RICHARD I really didn’t deserve the epithet Lionheart. Born in Oxfordshire, he quickly decided that the English weather was a bit too nippy and bunked off to France for his formative years. Even when he became King of England in 1189, he chose to swap the chill autumns in Winchester for topping up the tan abroad. In the whole of his ten-year reign he was in Britain for just six months.

One of the places where Richard liked to do his sunbathing while plotting the capture of the Holy Land was Cyprus. On his way to biff Saladin, the King stopped at Limmasol and beat up the local ruler (well, practice makes perfect) before getting married there. Today most of the English lads who come to fight and pick up women can be found at Ayia Napa, on the east of the island. The permanent expats tend to be over the other side, between Limmasol and Paphos. Like Richard I, they come to escape the British weather. But unlike the earlier Crusaders, the only thing most of them want to shoot is a few level-par holes on the golf course.

Kevin Blackman, 60, and his wife Sue, 63, first visited the island in 1973 and enjoyed it immensely, but they had not been back until three years ago, when Kevin decided to retire early from his job as an investment banker in the City. “I didn’t want to retire in England,” he says. “The climate is such that you might as well hibernate between October and April — but instead of having a holiday home abroad, I wanted to live in the sun full-time.”

Seeing an advertisement in The Times for a forthcoming development 15 miles from Paphos, and remembering the earlier holiday, he flew out to see what the country was like. A few days later he became the first person to buy a plot in the fledgeling five-star Aphrodite Hills resort. The 600-acre estate is close to the coast and has a beautiful, and challenging, 18-hole golf course. This was one of the attractions, as Kevin described himself as “a very poor golfer” before leaving and has improved his game by playing three times a week. “Not in August, though. It’s far too hot.”

The advantage of getting in early was that he could take first pick of the plots. Nothing was built when he arrived; they had barely started to seed the fairways on the golf course. “I sat on a rock by what would become the 16th green and looked across to the sea and knew I wanted to live there.

“I’d flown out only to have a look, but I really didn’t want to miss this perfect plot.” In fact he then bought a second. “I was worried that someone might spoil my view if they built next to my villa, so at 5am on the morning I was due to leave I called the sales manager and said I wanted the next-door plot too.” That extra £60,000 has become a small orchard and an extension of their garden. They have lived there since December 2002, but the much-longed-for good weather didn’t appear at first. “Within a month of moving, it was freezing, there was a hurricane and hailstones the size of golf balls. This wasn’t what the adverts promised. We stood there and wondered what we had done.” Thankfully the sun has shone since, and in the 20 months they have lived there he has spent only one week back in Britain.

Hardip and Parkash Rhandawa are also owners at Aphrodite Hills, but are not yet ready to retire there. Hardip, an electrician, and Parkash, a beauty clinician, are both only 44, with two children, but are already long in the tooth when it comes to investing in property. Their two properties in Cyprus have expanded their portfolio to 21 residences.

They bought their first, a two-bed mid-terrace house in Milton Keynes, 19 years ago. And with that first hit they haven’t been able to resist buying more and more. As well as 14 properties in England, they own five on the Costa del Sol, but that was not enough. A visit to an overseas property exhibition encouraged them to think that Cyprus was the next big place. “We had never visited the island — in fact we didn’t until ten months after we’d put down a deposit on our house there — but we just had a good feeling, especially with Cyprus joining the EU,” Parkash says. “We bought for capital growth, but now we make a good rental income too.”

One property in Aphrodite Hills quickly became two with the addition of a one- bedroomed apartment, and a third is on the way. “Our daughter is nine and when she goes to university I think we want to retire there, so now we want somewhere for us to live.”

One of the thrills for the Rhandawas was finding that the British Olympic team visited their resort and used the spa there. Future visits are planned over the next few years, so they are hoping to spot the next Kelly Holmes jogging past one of what will probably be a dozen villas they’ll own by the next Olympics. www.aphroditehills.com

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