I've added this resort to our hotel reviews. If anyone has stayed here please add your review here http://www.holidaytruths.co.uk/

Many thanks

I don't know anything about the resort itself, but its about an hour and a quarter drive from Larnaca Airport

Thanks Pubdog,

Any other information regarding the resort would be very helpful.

Have you seen their website?

Mark

Hi there,

I stayed at the resort last year and am returning again in September.

Are you staying at the hotel or one of the Villas?

Paul.

Yes I have checked the website, but there is no mention of them providing towels, may give them a call reagrding this next week.

We are staying at the Hotel part of the resort.

Many thanks

The hotel will certainly provide towels. They are a means of identifying guests.

There are few travel experiences as intoxicating as the moment you emerge from the gloom of a British winter into the blue skies of a winter sun holiday. That first waft of warm air as you step off the plane, the first glimpse of a sparkling turquoise sea, are like the scene in The Wizard of Oz when black-and-white footage suddenly gives way to glorious technicolour.


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With my husband and teenage sons I had booked into Aphrodite Hills, a purpose-built resort village chosen not for its quirky local charm but for its impressive list of on-site activities. The combination of a tennis academy, championship golf course, riding lessons, spa and beach club should, I hoped, be enough to keep them all in a happy state of permanent activity.

Driving south-west from Paphos, sable-coloured hills on one side, the sea glinting below us on the other, we turned through the entrance gates to Aphrodite Hills and into an altogether greener and more manicured world. Beyond the well-kept borders of bright flowers, we caught a glimpse of the golf course before the distant hum of buggies gave way to the tinkling fountains at the entrance to the resort hotel - the InterContinental Aphrodite Hills Resort Hotel (try saying that after a few glasses of the local plonk).

The resort and hotel take their name from nearby Aphrodite's Rock, the spot where the Greek goddess of love and beauty is supposed to have been born - rising up in true godly style from the foaming seas. It looked as though she was at work in the hotel that day as across the reception lobby tottered an ageing, medallioned guest, groping a Jordan lookalike in a skirt narrower than the average man's tie. We raised eyebrows at one another in alarm. Had we unwittingly strayed into WAG territory?

But out in the beautifully kept hotel grounds, among the carob and olive trees, bougainvillea and hibiscus, the bling factor was mercifully low. Other guests turned out to be a very normal crowd of couples and families, largely, but not exclusively, British. It was half term and a babble of squeaky voices rose up from the well-supervised children's club, the playground with mini-golf and zip wire, and from the large pool.

From the pool area, paths and courtyards lead to the 290 rooms and suites. Our room, like all those I saw, was large, comfortable and furnished with a nod to Cypriot style. French windows opened onto a sunny balcony overlooking the pool - a bonus at autumn half term, but a potentially noisy perk in high season when it might be safer to book a room with a garden view, or one of the slightly more expensive and quieter Club rooms, with their own pool and lounge area.

If the hotel is tricky to navigate, the resort itself is far more confusing. The size of a small town, its villas and apartments are clustered in neat developments with names like Apollo Heights and Theseus Village, dotted around the 578-acre site.

At its heart is the purpose-built village square with sweeping sea views, several restaurants, a medical centre, car hire (essential if you are in an outlying villa), a food store selling Marmite, Cornflakes and other British staples - and even an interior designer to doll up newly sold properties. Most are owned by golf-playing Britons and leased out as holiday lets (guests have the use of all the resort facilities, for a fee). It's still a work in progress, though, and builders were hard at work filling vacant plots last autumn, so anyone renting a self-catering property should check that it's out of earshot of diggers and cement mixers.

Just off the village square is the sleek and stylish Retreat Spa, with its own pool looking out to sea, a sequence of hot and cold rooms, a hammam, sauna and vast range of expertly executed treatments (though watch out for the Thai massage if you're feeling fragile). It's a wonderfully calming place - one of the best spas I've ever come across - and if they had handed me the keys to a treatment room I would have happily spent the whole holiday there.

Beyond the spa is a state-of-the-art gym (you can buy membership by the week) and beyond that the tennis academy. Aphrodite Hills has set out to rival luxury sports resorts in Portugal and Spain and it certainly hasn't stinted on the nine pristine and floodlit clay and hard courts. A new head coach is due to arrive from England this month and will, I'm told, continue the programme of group lessons for all ages and skill levels (from about £10 per person), as well as organising private lessons.

We had a vigorous, if punishing, family lesson which had us chasing balls from the four corners of the court and then, with barely time for a shower, we were squeezing into long trousers for yet more sporting challenge. The stables are sited at the furthest extremity of the resort, where the groomed landscape gives way to rolling hills and olive groves. An hour's hack through the herb-scented countryside on their easy-going, tourist-friendly horses gives you a feel of the real Cyprus, with sweeping views across this corner of the island and out to sea.

But the pride of Aphrodite is the golf course. Golf is not my favourite sport (just a glance at the list of the golf rules on the website is enough to put you off), but the coaches were so charmingly unstuffy that I found myself actually enjoying a lesson under the big white sails that shade the driving range.

And my sons and husband were bowled over by the championship course - although they seemed to have as much fun manoeuvring their buggies up and down the deep, ball-guzzling ravine that splits the course as they did from actually playing. You're not allowed out without a handicap, but turf-bashers like me can swing away on a small practice area. And if you can switch off from all the golf talk, the clubhouse restaurant, with views over the course, is a pleasant spot for lunch.

Elsewhere at Aphrodite Hills the food was mixed: reasonable without being exciting at the hotel restaurants and poolside bar (although I can't vouch for Leander restaurant, which was closed during our stay), with service ranging from thoroughly charming to East European brusque. Over at the village square we ate at Zimi restaurant (flaccid pizza and pasta), Pithari Tavern (a good, reasonably priced taverna food, packed every night) and the French restaurant L'Atelier Brasserie (expensive but with the best cooking in the resort). Other outlets in the multicultural square include a sports pub, a Japanese/Chinese restaurant and a chic little place in the spa garden where you cook your food on hot stones.

With so much to do on site, few guests venture out into greater Cyprus, unless it's to take the hotel shuttle bus down to the Beach Club. But one of the high points of our visit was an afternoon trip to the Tombs of the Kings in Paphos, where we climbed down into the ancient subterranean structures, skillfully cut into the rock some time in the third century BC.

Even better were the astonishingly beautiful and well-preserved mosaics in the remains of grand Roman villas at Paphos Archeological Park, a Unesco World Heritate site so impressive that our teenagers voluntarily unplugged their iPods.

But this short burst of culture was more than enough for them and they were keen to get back to the golf, the tennis and the hotel pool.

If you can budget for all the extras, Aphrodite Hills is a great place for a sporty family holiday, although our visit has had some unfortunate repercussions. Now, whenever I come through the front door at home, I risk life and limb negotiating three bulky new sets of golf clubs.