Boxing day the record for visits to Troodos

Boxing day was the busiest day for Troodos last year, with more than 5,323 vehicles counted on the Karvounas – Troodos road by a traffic counter installed as part of the EU-funded Geostars programme, the forestry department said on its Facebook page on Wednesday.

The system monitors visits to the Troodos national forest park. In 2021, it recorded a total of 341,056 vehicles going and coming from Troodos, up 13 per cent on 2020 (302,373) but down 10 per cent on the 377,282 recorded in pre-pandemic 2019.

The average for 2021 was 934 vehicles a day, with weekends and holidays recording a daily average of 1493. Per season, the daily average was winter 972, spring 581, summer 1,250 and autumn 935 vehicles.

“Beyond its environmental importance, these figures prove once more the exceptional importance of Troodos national forest park as a destination for recreation and are useful for the management of the Troodos national forest park particularly and the area of the Troodos geopark more widely,” it said.

The project “stargazing and natural environment – alternative development and promotional product for east Mediterranean geoparks” with the acronym GEOSTARS Geostars http://geostars.eu/ is being implemented under the Interreg V-A Greece- Cyprus 2014-2020 cooperation agreement. It is co-financed by the EU and national funds from Greece and Cyprus.

The device was installed with the cooperation of the forestry department and the public works department and incorporated into the traffic measuring system Diavlos – Traffic in Cyprus of the department of public works.