harder and ever more addictive as Aleks guides us around his favourite routes. I really don’t want to go home, but like all good things, this must end – and no matter how smitten I am, it must end with objectivity. Our stay at the Agora, had we paid for it, would have cost £1,459 (£364 per night including breakfast – or from £139 for a smaller room), plus £36 per day to rent the bike. A quick search online turns up self-catering properties in Lefkara available from about £70 per night – in other words, you could bring your own bike (eurgh, the faff!) and stay here no-frills for a fraction of the cost. Objectively, then, my head says go for the budget option. But I’m struggling to be dispassionate, because my heart says the Agora won’t be easy to leave behind.
“You can check out any time you like,” the soft rock on the taxi stereo seems tuned to my bitter-sweet thoughts as we swoop down from the mountains towards Larnaca airport, “but you can never leave”. I’d prided myself on being invulnerable to the trappings of luxury, but the Agora’s particular, honed-and-curated ethos – tranquil not brash, panache not flash – has seeped into my psyche. Uncomfortable though this is to confess, if I had the money, I’d find it hard to resist splurging on a return stay. “I'm not the man they think I am at home,” Elton jibes me through the speakers. Oh no, no, no, I’m a rocketman with a newfound taste for the high life.
