Bell tolls for yet another corner of the British Empire

The death knell sounded for a forgotten corner of the British Empire yesterday as the United Nations deadline for a peace deal in Cyprus passed with neither side giving ground. The only positive move in the stalled peace talks is that Britain, the island's third stakeholder, will cede territory, having unexpectedly offered this week to sacrifice half the 100sq miles of its two long-held military bases.

This is sovereign territory and the scene of enthusiastic golden jubilee celebrations last year. The anachronism is that it is also Cyprus. Pig-tailed girls in oversized riding hats atop plump gymkhana ponies sounds as English as Thelwell's A Leg at Each Corner. The damp green grass looks like the Home Counties and the saddle club across the lane is abuzz with plummy voices.

Welcome to the unofficial holiday home of the British armed forces. The two huge military bases on the Mediterranean island were Britain's price for granting Cyprus independence in 1960, a windswept corner with more hours of sunshine in a week than some postings see in a season.

On the radio, a DJ with a Midlands twang is reading out birthday messages for listeners. "Happy birthday then to Mike in Kuwait, next up we have Dave. Dave is turning 30 today, so all the best to Dave in Kosovo." Just another morning on British Forces Broadcasting Service. Jim Guy, a chief constable with the bases' miniature police force, took active retirement four years ago, swapping the stress of the Glasgow city centre for the quaint charms of the east coast Dhekelia garrison.

"It's like a little English village," he says. "All of your basic needs are covered and you need never set foot outside it. In my last weekend in Glasgow we had between 200 and 300 incidents of which at least two dozen were very serious. In my first here, there were five, the most serious of which was an offensive slogan painted on a fencepost."

For long-suffering military families who follow their nomadic spouses to some of the most far-flung and unwelcoming places on earth, Cyprus is pay-back time. There is no malaria, no hostile RUF, KLA or IRA. Apart from periodic exercises, work is mostly restricted to mornings, with afternoons and nights free.

"Soldiers serving elsewhere are obviously jealous of all this," one major says. "But we're only here for a couple of years and then it could be off to Bosnia. With the climate and the set-up here you'd be a fool not take advantage of it."

Military installations cover less than 20 per cent of the area of the bases. Behind the wire fences are self-contained British communities with their fire brigade, schools, hospitals and police force. There's even room for the British Animal Rehoming Centre, which does a brisk trade in abandoned dogs when the hunting season closes.

As you drive through the southern Episkopi base, with its trimmed verges, your eye falls on British signposts pointing you in the direction of streets with names that include Gibraltar Close and Londonderry Lane. All are home to semi-detached barrack houses with tiled roofs, built with a bureaucratic disregard for the ferocious summer temperatures.

"It's as British as Hampshire," Rob Need, a base spokesman, says. No one disagrees. At the heart of the garrison is a potent throwback to another colonial era, Cyprus's own Happy Valley. A lush grassy swath of rugby pitches, cricket squares and stables is closed in on one side by terraced olive groves and on the other by vertiginous cliffs. The playing fields, a testament to how far the armed forces will go to enjoy the rest and recreation for which this posting is legendary, could have been transplanted from Harrow. But a once-thriving polo club fell victim to cuts two years ago.

In 1955, Royal Engineers decided the yomp to the beach was too hard, so they bored a 200ft hole through the cliffside to drive there instead. The stunning shingle shoreline became known as Tunnel Beach and is home to a much-loved watersports club. Turkish or Greek Cypriots have to apply in writing to go for a swim.

To the bases' residents, the offer to hand back all this smacks more of cost-cutting and betrayal than a peace gesture. In private, many feel their little spot in the sun was sold out cheaply by an initiative that made little real impact on deadlocked talks. After Hong Kong and Gibraltar, Cyprus seems next in line to fade into history.

The insistence from the Foreign Office that the offer was limited and would not affect the military capability is seen at best as naive and at worst as disingenuous. "You give them an inch and they'll take 98 square miles," one soldier said.

A 300ft high and 600ft wide antenna rising out of a wetland marsh in Akrotiri points to the real future of the British military presence on Cyprus. It is the biggest ear in a strategic listening post eavesdropping across the Middle East and needs few servicemen and women to guard and operate it. The polo field left to seed in Happy Valley was the first part of the holiday home to close. It is far from the last.