Frenaros

Avgorou is one of the Famagusta region's main agricultural villages — population around 5,000, sitting on the red soil that makes the Kokkinochoria cluster's potatoes, vegetables, and citrus fruit some of the best on the island. The village takes its name from the ancient baths of King Evagoras of Salamis (finds in the area go back to the Late Bronze Age), and it has the wide-streets-and-square feel of a community where farming is the main employer. The big draws are the Ethnographic Museum (which traces village life through Cypriot folk objects), the church of Apostolos Peter and Paul, and the Agios Kendeas Monastery. Three village panigyria fill the calendar: the Feast of Apostolos Peter and Paul on June 29, the Feast of Agios Kendeas on October 6, and the very popular Potato Festival in July, when the village turns out to celebrate its most famous crop with everything from baked, fried, and roasted potatoes to potato-flour pastries.

Liopetri is one of the bigger Famagusta-coast farming villages — almost 4,600 people — built on the red earth of the Kokkinochoria. The main crop is potatoes (Cyprus potatoes from this area carry their own EU geographical indication), with pomegranates and figs alongside. The Liopetri River runs to the coast through a quiet, reedy estuary at Potamos tou Liopetriou — a small working fishing shelter where you can eat outstanding grilled fish at a couple of tavernas right on the water, one of the best food experiences in the area. The fifteenth-century church of Agios Andronikos, with its octagonal dome and surviving fresco fragments, is built directly into a low cave-like rock formation and is the village's most unusual monument. A nearby barn marks the spot of a 1958 EOKA battle and is preserved as a national memorial. Worth combining with Sotira and the Cape Greco coast.

Paralimni is the working heart of the Famagusta region — the largest town on the south-east coast, the administrative centre, and the springboard for two of the island's most-visited natural areas. It's not a quiet rural village; the population has swelled past 14,000 since 1974, and the streets buzz with shops, tavernas, and locals heading to the holiday resorts. What makes it worth a stop is what surrounds it. Cape Greco National Forest Park, fifteen minutes south, holds the dramatic limestone sea caves, the cliff-top viewpoints, and the rare island flora that make it one of the prettiest coastal walks in Cyprus. Protaras's golden-sand beaches and Fig Tree Bay are equally close. In the old town, the thirteenth-century Panagia church — decorated unusually with eighteenth-century porcelain plates — anchors a small ecclesiastical museum, and the April Feast of Agios Georgios is a real village panigyri amid the urban scale.