Anassa

Two three-kilometre routes along the coast, and deep water four strides out.

Anassa stands on the hillside above Chrysochou Bay in the north-west corner of Cyprus, its gardens falling to about a hundred and fifty metres of frontage on Asprokemnos beach. It is mixed sand and pebble rather than the sand the booking sites promise, stony at the waterline and quick to deepen: a step in, three or four strides, and you are swimming rather than wading. Two routes hug the coast from there, each around three kilometres. East runs toward Latchi, where you turn before the harbour entrance. West is the wilder one, toward the Baths of Aphrodite and the coves of the Akamas, with nothing built along it. Families mark the beach down for being deep at once and stony underfoot, which is precisely what a swimmer wants. No beach in Cyprus is private by law, but this one is hard enough to reach by land that it behaves like one. The hotel closes for the winter, roughly early November to early April.