The treasured ruins of Apamea, Syria

Apamea cardo, the main street, was once bordered by 1200 10-metre high columns. Photo / Jill Worrall

Local honey is dripping from my roll of thin bread; the tomato in my other hand is warming in the morning sun. Across the narrow wooded ravine sprawls a castle where, more than 800 years ago, the Crusaders fought the Muslim army of Saladin for control.

The Crusaders had created their castle in about 1108, building up the defences on to what had been an earlier Byzantine fortress. But by 1188 it had been claimed by Saladin, after a siege of two days. There'd have been no time for any eating of bread and honey then.

I'd stood on this spot a year earlier while the castle's caretaker, and the first person to be born within its walls since Saladin's days, suggested that, inshallah, when I returned with a group, we could eat breakfast here.

And maybe God did will it because here we are: sitting among the wild pink cyclamen watching the changing light on the castle's walls.

The breakfast provisions were transported from Mr Betar's hotel just down the road. Most of it travelled by car but the kettles of hot water came via a son's motor scooter - me riding pillion while the rider steered us gingerly around corners without scalding his feet.

We had to thread through a flock of coloured sheep, driven by nomads drawn to the area by the spring growth.

Mr Betar's father was the castle's first caretaker after its restoration. He says his mother never took her eyes off him as he played among the ruins and clambered along the walls with their sheer drops.

Today his former playground is strewn with stone catapult balls and masonry blocks yet to be reinstated into collapsed walls. The spring grass that laps around them is strewn with red anemones.

Mr Betar's parents would not be the only ones horrified by the castle's dangers. A health and safety officer would have had palpitations. Which is perhaps why it is such a perfect place (unhindered by safety rules and warning notices) in which to imagine keeping watch along the castle's walls, or riding in over the drawbridge perched across a man-made ravine 28 metres above the valley floor.

Originally cut by the Byzantines and later deepened by the Crusader armies, the ravine, which is 156 metres long, cuts the castle off from rest of the mountain ridge. It's estimated about 50,000 cubic metres of solid rock must have been cut out to create this.

We ponder the works of man later in the day at Apamea, a city on the fertile Al Ghab plain created by Alexander's Selucid Greeks in the 3rd century BC and developed into a flourishing trade centre by the Romans until it was sacked by the Persians in AD540.

What makes Apamea so astonishing (apart from the scarcity of tourists) is the way its 2km-long reconstructed cardo - or main street - rises up from the undulating gentle hills on either side. There were once 1200 10-metre high columns forming this colonnaded thoroughfare.

Once, Anthony and Cleopatra walked here. Today the paved street still bears the grooves of chariot and cart wheels.

They might also have withstood the tread of hundreds of elephants. Apamea was a Selucid elephant taming centre. At one point there were more than 500 stabled here, along with up to 40,000 horses.

Today the hills that must have supported all these animals are alive with village men and children on the hunt for tourists with money to spend. There are postcards, of course, but also "genuine antiques".

A stubbly faced man, his head muffled in black and white chequered kuffeye, sidles up to me and unfolds his palm to display a few worn coins.

"Alexander" he whispers.

"Put them in the museum," I whisper back - well aware they were probably made a few days ago in someone's back yard.

Unabashed he tries elsewhere, only to be replaced by a man who unwraps a tiny blue glass jar from a dirty rag. I love old glass with its impurities and air bubbles but am sure this too will be a fake.

Who knows, however, if treasures still lie underneath the pastures nearby. This city once had a population of 500,000 people and only a fraction of it has been unearthed.

Tragically, many of the glories of Apamea that were discovered by archaeologists have already been lost.

They were taken to Brussels where, during World War II they were destroyed during a bombing raid.

A reminder, if one was ever needed, that treasures should be kept close to a country's heart.

- Jill Worrall

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Pictured above: Apamea cardo, the main street, was once bordered by 1200 10-metre high columns. Photo / Jill Worrall