The First Week in South Africa
With the excesses of Christmas firmly in the rear view mirror it was time to focus on another year of travel.
Our first stop was Heathrow – Terminal 5, for a British Airways flight to Johannesburg. We had a month in South Africa to look forward too. The 12 hour flight from London to Johannesburg wasn’t too bad but we arrived off the overnight flight having had only a couple of hours sleep each.
First stop once through immigration, was to pick up a SIM card which was easy enough as just outside the airside exit there were three telecoms shop all with different offerings. We opted for Vodacom and were online in a few minutes.
With that sorted we headed over to car rentals to pick up our wheels for the next few weeks. We’d opted for the cheapest car available from a company called Woodford. This turned out to be a Toyota Starlet and Woodford as it happens is the South African name for Alamo/National. Our car was pretty new and very clean (not for long) and we were soon on our way.
We’d decided to immediately head South away from Johannesburg and we drove for just over an hour to a small town called Parys, just over 100km from the city.
By this time fatigue was catching up with us so we had 40 winks before going for a wander around town and to find some food.
Our introduction to South African night life was at a bar called “Jimmy Jaggers” which seemed to be the most lively place in town. We had a fantastic burger each and a much less interesting beer – Castle Light – which we won’t be having again.
We were seriously flagging though so we headed back to the hotel – Le Grand Chateau (a misnomer if ever there was one but decent enough), for some much needed sleep.
The next morning we carried on heading south to our first proper destination of the trip. This was our introduction to South African roads or should I say to South African potholes. We followed google maps on the most direct path which seemed to be a main road but it was full of deep potholes and what should have been a 3 hour journey turned into 4.5 hours. We learnt our lesson though and will be sticking to the single digit highways where possible from now on rather than blindly trusting Google Maps.
A little jaded by the drive and probably not yet recovered from the flight, we eventually arrived at Clarens. This very cute little town can’t help but lift your spirits with its large grassy square in the middle surrounded by restaurants, bars and shops. The receptionist at our hotel the night before had recommended the Clarens Brewery so we made this our first pit stop, where we very much enjoyed trying their flight of gins and flight of beers.
After pre-dinner drinks we went next door to a Portuguese restaurant which was great. We both ordered fish after overloading on red meat in the Balkans for 7 months. I ordered the Kingklip which I had on a previous trip to South Africa 20 years before and it was just as delicious as I’d remembered.
In the morning we were up early to head down the road to Golden Gates Highland National Park but when we got to the car we heard some noises coming from the engine. Somehow on our drive the previous day we had managed to pick up a hitchhiker. A small bird that had gone through the grill at the front of the car and was now sitting in the space in front of the radiator.
We spent about 30 minutes gently trying to coax him back out of the grill using 2 spoons from our accommodation but the more tried the more he hid at the back. We didn’t know what else to do so set off for our day at the National Park.
This park has some animals but it is really known for its scenery, so we headed off on some scenic drives through the park. We did see some Wildebeest but they were a long way from the road and we couldn’t get a clear look at them. The wildlife highlight of the day was seeing a baboon who galloped away when we drove past.
The park itself is spectacular though and we did a couple of short walks from the visitor centre to a narrow canyon called Echo Ravine and to some cliffs with Mushroom like overhangs. Also near the visitor centre is a waterfall with a natural pool underneath which was a perfect place to cool off on what had turned into a pretty hot day.
The only disappointment of the day was our visit to a Vulture hide where there were no vultures to be seen.
On our return to Clarens we went to fill up with petrol and with the help of the attendant (no self service filling stations in South Africa) we managed to get our hitchhiking bird out of the grill. I moved him into the shade to recover but I think sadly his chances of survival after his ordeal were probably low.
The next day we continued making our way South with two days driving and a stop in Bloemfontein to overnight at a guesthouse with a pool. The pool was very welcome as this part of South Africa is very hot in the summer and we saw temperatures as high as 36c.
We stopped off on the way to see the Gariep Dam which is on the High Veld creating a bit of an oasis in a very hot area.
Our destination was the town of Cradock which was a dusty small town with what seemed like few merits. However it is right next door to Mountain Zebra National Park which we wanted to visit.
The gates opened at 7am so it was an early start for us as we wanted to spend a full day at the park.
The roads in the park are all gravel – apart from a short stretch of tarmac around the visitor centre. You have to go to the visitor centre at some stage during your visit as this is where you pay and receive an exit permit to enable you to get out of the park.
Mountain Zebra National Park is a fairly mountainous park of 284 km2 with a number of loop roads most of which are in pretty good condition although a little rough for our rather dainty hire car.
The park was set up to protect the endangered Cape Mountain Zebra which have been brought back from the brink of extinction. We were worried that we wouldn’t see any zebra but we shouldn’t have been because there were a lot of them and we had some fairly close encounters.
The park does have a few lions and cheetahs but we were not lucky enough to see them. However there are loads of deer including kudu, eland, springbok, steenbok, gemsbok, blesbok and we saw all of these.
After game viewing all morning we were ready for a break and we drove to the rest area which is a few km’s from the visitor centre. Apart from a couple of viewpoints this is the only place in the park that you are allowed to get out of your car. This is a safe fenced area with a lovely swimming pool.
We were the only ones there and we proceeded to get some sandwiches out of the car to have lunch on a picnic table in the shade. At which point a monkey ran in grabbed the sandwiches and ran off with me chasing the little bugger to no effect. Ah well another lesson learned and one skipped lunch definitely won’t kill me.
We spent a couple of hours swimming and relaxing before heading back out for a late afternoon game drive.
While we were deep in the park the blue skies quickly darkened and fat drops of rain started falling. It wasn’t long until the rain was torrential and the roads all turned to rivers. We later learnt that this was the first rain in six months. Fearing that we would get stuck we started heading for the exit and after a fairly hairy drive we made it. Our little Toyota Starlet did us proud!
The next day we headed back into the park for another long game drive and it was amazing. Most of the water from the previous nights torrential rain was gone, the sun was back out and the roads were much easier to drive on.
We had a lovely morning in the park spotting some new animals and some familiar animals before heading off around lunchtime to get back on the road heading South towards Port Elizabeth and the start of the Garden Route.
The Long Road Home
Moving onto Montenegro we felt as if we were starting the proper part of our journey home, although there were a few outstanding places we still wanted to visit.
Our first port of call was Ulcinj. This was a small town that was founded in the 5th century BC. It has an old town and castle on top of one of the headlands but over the years the town has expanded and now wraps around the whole bay.
We explored the castle and old town but had to park well outside of the town centre and cycle in as the roads were becoming more and more narrow.
Ulcinj was just a quick stop and we continued on our way to the main attraction – Stari Bar, which is somewhere we have wanted to visit for a while. Stari Bar is actually a few kilometres inland from the new town – Bar, and sits atop a hill (of course it does!), overlooking the new town.
Stari Bar has changed hands many times over the years, being controlled by the Venetians, the Serbians, the Hungarians and the Ottoman Empire. It was finally captured back from the Turks in 1877 by the Montenegrins but it was eventually abandoned in 1977 after an earthquake destroyed the aqueduct that brought water to the city.
The old city has been restored in part and the overgrown ruins make a peaceful place to wander around but there are only a handful of buildings you can actually go in.
We couldn’t find anywhere to stay overnight here so we decided to drive to the old capital of the country, Cetinje. As we headed along the coast we drove past the island of Sveti Stefan which is now a very upscale hotel with rooms starting from €1,000 per night. Unsurprisingly we didn’t stop here for the night.
Cetinje was the Capital of independent Montenegro from 1878 to 1918, after which Montenegro became part of Yugoslavia. The capital of Montenegro was moved to Podgorica in 1946.
Despite being the old royal capital, Cetinje is a quiet, small town but, it is home to most of the museums of Montenegro and we were lucky as we arrived on a bank holiday when all the museums are free to enter. Not being able to resist a freebie, we got stuck in!
First on the list was King Nikola’s Palace. Nikola 1st was the reigning monarch in Montenegro from 1860 to 1918 when he was deposed and Montenegro joined the other Balkan states to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, renamed Yugoslavia in 1929.
Many of the rooms of the palace were richly appointed and some of the furniture was very ornate. We then visited Billiard’s Palace, home of Prince-Bishop Petar II Petrovic-Njegos (more widely known as Njegos) who ruled from 1830 to 1851. If you find yourself in Cetinje and don’t want to visit all the museums, we found Billiard’s Palace to be the most interesting and informative.
After visiting the two Palaces we moved onto the Ethnographic Museum, which has numerous traditional costumes from different regions of Montenegro.
We learnt that Montenegro had been a very poor country and that 19th century Montenegrin society was considered primitive by its neighbours meaning that Montenegro was fairly divorced from the politics of the region.
After all that exertion we took a pitstop at one of the cafes on the main square where we enjoyed a warming hot chocolate before heading back to the camper for the night.
Early the next morning we drove onto the current Capital City, Podgorica.
We were able to park right next to the Cathedral and then explored the town by bike. To be honest it didn’t take very long. For a Capital City we were surprised at how little there was to see here, other than the Cathedral, which is quite impressive, a new suspension bridge, the Old Roman Ribnica Bridge and an Ottoman era clock tower. You certainly wouldn’t be missing much if you decided to give this city a miss.
After visiting Podgorica we drove up into the mountains on a road we had already driven in the summer. We were heading to Mrtvica canyon which we had skipped in the summer because of the heat.
I got up early the next day and headed out for the hike from the main road to the canyon. It’s actually quite a hike to get to the start of the canyon, around 5km, and after that it was another 5km’s along the canyon to reach a channel that had been cut into the cliff walls which was part of an old military trail.
One of the first stops in the canyon is the ruin of a bridge – this actually links a couple of campsites with the trail but was washed away a few years ago.
Next up was the “Gate of Wishes” where it is said that if you throw a coin through it your wish will be granted. I don’t know about wishes but I was pleasantly surprised to find a rare Fire Salamander crawling around right there.
It was definitely a fun hike and I was glad to be here in the autumn rather than in the height of summer, as it was a 20km hike with over 700m of climbing – so quite hard work.
That afternoon we headed down out of the mountains and went right back to sea level to the town of Kotor. We had actually been here before a few years ago so we were just stopping off for the night.
Kotor is a lovely city – like a small version of Dubrovnik – and, as there were no cruise ships in town, it was relatively deserted which was lovely. Parking here is at a premium, and we paid €20 to stay overnight in a car park with no services. However, the location was excellent, only 300m from the entrance to the city.
We were beginning to clock up the miles as we had that date with a ferry in our minds, so after only 1 night in Kotor we left Montenegro and headed back into Croatia.
Having previously visited Dubrovnik and being on a tight deadline we drove right past it, stopping only for a quick photo opportunity. You used to have to drive through Bosnia to continue up the Croatian coast but a big new bridge links the Peljesac peninsula back to the mainland now making the journey much more straightforward.
After reaching the Makarska coast we found a camp site for a couple of nights to take a break from the driving. The prices are much better in the off-season and we parked up in a pitch overlooking a pretty little cove. The beach was small so I am not sure how it would fare in the Summer months, but at this time of year it was perfect.
We were also really lucky with the weather and had a beautiful sunny day which was warm enough for us to spend on the beach swimming and sunbathing (in mid November), quite a shock as we were in hats and gloves the day before in Kotor. We had even packed away our shorts and swimsuits and dug out the hot water bottle as the weather had been much colder recently as we moved northwards.
Previously on our way through Croatia we missed out on visiting Split, so we wanted to pop in and take a look this time around. The only motorhome parking in town is near the football stadium, in an industrial area that felt pretty sketchy to say the least but there were other campers there so we weren’t alone.
From the car park it was an easy cycle into town and we started by exploring the old town. It was a bit of a shock to the system as there were hordes of people everywhere. We soon realised that not only was their a huge cruise ship in the harbour but there was also a football match involving Croatia on that evening.
Fortunately in the afternoon the cruise ship passengers disappeared and the football fans seemed to settle into the harbour front bars so things calmed down enormously.
Split is the second biggest city in Croatia and was established as a Greek colony in the 2nd or 3rd century BC. In 305 AD it became the seat of Roman Emperor Diocletian and the heart of the old town is the Diocletian Palace.
We decided to stay in the vicinity of Split for another day and visit the Roman ruins of Solona which are on the outskirts of the town.
We parked near the old Ampitheatre of the city and walked across the site from there. There was no way to pay at this entrance so we were fortunate to have a free visit.
The ruins of the city are mostly just the foundations but there was a very interesting mass grave in a long trench that had a line of sarcophagi in it.
Above Salona is a cool castle called Klis Fortress. After the fall of the Romans this was the seat of a number of Croatian kings and was instrumental in defending Croatia from the Mongols and the Ottomans.
It has changed hands many times throughout history and has been controlled by the the Hungaro-Croatians, Turks, Romans, the Knights Templar, Venetians, Austrians, French and Yugoslavs.
This fortress was one of the locations for Game of Thrones and, if you were a fan of the series, it was the castle in Meereen where Daenerys freed the slaves.
After spending the night below the fortress we got back on the road. The weather was definitely turning against us and as we moved further North we drove through some absolutely foul weather that stopped us visiting some places on our list. Well that just leaves something for next time.
We had been planning to head inland to visit Zagreb and Ljubljana but decided against this when the weather forecast was predicting nighttime temperatures as low as -12c. We’d need more than 1 hot water bottle to cope with that! So we decided to stick near the coast and visit Trieste where the temperatures were significantly warmer.
On the way through Slovenia to get to Trieste the weather improved although we were driving with snow on either side of the road. This made us worry a bit about the journey to come from Trieste through Slovenia and Austria as we didn’t have chains or winter tyres, which are legally mandated.
We arrived in Trieste and by the next day the sun was shining and things had warmed up nicely. We hopped on our bikes and off we went.
First stop was the San Giusto Castle which sits on a small hill above the harbour front, where the city centre is located. After Trieste came under the control of the Austrian empire in 1382, the Imperial Court ordered the construction of the fortress. The building work was lengthy to say the least and lasted from 1468 to 1636. After the Austrian Imperial Captains ceased to reside in the castle in 1750 it was converted for use as a garrison and a prison.
The castle has great views of the city from its ramparts and the museum room inside has a display of medieval weaponry which shows the development of weapons throughout history.
After gaining height to get to the castle we could free wheel back down to the harbour front – made only a little more difficult by the cobbled streets which were hard work on our wheels and our posteriors!
At the centre of Trieste is the Piazza Unita Italia, which is the largest square situated next to the sea in Europe. Several enormous and important buildings line the square including the Town Hall, the Palazzo del Lloyd Triestino, the Palazzo del Governo and the Palazzo Pitteri.
Running through the old town from here is the Canale Grande, which was a small waterway that allowed cargo barges to off load their goods directly into the city.
The Canal is lined with restaurants and we had a lovely lunch sitting in the sun and fending off the seagulls.
A few kilometres past the harbour is a national monument on the site of the an old Rice husking plant that became a concentration camp in WW2. It is called Risiera di San Sabba and was used for the detention and execution of political prisoners and also as a transit centre for Jews who were being transported mostly to Auschwitz. This was a sombre end to our stay in this beautiful town.
After leaving Trieste we had some big days of driving ahead of us. Our first drive day took us all the way from Trieste to Munich, where we travelled through a snowy landscape but thankfully with clear roads.
After a night in Munich we drove through Germany and stayed at a football stadium and bowls club close to the border with Luxembourg, before another big day where we ended up at Bruges. We had moved through the coldest part of Europe and Bruges was much warmer than it had been further South.
We had been to Bruges almost 20 years earlier but we thought it was time to revisit and see the Christmas decorations lighting up the town.
We made our way into town from the well-positioned Aire on the outskirts and spent a pleasant, if grey and drizzly day, wandering the sites, and eating and drinking. We visited the Torture museum which although very gruesome was actually really interesting. It’s quite horrific the medieval ways that were used to inflict pain.
As we were nearing the end of our trip we decided to splash out on a nice lunch and visited a gastro pub, which had 400 beers on the menu. This made choosing a beer to have with lunch much harder than picking what to eat. Most of the beers were 7% or higher alcohol so fortunately they only came in bottles. The beer I actually chose was called De Poes and very tasty it was too. The food was also excellent.
We did potter briefly around the Christmas market in the central square and although it was very pretty with the Christmas tree and the lights it was still disappointing, filled with the same gifts as all the other Christmas markets and selling overpriced food and drink.
Belgium is of course renowned for its chocolate and by early evening we were in need of a pick-me-up, so we stopped off at a chocolate tea room for a much needed hot chocolate. The way they serve them is to give you a cup of hot milk and then you choose some additional plates of yummy things to add to the hot milk, including a bath bomb type ball of chocolate which melts in the milk. Needless to say they were delicious.
After Bruges it was almost time to head home and we only had one more stop to make on the way to France, in the town of Veurne. Veurne is a very small town but like many of the small towns in France and Belgium it has a lot of beautiful old buildings. In Veurne we visited the old townhall and court room and climbed the bell tower which was used during WW2 as a sniper and spotting tower.
We also stopped off for a cheeky sticky bun at a fantastic bakery in town but we had burnt a lot of calories climbing that tower!
After our brief visit to Veurne it was time to head to Calais and board our ferry home to spend Christmas with family and friends. And so ended our 7 month trip around the Balkans. We visited 15 countries in total and loved every single one of them (but definitely some more than others!).
Revisiting Albania
Leaving the Peloponnese after 6 weeks we felt like we still had unfinished business and with so much left to see, we look forward to returning to this region of Greece in the future. But, with a long way to go to get home and after taking six months to get to this point we only had 1 month to make it to Calais in time for our pre-booked ferry crossing.
The first question was how to cross the Gulf of Patras. We had taken the bridge on the way over but this time we wanted to try out the cheaper ferry option. It was well sign posted – until you got down to the dockside, and then there were no signs at all and ferries in a number of different places. We somehow managed to figure it out and drove onto a waiting ferry – although we were a little nervous as to whether we had chosen correctly until a man appeared at our window with the tickets.
The ferry was much cheaper (you pay once onboard) and it only take 20 minutes. The views of the bridge are much better than when you are on the bridge and we were soon across to the other side.
We decided to spend the night in a free park-up on the beach just near the town of Nafpaxtos, where we were all alone and had a great view across to the Peloponnese. After a refreshing swim in the morning just a stones throw from the camper, we headed off to explore the town.
Nafpaxtos has a lovely old Venetian harbour where a few small fishing boats are moored surrounded by cafes and bars and just a short walk from the town square. We stopped here for what turned out to be a very good hot chocolate and some idle people watching.
On a hill above the town sits an imposing Venetian Castle accessible via the narrow, ancient streets. It’s a very nice town for a stopover and I think in season the fish restaurants along the beach would be heaving.
We needed to get some miles under our belt but couldn’t resist stopping off at the Roman Aqueduct of Nicopolis, near Preveza, for a quick poke around. The aqueduct was one of the most important structures of the Roman period in North Western Greece. It was built to provide Nicopolis with clean water and runs for 50 kms from the springs of Agios Georgios. If you take the staircase and then scramble up and along the hillside a short distance you can see the channel through which the water travelled, a short section of which is complete with an arched roof.
Our last pitstop in Greece before hitting the Albanian border was Ioannina, where we stayed in the same lakeside spot as last time when we were heading South. Only this time there were no other campers – the season is definitely over. We even revisited the same restaurant as before and enjoyed their amazing gyros, but this time we were sitting inside with the fire blazing.
We weren’t having the best weather this time around and late that night the wind really picked up. With the camper rocking from side to side sleep seemed unlikely, so we made a late night call to get up, get dressed and move away from the shoreline, finding shelter further along the road behind a huge hedge where we were better protected from the elements.
And that was it for Greece, the next day we drove the short distance to the Albanian border for some unfinished business.
This time around getting border insurance was much easier with sellers at the border. So after only 5 minutes we were across the border and on our way, with a plan to visit some of the lowland towns that we had avoided last time due to the extreme heat.
First stop – Gjirokaster, a regional capital and ancient town perched on the side of a very steep hill. Cycling into town from our campsite was a real challenge. We definitely took a wrong turn (or two) and ended up on a cobbled street with a gradient that must have been around 30%. Needless to say, we got off and pushed our bikes.
The old centre of town is lovely but very small, consisting of only a couple of streets lined with cafes and souvenir shops.
Our first destination was actually just outside the old centre behind the townhall, where the entrance to an extensive cold war nuclear bunker is located. Tours were on the hour and tickets can be bought from the townhall.
The nuclear bunker was built in the 1970’s to house 300 government officials and party elites. It was unknown to the locals until the 1990’s after the Hoxha government had fallen. When it was discovered, the angry local populace stripped most of the fittings from the bunker leaving the bare rooms and tunnels that we see today. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the bunker is that there were only 4 toilets for 300 men – I am not sure how they would have managed but luckily it was never put to the test as just like Tito’s bunker in Bosnia, it was never used.
We also toured a really interesting traditional merchants house – the Skenduli house, which is still owned and run by descendants of the original owners. This was a traditional Ottoman townhouse of a wealthy family, that was built in the 18th century.
The woodwork, fireplaces and windows were beautiful and the secret stairways were fascinating but without doubt the most stunning feature of the house was the so called “Men’s Room” which was only used for family weddings. Unfortunately no pictures were allowed in this room but it was very ornate and richly decorated.
At the top of town, there is, like in most towns, a large castle, built from the 12th century onwards. The castle was built to defend the river valley it overlooks, which was a key strategic route. It fell into Ottoman hands in 1419 and Ali Pasha significantly expanded and remodelled it, including adding the clock tower which was built to enable people to see the time for prayers easily. During the communist era it was used as a prison but ever since has been refurbished as a heritage site.
Displayed in the castle is the wreckage of an American fighter jet, a Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star, which was supposedly shot down during the cold war. The pilot was initially held as a spy but he was eventually released to return home.
Gjirokaster is a great little town and we really enjoyed our time there but if there is a next time, we definitely won’t be cycling!
Next up was the archaeological site of Butrint, but on our way through we stopped off at the famous Blue Eye Spring. This is the second Blue Eye that we have visited in Albania and was just as busy as the last one in Theth.
The Blue Eye itself is a 2km walk from the car park although they do rent bikes and escooters to make it easier and in peak season there is also a tourist bus. The site itself was fairly small and must get completely overwhelmed in the summer but the colour of the water was amazing.
The water absolutely pumps out of the spring which is said to be more than 50m deep although no one has actually dived to the bottom. The flow rate is 18,400 litres per second and the water is only a few degrees above freezing, however this does not deter some locals from swimming despite the numerous no swimming signs.
The Butrint Archaelogical park is well worth a visit and we spent a good few hours wandering around the site and museum. It was one of the most important Roman towns in Albania and is located on a headland on the coast that is surrounded by water on all sides other than a narrow access road. The town is directly across the sea from Corfu.
However Butrint remained important well after the Romans had departed as both the Venetians and the Ottomans used it as a port with their fleets sheltering in the lagoon behind the town. It did eventually fall into decline as rising water levels regularly flooded the area and it wasn’t rediscovered until the 1900’s.
Having explored Butrint, we drove along the coast and up over the scenic Llogara Pass at 1,027m. We found a lovely secluded meadow away from the road and while watching the sunset were treated to a sighting of a young deer. This was a great park-up for the night, our only problem was getting back to the road the next morning. It took a few attempts and some road re-building with rocks in the vicinity, but we eventually made it up the short but rough access path with grit, wet earth and loose stones flying everywhere. Sometimes we forget we are not still in The Beast and the poor Beastlet gets a real workout!
Once back on the road and down the other side of the pass you reach the busy town of Vlore. We didn’t explore Vlore itself but we did stop briefly to visit St Mary’s Monastery, which is built on an island in a lagoon and connected to the mainland by a boardwalk. It is a pretty location but the site itself is small and there were swarms of bugs, so with no reason to hang around we carried on to our next destination – Apollonia.
Apollonia was founded in the 7th century BC and was a prosperous city that flourished until it was partially destroyed in the 3rd Century AD by an earthquake. At its peak the city housed over 60,000 people.
The site is fairly small with much of the remains of the city unexcavated and under brush. There is however a decent small museum at the entrance to the site which is next to a church and the most interesting ruins are concentrated around the Bouleuterion or city council building which was modelled on a temple.
Apollonia makes a pleasant diversion but it is definitely not an essential stopover.
Inland from Apollonia is the city of Berat, otherwise known as the “City of a Thousand Windows” due to the architecture of the old town.
There is a new town that sits next to the river but from here you can’t actually see the old town and so, on first sight we were a little underwhelmed and wondered what all the fuss was about, especially having visited Gjirokaster which has similar buildings. However, if you follow the course of the river you reach the old town area where on both sides of the river, the old style buildings can be found which give the city its nickname.
But first of course we cycled up yet another steep hill to a fortress overlooking a town, although this one also encompassed a town within its own walls. From here you get views across Berat new town but it is much more difficult to see the old town itself which is nestled directly below it at the foot of cliffs.
Unfortunately we were a little underwhelmed with Berat, which I find is often the case with the very touristy places where our expectations have been raised from all the hype. There isn’t actually much to do in Berat and although it was nice to wander the streets we felt Gjirokaster was without doubt the more interesting place to visit.
Having been on the move for a while we were feeling in need of some rest and laundry facilities, so we left Berat and set off back towards the coast where we settled down at Sunset Camping for a couple of nights. It was definitely low season as, apart from 1 other camper, we had the place to ourselves.
After a little time relaxing we girded are loins to head into Tirana, the capital of Albania but captured a couple of interesting sights on our way.
A remote castle and more interestingly an old cold war submarine base, although we got shouted at for photographing this so made a very hasty retreat! It is signposted and on google maps so we weren’t really sure what the problem was but with angry men gesticulating and shouting in a foreign language we weren’t about to stick around and find out.
We decided to spend a couple of days exploring Tirana and based ourselves at a hotel that let us park in the gated parking lot just a few kilometres from the centre of the city.
First up was the Djati Express cable car. A 4,670m long journey which takes you to the top of the Djati mountain at 1613m above sea level. There are views of the city from here but it was pretty hazy so they were not the best. At the top of the cable car there are a lot of things to do, although they are focussed mainly around families. The one thing we were tempted by (crazy golf) was closed. It was quite expensive to ride cable car and not really worth the money however it did get us a parking space in the area which we needed to go to the nearby Bunk’Art.
Bunk’Art is Hoxha’s main nuclear bunker for the government of Albania which has been preserved in good condition. There are a number of art installations in the bunker but most of it is just touring round the bunker as it was in the cold war era. The most surprising part was the full theatre which was designed to fit the entire Albanian government at one time.
It always surprises me in these bunkers how basic the accommodation is, even for the President. I think if it had ever come to it, trying to survive in these bunkers would have been pretty hard. They also only seem to have had three months worth of supplies so venturing out 3 months after the nuclear holocaust would have been pretty grim.
On our second day in Tirana we cycled from our hotel down a steep, fast and busy main road into the flat centre of town. We had gone in on a Sunday, our favourite day to explore capital cities as they are generally much quieter.
There are lots of modern buildings in the centre of the city and actually not many old structures. In fact the oldest building we saw was a mosque right off the central square. This was the busiest place in the city and seemed to be the no.1 destination for any tourists.
We enjoyed a really interesting visit to the House of Leaves museum, which started life as an Obstetrics Clinic, before being occupied by the Gestapo during WW11 and later as the headquarters of the secret police during the Hoxha years. This is a great museum which explores the surveillance and interrogation of the population during the communist years. The surveillance was widespread and very high tech for the times and a very large number of people were highlighted as a danger to the state. Of these a substantial number were arrested, interrogated and ultimately executed.
It was a good example of the way Communist states ruled by terror in those years.
On our way out of town we stopped off to look at Hoxha’s old house. You can only peer at it over the fences but it is quite nice. Apparently it was linked by tunnels to some of the key government buildings including the House of Leaves.
Not wanting to cycle back up the steep, busy main road to the hotel we decided to cycle back through Tirana Park just outside the centre of town. It is a lovely park with winding cycle and pedestrian paths but of course it was uphill and it became a bit challenging when our path became blocked by the President’s residence. Needless to say we got lost and ended up having to cycle/walk up a narrow trail through some gardens before finding the right road to get back to Hotel Baron where we had left the camper.
Tirana was our last place of interest to visit in Albania but before heading across the border back into Montenegro, we spent our last night in Albania at Camping Australia. This is a lovely new campsite set on the Buna river just outside Skhoder. We had a nice dinner here where we chatted with the friendly Albanian/Australian owner who was actually flying to Australia the next day to escape the winter. We have the same idea but first we need to head North and home.
The Peloponnese – Around the Fingers
When we finally managed to drag ourselves away from the beautiful beach in the Easternmost finger of the Peloponnese we decided we needed to pick up the pace a little bit or we would run out of our allotted time for Greece.
The next place to visit was the town of Nafplio. Nafplio is the regional capital of this part of the Peloponnese and although it is a small town, it has a large harbour.
There is a big castle overlooking the town called the Fortress of Palamidi. With 999 steps up to the castle from the town it could be a bit of a hike but fortunately there is also a road and small car park outside the main gate. Unlike many of the castles in this area this one is relatively new and was in fact built by the Venetians at the start of the 19th Century.
The fortress is actually huge with a number of terraces that stretch across the plateau on top of the hill overlooking the town. The further you go from the central keep the more run down it becomes.
There used to be a link between this castle and another castle directly above the town but this has disappeared over the years. The second smaller castle is much less well preserved but is free to visit and you can see the clock tower that sits just above the town.
The town itself is very pleasant with narrow shady streets lined with cafes and restaurants which provide a welcome respite from the heat of the day.
From up in the castle you can look down across the town and harbour and to the Bourtzi Castle, which is located on the island of Agioi Theodoroi.
Inland from Nafplio are a couple of sites of ancient ruins. The first that we visited is Tiryns and the second and much bigger site is Mycenae. These two sites are famous for their well preserved Cyclopean masonry. This was a form of Mycenaean architecture using massive limestone boulders. We visited Tiryns first which has up to 17m thick walls where tunnels run through them. We managed to squeeze a short way into one of the tunnels but were unable to go any further. The walls are impressive but once you enter the site and climb to the top of the city there are only foundations to see.
Tiryns is a hill fort which was occupied for 7,000 years from before the Bronze Age. It was part of the Mycenaean empire and in myth is said to be the location from which Hercules performed his Twelve Labours.
Unfortunately, like many of the Greek archaeological sites we have visited, there is a real lack of good informative signage so it is difficult to know what you are looking at without some prior research.
After Tiryns we moved on to Mycenae which is renowned for being the seat of Agamemnon who was responsible for the siege of Troy in the Trojan War. Between 1600 BC and 1100 BC Greek civilization is known as Mycenaen in reference to the dominance of Mycenae at this time.
These ruins are much more impressive and as such were quiet busy with coaches of tour groups. The ruins as we see them today have two main gates – the biggest of which, the Lion gate, is synonymous with the site itself.
Perhaps the most notable thing for us at the site were the big circular Tholos tombs. In fact just off the site is one such tomb in which the structure is fully intact. These tombs were often used for more than one burial and personal possessions would also be placed inside the tomb to ease their journey to the afterlife or as offerings to Gods.
After the two ancient sites we headed to a more modern one, the Larissa Castle of Argos, which can be seen across the valley from Mycenae.
Although there has been a fortress here since Mycenaean times the modern castle was built in the 12th century.
Nafplio had held our attention for a few days but we were in need of a campsite to dump our waste and fill our water so we headed south to a well known and regarded campsite called Semeli Camping.
The campsite has a beautiful beach and free to use of their sun loungers (which isn’t always the case). We enjoyed a day lounging on the beach and sundowner beers while watching an amazing sunset.
We had to keep moving though so the next port of call for us was right at the bottom of the second finger, the town of Monemvasia. There is no motorhome parking throughout the town except on a pier sticking out into the sea at one end of the town. During our visit in October this pier was full of motorhomes so it must be all but impossible to park in the high season. However we were now far enough from Athens to be out of the range of day tripping tourists so everything was much quieter.
The modern town of Monemvasia is along the coast with a modern harbour. This isn’t the draw for this town though. The main draw is the narrow necked peninsula, which is the site of the ancient town of Monemvasia. The town is built entirely on the backside of the rocky cliffs of the promontory so it is entirely hidden from the mainland as a form of defence.
The old town of Monemvasia consists of a well restored and lived-in town with lots of bars, restaurants and hotels alongside old churches. This is a walled town and looks to be very well defended as the walls abut the rough seas and look all but impossible to breach. In fact, originally the only way to the city was by boat but eventually a paved pathway was built to provide access. The town is known as the “Gibraltar of the East” as a result of its location.
The second part of the city sits on a high plateau of the promontory, up 50m high cliffs.
The whole time we were at Monemvasia the wind blew strongly. I cautiously flew my drone for some shots but had to be very careful as the wind was almost too strong and on one attempt I wasn’t able to make it back to the start position so had to move along the city to get to a point where I could land it.
We decided to treat ourselves to a dinner of seafood while we were here and on a cold and windy evening went to a seafront restaurant in the new town which was practically deserted. The massive platter of seafood that we were served was superb and we thoroughly enjoyed it, not least because throughout the Balkans there had been very little fish on the menu. Afterwards of course there was the obligatory Limoncello and some custard tarts to finish.
Leaving Monemvasia we drove West along the coast and stopped at a sandy beach to visit the shipwreck of the Dimitros. This is a 67m long 1000 ton cargo ship that was used to smuggle cigarettes between Turkey and Italy before being seized by port authorities. It was deliberately released from the port and set on fire to hide the evidence.
The port where it was released from was the town of Gythio which was where we headed next.
Gythio is a seaside town built up the hillside from the harbour but it only took an hour or two to wander around as there are no specific tourist spots.
We ended our day at Mani Camping, a huge campsite on a very long sandy beach. This was just a quick stop for us though as we wanted to keep moving.
We drove inland to the ruined city of Mystras but first we stopped off at a mountain overlook for the night. There was a lovely view and when we arrived, a fire truck was parked there. It was a small space, only really big enough for two vehicles so we asked if they were happy for us to stay before settling down. It is quite common to see fire trucks parked at mountain lookouts, they spend the whole day there watching for fires and leave in the evening. We spent a quiet night here and in the morning headed to Mystras for opening time. Mystras is near the town of Sparta but there, all the ruins of Ancient Sparta have been destroyed.
Mystras has two entrances, an upper and a lower gate. We went to the upper car park first, which accesses the fortress at the top of the city. This gives easy access to the Frankish Castle which caps the peak of the hill on which Mystras is located. The castle was built in 1249 by the Frankish leader Guillaume de Villehardouin. The castle itself is just bare walls these days with no remaining rooms but the views across the area are good and worth the climb.
After exploring the fortress we moved the Beastlet down to the lower car park and explored the ruins of the Byzantine city from there. It was a good thing that we arrived early as the small car park was completely full by the time we left.
The town itself is largely just crumbling walls but there are a number of churches, monasteries and frescoes that have been preserved and it is definitely worth a visit. The majority of the city dates from 1271 to 1460 but it was a thriving town until 1715 when it was captured by the Turks and then burned during the Orlov uprising in 1720 and what wasn’t burnt then, was in 1825. It did remain inhabited until 1954 but was a shadow of its former self.
After leaving Mystras in the early afternoon we drove towards Kalamata which involved driving over Langadha Pass in the mountains which reaches over 1,300m. We decided to spend the night in this spot with beautiful views before dropping back down to the coast the next day.
In the morning we skirted the city of Kalamata before ending up at a campsite that we had been recommended, called Camping Loutsa. This was just outside the small fishing village of Foinikounta and was situated on a beautiful sandy beach. The campsite was due to shut for the season in a few days and wasn’t very busy meaning we found a spot on the front rank looking out over the sea.
We stayed a couple of nights and enjoyed swimming and lazing on the lovely fine golden sand. In fact if we had more time and they weren’t closing for the season we would have definitely stayed longer as this was probably our favourite ‘campsite beach’ so far, but time was running out and we needed to keep moving in order to meet our timetable, albeit self imposed.
Only a few kilometres along the coast from here is the town of Methoni, which has a large castle on a promontory sticking out into the sea, built by the Venetians in the 13th century. It is one of the largest castles in the Mediterranean and off the tip of the mainland is a fortified inlet, which was used as a prison and place of execution during the Turkish occupation. Called Bourtzi it was built in 1500 and is connected to the main castle by a narrow paved walkway.
From Methoni it is only a short drive to the town of Pylos. This is a lovely town that I’ve visited a couple of times before by yacht as it makes a very convenient stop over on the way from the Ionian to Athens. Arriving by land provides a very different perspective although we parked up next to the marina, which was only a few minutes walk from the centre of town.
Unbeknown to us, we had arrived on a bank holiday and we were treated to parade of children in costume and a marching band with the whole town there to watch. The best thing about the bank holiday was that the entry to all the monuments and museums was free, so we headed to the castle on the headland above the town to have a look around.
The castle was sprawling and little remained inside other than the outer walls and the inner keep. There were however a couple of small museums inside the walls to checkout.
Only a couple of km’s down the road from Pylos is a well known, very pretty and popular beach called Voidokilia beach. The beach backs onto a lagoon, which hosts a large population of flamingos. Unfortunately we weren’t able to get close enough to the flamingos for a good photo as they stayed far enough away to remain undisturbed by any tourists.
Above the beach is a cave called Nestor’s cave. Nestor was a king of Pylos who features in the Iliad.
Further up is the Old Navarino Castle which is a thirteenth century Frankish castle that was in use until around 1825. The castle is in some disrepair and is officially closed but there is a rough path up to it and a rope at the top to help you clamber over the walls into the interior of the castle.
Our last stop on the Peloponnese was the ancient Greek ruins of Olympia, the birthplace of the Olympics. Olympia didn’t function as a proper city but was a training camp for athletes that competed at the Olympics, which as in modern times, were held every four years, with “champions” attending from all the major cities across Greece.
The original stadium where the games were held can be visited but it is just a depression in the ground. However, the original entrance to the stadium has been reconstructed and you can also see a row of 16 stone pedestals leading down to the entrance, which were engraved with the names of cheats to shame the athletes, their city and to dissuade others from cheating. In ancient times, bronze statues of Zeus (Zanes) would have sat atop the pedestals.
The ancient Olympics had far fewer sports than we are used to these days and in face started as only a single foot race. However, in the years following the first Olympics in 776 BC, other races were added and wrestling, boxing and chariot races were also included. The event that appealed to me most was the last foot race added in 520 BC, the Hoplitodromos, which was a race where the participants had to wear helmets, greaves (armoured shin protectors) and carry a heavy shield. The race was around 400m which must have been hard work with all that heavy metal.
The site at Olympia is split into two places, firstly the ancient ruins and then a very good and informative museum.
Olympia was the end of our time in the Pelponnese and we were also very close to the end of our time in Greece. We needed to start the long drive home and we had left ourselves a month to complete this but, we had unfinished business in Albania and Montenegro, where we wanted to finally visit all the places that had been too hot for us to visit at the height of the Summer.
The Peloponnese – Part One
Having spent the best part of the last three months at altitude, it was time to descend the mountains and hit the coast where the temperatures were finally perfect for us, with the days in the high 20’s to early 30’s and cooler nights.
From Delphi we dropped down into the valley and drove along the coast, passing many tempting looking spots where we could have parked up on the water, until we reached the massive bridge which links the town of Patras with the mainland. The Rio-Antirrio Bridge is the longest fully suspended cable-stayed bridge in the world and was opened in 2004 (hitting its deadline of being opened by the Athens Olympics with 1 day to spare).
The toll for the bridge is pretty high and there are cheaper ferries which you can take to cross the Gulf of Corinth, however we missed the turn-off for the ferry and were stuck crossing the bridge.
Once across you are only a few kilometres from Patras and we had an appointment in the city. I had been suffering with fairly bad toothache recently so I managed to find an English speaking dentist in the city. We found free parking around 1 km from the centre, albeit in a fairly sketchy looking car park and I walked into town for my appointment leaving Sarah to guard the motorhome.
I took the opportunity for some sight seeing around town which is a busy port town with what felt like a real café culture in shady streets away from the still blazing daytime sun.
The dentist was super modern and although it turned out that I needed to have one of my wisdom teeth removed he dealt with it easily and it was probably the best dental experience I have ever had. Coincidentally, the dentist used to work in Fulham – London, very close to home, and spoke excellent English. The best bit was at the end when I was presented with the bill for €50! I actually did a comedy double take as in the UK this would probably have cost at least £300.
We didn’t intend to hang around Patras and we drove up into the mountains to the East of the city to visit a monastery which we knew allowed free overnight parking. Unfortunately the next day we woke to torrential rain and low cloud but it didn’t stop us touring the monastery first thing. This was to be the last we saw of rain for over a month so we shouldn’t complain.
The Agias Lavras monastery is above the town of Kalavryta and sits at over 800m. It was built in the 10th century, although like many monasteries it has been repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt over the years. It is famous as it is credited by some as the birthplace of the Greek War of Independence in 1821.
I enjoyed the warning sign on the gates of the monastery that prohibits women wearing provocative clothing, such as trousers – I shudder to think what they would think of a miniskirt.
Upon leaving the monastery we immediately turned onto a very steep hill. The Beastlet was very cold and wet and as soon as we tried to accelerate up the hill the check engine light came on and we were plunged into limp mode. We managed to slowly grind our way to the top of the hillside where we visited a monument to the fallen heroes of the 1821 war of Independence.
Not knowing much about engines we were hoping that while we were checking out the sights the Beastlet would rest, the electrics would reset and all would be well with the world again. Unfortunately that was not the case. The check-engine light reappeared and, being on top of a hill-side in the middle of nowhere, we had no other option than to limp on and hope for the best but there was drama to come.
Following our sat nav (big mistake) we limped along through the town of Kalavryta and then up yet another hill to get onto the main road to the Cave of the Lakes in Kastria where we had originally planned to spend the afternoon and stay the night. The hill got steeper and steeper and as we turned a corner we saw the road surface change to a slippery marble-like material and a pickup truck ahead wheel-spinning and struggling on the wet surface – I knew then we were in trouble. There were two strips of concrete down the middle for the tyres but we were too wide to fit on them. It wasn’t long before our wheels started spinning and we came to a halt.
The road was so steep that our handbrake wouldn’t hold us and we just started sliding backwards. The only thing we could do was reverse a bit and try and hit the steepest bit again as fast as we could in the hope that we would keep traction and get over it. No luck though, we just spun out time and time again and being in limp mode from the check engine light was definitely not helping. At this point an elderly gentleman from the house on the corner, who clearly has to do this all the time, came out to ‘help’ us. I’m not sure whether adding a third person into the mix helped at all but with some hand gestures and broken English he did explain that there was a driveway half-way down the hill where we could turn and for that little piece of information we were grateful.
So we started the long, slow reverse where we then got stuck on a bend and couldn’t make the corner. Thankfully the corner wasn’t on the steepest section of the road so after several wheel-spinning and stalling attempts and a terrible burning smell coming from the engine, tyres or maybe both, we finally found some traction to move forward enough to re-align ourselves so we could continue to reverse back down the hill. We came within a centimetre of knocking down a wall and destroying the side of the camper, not to mention what we were doing to the engine but we eventually we reached the driveway, took a huge sigh of relief and turned ourselves around. The fact that there were no other cars on this country road in the half-hour it took for this drama to play out was a blessing but also a sign that somewhere close by there was a better road that we should have taken. Yes sat nav, I’m talking to you!
Once we got back to the town we pulled into a parking spot where we called our break-down cover (no help at all) and did an internet search trying out a bunch of methods to reset the check engine light while waiting for our blood pressure to go back to normal. However nothing we tried made any difference so we decided our best option was to ditch the Cave of the Lakes and head out of the mountains (at least we would be going downhill) to a campsite on the coast near the town of Akrata, where we would have more chance of finding a mechanic. The campsite we found was almost full and the pitches were so small that our 6m camper was sticking out of the pitch but it was right on the beach and best of all, it had a bar which we happily collapsed into after a very long, stressful day. The next day the skies cleared, the sun came out and when we tried the engine it started up without any problems and no check-engine light – what a difference a day makes!
We decided to stay a couple of days turning the engine on each day in our paranoia just to check it was still OK before we gingerly drove off and thankfully put the engine problems behind us.
Our next port of call was the Corinth Area on the Eastern side of the Peloponnese where we visited the amazing Corinth Canal. This is a 6.4 km long narrow canal cut 90m deep through the isthmus of Corinth with near vertical cliff walls. It is only 24.6m wide at its narrowest bit and is therefore not suitable for most modern ships. However it cuts a significant distance off the journey from Athens to the West so it is still used by pleasure craft and some smaller commercial ships.
The canal originally started to be excavated in 67 AD but this attempt failed and despite other attempts over the years it wasn’t completed until 1893. It was never really a commercial success even in the early days and is prone to damage by seismic activity, in fact I was due to sail through it 2022 but it was closed due to earthquake damage and we had to go the long way around !
At both ends of the canal are submersible bridges which sink 8m down to provide for the draft of boats.
After spending some time at the canal we headed to the ruins of Ancient Corinth. The site of Ancient Corinth is 5 km’s away from the modern town and is a site that has been continuously occupied since 6500 BC. By classical times this was a big city and rivalled Athens in its wealth. It was known as “Sin City” in ancient times and was renowned for its large number of prostitutes.
Built high on a hill at an altitude of 575m above ancient Corinth is a fortress known as Acrocorinth. The fortress has endured through many owners and Roman, Byzantine, Frankish, Ventian and Turkish construction is layered over and around each other.
The castle surrounds the two peaks of the hill and beneath one is the Fountain of Peirene, supposedly the favoured watering hole of Pegasus.
The castle allows for a good hike as it is large and built around the summits – there is a lot of climbing to be done in the castle itself to explore the ramparts and various ruined buildings.
There is a tower near the top but unfortunately although it can be climbed you aren’t allowed out onto the roof to get views of the area and have to make do with the views from the base.
After exploring the Corinth area we carried on South along the coast of the Peloponnese to another busy campsite called Bekas Camping. There were a huge number of Large German campers here who were settled in all along the seafront pitches for long periods of time. We settled for a shaded spot away from the shore in a quieter part of the campsite.
The campsite was on a long shingle beach but, about a 500m walk down the beach, there was easy access to snorkelling over the ruins of a Roman villa, where you could see the remains of large amphora. The outline of the walls were really obvious from a drone shot and even snorkelling you could see the walls up close.
The campsite was also close to the Ancient city of Epidaurus, which is famous for its huge theatre and well preserved ball court. The rest of the ruins of the city are really only foundations and it is difficult to get too much of a sense of what they represent.
The theatre was constructed in the late 4th century BC and is considered to be one of the most perfect Ancient Greek theatres both in terms of acoustics and aesthetics. It was large enough to hold between 13 and 14 thousand spectators. There are 55 tiers of which 34 were reserved for priests and Lords.
At this point we had been moving quite a lot and had stayed in some busy campsites so we were craving a little peace and solitude. We had done some research and found a remote beach that we thought we could camp on in the South of the Eastern-most finger of the Peloponnese, so we decided to investigate.
On the way there we stopped off at a pair of large sinkholes know as the Caves of the Twin Dolines. The smaller of the holes is accessed through a staircase that goes down a tunnel into the sinkhole and there are two rock cut churches within the hole itself.
When we arrived in the sinkhole we found a television crew hard at work. They were from Poland and filming a TV series investigating what makes successful athletes such high achievers. We spoke to one of the producers and asked why they were filming there, he just shrugged and gestured around himself, because it’s beautiful. Well, we couldn’t argue with that.
It was a really hot day and we were ready for a swim so we carried on to the beach where we hoped we could stay the night and when we arrived we were really pleased to find that there were only a couple of motorhomes there and that it was otherwise deserted.
We found a spot only a couple of metres from the water, with some shade from some bamboo and what felt like our own little patio. We were to stay here for 4 nights, until a lack of food and drinking water (our planning had been poor) forced us to move on.
Apart from being a great location for swimming and snorkelling (I even saw a turtle), there is a cave around 500m around the cliffs from the beach (not accessible by vehicle), which has been inhabited since neolithic times. The cave has been well preserved and unusually for Greece there were some excellent signs explaining what we were seeing. The cave is called the Franchthi Cave and humans first occupied it in the Upper Paleolithic around 38,000 BC. It was occupied for 35,000 years until 3000 BC but even after that it was used as a shelter for shepherds and their flocks right up until the 20th century.
It was around this time that we realised we had woefully underestimated how long it would take us to drive around the Peloponnese and the one month we had allocated was never going to be enough. Still, it gives us the perfect excuse to come back another time!
Meteora and Delphi
Having enjoyed the Greek mountains so much we decided to prolong our time there before heading towards the coast, so we made our way to the lovely mountain town of Metsovo.
Metsovo, in the Pindus mountains, is the main regional hub for the surrounding area despite only being a small town. The elderly gentlemen who gather in the small, bustling main square each day to watch the world go by are very friendly and were keen to tell us all about the history of the town, its church and the ancient trees in the churchyard that have grown into the shape of a cross (although we couldn’t really make it out ourselves).
Above the steep-sided town, close to where we parked, is a memorial to the fallen of the 40th Cavalry Division fighting Mussolini’s army in 1940, as well as a genuine M24 battle tank.
While below the town is the 14th century Holy Monastery of Saint Nicholas of Metsovo, which still has four resident monks. You can ring on the doorbell and a caretaker will appear and (somewhat grudgingly) show you to the beautifully painted church. There is also a little shop where you can buy some of their award-winning wine.
We decided to stay in the Metsovo area for a couple of days near an old ski resort, where we spent a peaceful couple of days with only the cows and a few stray dogs for company.
Not far from Metsovo but further up into the mountains is the reservoir of Aoos Spring Lake and this was a real gem. We drove all around the lake until we found the perfect spot for us.
The view of the lake and its many islands was spectacular from here.
We loved this place so much that we stayed longer than expected. Each day in the morning a large flock of sheep was escorted passed us by a pack of flock guardian dogs and back the other way in the evening. There was no sign of a shepherd but the dogs seemed to have it well in hand. They were a mix of breeds and some were very friendly and others more wary. One dog, who we nicknamed Stavros, seemed to be less conscientious than the others and would spend the day with us, lazing in the shade of our camper, and then join his flock again on their way back in the evening.
The highlight of our time at the lake was on our final evening when we built a fire ring from stones lying around and had a campfire from wood that we scavenged from the area.
We kept it burning all evening and it provided enough warmth to allow us to sit out and watch the stars appear. The stars here were beautiful, far as we were from any light pollution.
Unfortunately we couldn’t stay here forever and it was time to move on – our next stop was somewhere we had been looking forward to visiting ever since we had heard about it – Meteora.
Meteora is famous for its clifftop monasteries. Most people have heard of this place through the James Bond film, For Your Eyes Only, where Bond had to climb up the pinnacle to the monastery at the top.
At one time there were 30 monasteries built on the cliffs in Meteora. They were built in these inaccessible places (only accessed originally by a network of ropes, ladders and pulleys before the modern staircases were carved into the sides of the rocks), not only to allow the monks to be closer to God but also to provide protection from bandits and oppression.
Monks have been living on these cliff tops since the 9th century but it wasn’t until the 14th century that the larger monasteries that we see today were constructed. The hey day of the monasteries was between the 15-17th centuries, after which time they started to decline mainly due to raids by thieves and conquerors. Many were abandoned and today only 6 monasteries are still active.
Staying the night in a motorhome near the monasteries themselves is prohibited, so we stayed in a campsite in the town of Kastraki, at the foot of the mountains. The campsite was absolutely heaving with around 100 campers each night. It did however have a nice swimming pool.
We got up very early to drive up to the monasteries for sunrise and to make sure we could get in the car parks before they filled up, which proved to be very sensible as it became very busy with tour buses as the day progressed.
We visited two of the six monasteries and went to the major viewpoints to get a good look at the area. The interior of the monasteries wasn’t actually that interesting and they were very busy with big tour groups but the viewpoints definitely don’t disappoint.
Only a 10 minute walk from out campground we found a monastery that is off the beaten track but it is not possible to visit the interior. The views from the outside were interesting and we saw a monk having his morning coffee on the balcony, safely ensconced above us. There were also old and broken down platforms around holes in the rock, where hermits used to live !
In the same area, and not connected to the monasteries, are some ancient rock dwellings that pre-date the monasteries themselves which can be visited and we enjoyed poking around in them.
Meteora is definitely spectacular but it was very busy with tourists and after we had seen what we came for we were glad to get away and we continued driving towards the coast. But first we stopped at Delphi, an ancient Greek site, famous for the Oracle of Delphi.
We stayed at a campsite which was perched on the hillside with an amazing view over a swimming pool to the coast far below. This was our first glimpse of the sea since May in Croatia.
We visited Delphi first thing in the morning in order to get a parking place in the very small parking area and hopefully avoid the majority of the tour groups. We managed to get a place to park which wasn’t too far away from the entrance but we failed to avoid the tour groups and it was pretty busy.
As we were to discover, there is minimal reconstruction at Greek ancient ruins and the signage is fairly poor so it is difficult sometimes to understand what you are looking at. Greek sites definitely require a tour guide or some internet research beforehand to understand what you are seeing.
Delphi itself is built into a steep hillside with temples at the lower end, a theatre in the middle and a stadium right at the top. Delphi was a site built around the Temple to Apollo but it was also the site of the Oracle of Delphi. This was the most famous ancient Oracle, actually called Pythia, and was a woman over 50 who was supposed to communicate directly with Apollo. Pilgrims would seek Apollo’s wisdom and she was incredibly influential. The last prophecy was given in about 393 AD when the Romans passed laws to ban paganism.
Down the road a few hundred metres from the main site is another site which holds the Athena Pronea Sancuary or Tholos which was the first temple that pilgrims to Delphi visited when they arrived.
We were ultimately a bit underwhelmed by the site itself but the museum which is on site was very interesting with some very well preserved statues.
A few miles away from the site of Delphi, in the mountains above, is the Corycian Cave. The Corycian Cave was believed to be the home of the Corycian Nymphs and the ritual home of Dionysus. Even today some form of pagan worship is carried out here and the rock maze on the cave floor is testament to this. The cave can be accessed by a very rough 4×4 track but we parked up about 4km away and hiked up. The cave itself has an easy entrance and a large 1st chamber, however you can climb up the slope at the back of the cave and enter another chamber which is completely dark and then from there you can also go to a third chamber but it gets increasingly difficult to progress so I stopped at this point.
Next stop was the Peloponnese, more ruins and some lovely beaches but that is for the next post.
Finally Greece
After 3 months out of Schengen we were clear to go back into the Schengen zone once again and we wouldn’t have any problems with timings for the rest of our trip. It felt like we had been heading for Greece for a long time and it was exciting to finally get to the southernmost country of our journey.
After a quick border crossing, where bizarrely there were peacocks roaming around the border security booths, we were back in the EU.
Hardly surprisingly, as we approached Greece from North Macedonia, we entered the country through the Macedonia region, which is fairly mountainous and seems to have more in common with the rest of the Balkans than the coastal regions of Greece that are more familiar to us.
Our first port of call was Kastoria, a lakeside town on an isthmus, with an old town on the side of a steep hill. We parked up in a free lakeside car park for the night and were treated to beautiful sunset views across the lake.
The following morning we jumped on our bikes to explore the old town. Kastoria is a town that grew rich on the fur trade using the pelts of local wild beavers. Unfortunately they were hunted too extinction in the area by the 19th century. Despite this, the fur trade was kept alive with farmed beavers and imported pelts and even today, we were surprised to see, that there are still many fur shops around the town.
One of the highlights of Kastoria are the grand old mansions of the fur-trade families, which date from the 17th-19th century.
After exploring the town we headed to Dragon Cave where we did a self guided tour of the main chambers, one of which had more stalactites than I have ever seen before in one cave.
After Kastoria we continued to head South with the ultimate goal of getting to the Peloponnese but we were soon distracted by the beautiful Greek mountains.
We headed to the village of Monodhendhri which overlooks Vikos Gorge and is a great starting point for a hike into the gorge. The village itself is a great example of a Greek mountain village with narrow stone paved streets.
A short walk from the village itself is the monastery of Ayia Paraskevi which is perched right on the edge of the gorge and from here, there is a cliff edge walk that goes to a cave, Megali Spilia, which was once used as a safe haven for the villagers when they were under threat. A head for heights is definitely needed for this path as it is narrow and the drop off to the gorge would almost certainly be fatal.
Vikos gorge itself is 1,000m deep in places but while we were there the river running through the gorge was dry with only some puddles along the way.
I hiked down into the gorge from Monodhendhri and walked around 8km along the river bed but the views were limited as much of the hike was under trees and the hike back up was fairly brutal, so I wouldn’t say it was particularly worthwhile.
After leaving Monodhendhri we drove back down into the adjacent valley and headed around and back up to another village on the other side of the gorge – Vradeto. The road here was spectacular and the village felt much more authentic as it was far less touristy.
Vradeto is famous for the Vradeto steps which were the only way to reach the village until the road was built in the 1970’s. There are over 1200 steps and the staircase took over 20 years to build.
Vradeto is a great place to start the hike to the Beloi viewpoint over the Gorge which is one of the most spectacular places to see the canyon.
On the way to Vradeto we stopped off to see three stone bridges which date back to the 1700’s. The most visited of these is the Kokkoros bridge which is right next to the road. Unfortunately at this time of year the river beds were all dry. The other two were the Captain Bear Bridge and the Monk Bridge.
After leaving behind Vikos Gorge we headed to the regional capital town of Ioannina which is another lovely lakeside town. There is a great parking for motorhomes right beside the lake which is only a 5 minute walk from the old town.
Ioannina is an easy city to explore with a walled old town that for once isn’t on top of a great big hill. Outside the walls of the old town Is a lively modern new town with a relaxed feel. Its not a particularly big town but one that we immediately felt comfortable in.
Within the walls of the old town the highlights include the silversmithing museum which was the town’s treasury in years gone past and the tomb of Ali Pasha.
Ali Pasha was an Albania born in 1741 and he became a brutal leader, conquering Ioannina in 1787 which he then made the capital of a personal kingdom which he seized from the Ottomans. He showed no loyalty to any nation and in turn allied with the French, Turks and British depending on which suited him best at any one time. He managed to rule for 33 years until, in 1821, the Ottoman Sultan decided that enough was enough and sent an army of 50 thousand to capture him. He was duly decapitated and his head was sent Istanbul. His body is buried here in Ioannina.
We capped off our day in Ioannina with a visit to a waterfront grill – although it was pretty windy so we actually sat on the terrace away from the water, where we had a great value meal which we thoroughly enjoyed. If you are passing this way we would recommend “Something is Grilling on the Corner” for a great cheap feed.
North Macedonia – Part Deux
With the capital city, Skopje, in our sights we stopped briefly in the crazily busy city of Tetova to see the famous and impressive 19th century reconstruction of the Painted Mosque (or Pasha’s Mosque), before carefully reversing back out of a road (with the unsolicited ‘help’ of two locals) onto a busy roundabout and getting the hell out of dodge.
Just before you get to Skopje if you are travelling from the East, is Matka Canyon. Due to its proximity to the Capital it is a popular destination with limited parking so we made sure we arrived early to avoid disappointment. The water of the dammed Treska River is a beautiful turquoise blue and we had a fun couple of hours kayaking through the canyon to visit Cave Vrelo – one of a network of caves thought to be among the deepest in Europe.
The focus here however seems to be the boat tours. When we asked about the kayaking we were told to walk down to the platform where someone would help us. After waiting for 5 minutes or so and with no-one in sight, we helped ourselves to a couple of life jackets, untied a kayak and set off.
While there is no assistance in taking the kayak at the start, the situation is even worse when you arrive at the cave. There seems to be little thought as to how, in a kayak, you access the cave. It looks like there was once a pier but the broken debris was piled onto the steep grainy walls of the river and so it took some very careful manoeuvring and paddling around to find somewhere we could safely get ashore before then clambering over the debris to reach the boat pier and stairs.
The benefit of kayaking was that we had the cave to ourselves until right at the end when a boat tour turned up but by that point we were already on our way out.
After a leisurely paddle back we were actually greeted at the platform by a couple of people who, despite not bothering to come and assist us when we left, knew exactly what time we had departed to charge us the correct fee. Still we had a good time and afterwards found a nice spot to park up for the night down by the river and away from the comings and goings of the busy car park.
The capital of North Macedonia is called Skopje and it is an extraordinary city. Around 65% of the city’s buildings were destroyed by a massive earthquake in 1963. This led to a rebuilding programme of large buildings in a modernist style.
This was then followed in the 2010’s by a programme of building monuments and statues throughout the city as well as large classically styled public buildings which were implemented by the prime minister at the time, Nikola Gruevski.
It gives the centre of the city a weird feel of a fake classical city but the statues are certainly impressive.
Just a stones throw from the planned but attractive classical centre is the real heart of the city in the Carsija area. Here the narrow cobbled streets bustle with people and there is a large food market.
This area is full of ancient mosques and feels like a real lived city as opposed to the centre which has the feel of a set from a dystopian future.
On a hill overlooking the town is the Trvdina Kale fortress, built in the 5th century, which gives good views over the city but only the walls are left now and there is nothing to really see inside them.
After spending a full day in Skopje we drove back to the nearby Matka canyon for another peaceful night by the river. We were up early the next morning to drive to the Northern end of the country to visit the Kokino Observatory, a Bronze Age archaeo-astronomical site. The site was used for a number of rituals at different times of the year and notches were cut in the rocks where the suns rays outline key points at certain times over a cycle that lasted 19 lunar years.
There is a “throne” for four people where the rising sun would mark out the four rulers one by one on a certain day of the year. We had fun trying to line up the notches in the rock with the different times of year and where they would light up but a few more photos on the information boards would be helpful.
After leaving the Kokino Observatory we moved a little south to Kuklica which is small area with some interesting geological features where “rock dolls” have been created by erosion and are thought to be 30 million years old.
Much like those to be found in Utah in the USA but on a much smaller scale.
Surprisingly we were greeted by a British accent and we had a good conversation with a guy who runs the site with his wife. They had moved to North Macedonia a few years previously and he seemed pretty pleased to meet some fellow Brits for a chat.
We eventually stopped for the night at Rock Land Camp in the town of Demir Kapija. This was near to our destination for the following day so a convenient stopover. The area has lots of hiking and some great climbing so although we didn’t stay long enough to explore, it’s definitely somewhere to return to in the future.
It was my birthday while we were in North Macedonia so Sarah organised a night out at one of North Macedonia’s top winery’s, Popova Kula. They allowed campers to stay overnight in their car park so we could have a good night out and not have to worry about getting home.
We had a lovely evening at the winery. They even had entertainment in the form of some local children folk dancing and of course the wine was excellent. We splashed out on a much nicer meal than we would normally have, the highlight of which was definitely the huge starter in the form of a charcuterie plate featuring local meats and a generous basket of warm bread – absolutely delicious. To be honest, we didn’t need anything else after that, so we were pretty full by the end of the meal!
The next morning we were a little sluggish getting going but we eventually managed to set off, heading South towards Greece.
We stopped for a remote night in an area below the Treskavec monastery which sits on top of a bare rocky mountaintop. Although much of the monastery has been damaged by fire, the inside of the 14th century central church, which is being restored, still includes some impressive frescoes.
The site has been used as a place of worship since Roman times and there is a still a monk in residence here – plus some chickens and two small dogs.
We left the peak of the Treskavec monastery on a cloudy and dull day and headed to the mountain town of Krusevo which was really shrouded in cloud, to see the Ilinden uprising monument. This space age construction commemorates the 1903 uprising which was the country’s first step towards independence, although only lasting 10 days before being ended by the Ottoman empire.
Unfortunately visibility was limited although we did get to see the monument and had a look around inside. It is in need of some TLC though, as testified by the peeling paint and puddles in the interior from the leaking roof.
Our final stop in North Macedonia was the town of Bitola. Bitola is a charming town but the real draw here is the old Roman ruins at Heraclea Lyncestis. The site is small but has some excellent mosaics and a partially restored theatre. The city was important for trading from around 200 BC to the 4th century but unfortunately was then sacked by the Goths and abandoned.
The city of Bitola is known as the city of consuls as during Ottoman times many European countries had their consulates there. Today the city is very much one of faded glories with lots of 18th and 19th century grand townhouses looking worse for wear.
It is one of those cities where nothing is particularly spectacular but it’s just a nice place and we spent a few hours wandering around. We visited the big central market and walked around the Stara Carsija, Bazaar area, as well as the main shopping street where we stopped to people watch from one of the many cafes.
Bitola was our last stop in North Macedonia and we had thoroughly enjoyed this country. It feels like a bridge between the other Balkan countries and the EU and we will certainly be back to explore in more depth. But next for us is Greece, our ultimate goal of this trip.
North Macedonia – Part 1
We didn’t have to travel far to cross from Lin on Lake Ohrid into North Macedonia. It was an easy crossing with the ability to buy insurance at the border. The town of Struga (also on Lake Ohrid), is just a short distance away where you can easily park up on a quiet side street and walk into the centre to pick up some local currency, sim cards and anything else you may need.
Struga has the feel of a holiday destination with hotels on the lake shore lined with sun loungers and plenty of bars and restaurants to choose from. The Black Drin river runs from the lake and is a good place to go for a stroll or a swim to cool off from the heat of the day.
From here we chose one of the many campsites that line the shore before jumping on our bikes and heading off to explore the area.
A short cycle from the campsite is Kalista Monastery. The monastery’s church has a great position overlooking Lake Ohrid and unusually, we were able to access the upper floor of the church which provided a great viewing platform. While we were visiting, a boat arrived with a bride and groom and their wedding party. Not a bad wedding venue!
The real reason for visiting this monastery complex however is not the beautiful lakeside location, attractive monastery church, or the smaller Church of St. Peter and Paul, it is the connected 14th century cave church. There is a small fee for entering the cave church but as there wasn’t anyone on the desk when we arrived we entered without charge, although the lights were off and we had to sneakily locate the key to turn them back on!
About 500 meters further along the coast, past a hotel and leisure complex, is another one of these very cool cave churches, the 14th century cave church of St. Athanasija. Based on the style of the frescoes it is thought that they were painted in 1360’s. We thought that it may be locked but upon climbing the metal staircase we found it open and unattended.
Having come to the end of the path, we walked back to retrieve our bikes and headed to a lakeside bar to quench our thirst.
The following day we drove further along the shore of the lake to the attractive but bustling town of Ohrid. As it happened, we turned up in Ohrid on Independence Day, so the place was pretty busy with locals enjoying a long weekend. There is a lot to explore here and enough cafes, bars and restaurants to cater for everyone.
The walking tour takes you down narrow cobbled streets, past numerous churches, along a cliff-side boardwalk, past beautiful waterfront restaurants where we decided to stop for a leisurely lunch and a glass or two of wine, before climbing up to the picturesque Church of Sveti Jovan overlooking the lake.
Next up was the Hellenistic Amphitheatre that dates back to 200 BC. Later, during Roman times, as well as plays and performances, it was also used for gladiator fights and executions. The latter is believed to have made it unpopular with locals and so, with the downfall of the Roman Empire, the theatre was buried and consequently well preserved. It wasn’t until the 1980’s that it was accidently discovered during building works in the area.
From here we walked to the archaeological site of Plaosnik – which contains the church of St. Clement from 893, the ruins of a 5th century basilica and some impressive floor mosaics.
And, last but not least, we completed the walk to the very top of the hill to the gates of Samuel’s Fortress – one of Macedonia’s largest medieval fortifications dating back to 209 BC. Unfortunately for us, having made it all the way to the top, we found that it is closed on Mondays.
Ohrid is sometimes referred to as the Jerusalem of the Balkans (because it once had 365 churches), but there is a fee to enter many of the remaining churches and as photography is also forbidden we decided to give them a miss.
With a full day of sightseeing behind us and a couple of lunchtime drinks, we decided to stay put for the night in the lakeside car park where we had parked to visit the town. As a general rule, we prefer not to stay in town car parks if at all possible as they tend to be the meeting place for groups of teens and couples until the early hours of the morning, however thanks to an evening of torrential rain we spent a very peaceful night here!
The next day we drove to the eerily named, Bay of Bones, museum on water. This is a reconstruction of a prehistoric settlement on Lake Ohrid, dating back to between 1200 and 700 BC, where, rather than live on the shore, the villagers drove up to 10,000 wooden piles into the lakebed and built their modest homes over the water. Historians have dated the settlement to the end of the Bronze Age and beginning of the Iron Age and, given its fascinating history, this should be a really interesting attraction. However, there is minimal information at the site to bring this attraction alive and it really feels like with a little effort they could make the experience far more interesting.
Further still along the shore is the Sveti Naum Monastery. This was unlike any other monastery we had seen so far on this trip, in that it seemed more like a monastery theme park. There is a boating lake with boat trips to the Springs, roaming peacocks, restaurants, a hotel and souvenir shops lining the promenade up to the monastery. The place is a money-making machine with coachloads of people being bussed in, including from over the border in Albania. The original church on this site was built in 900 but this was destroyed by The Ottomans in the 15th century and the current Church of Sveti Naum was rebuilt in the 16th and 17th centuries.
After the recent hustle and bustle we decided to head into the mountains for a little peace and quiet to Galicica National Park which provides fantastic views of both Lake Ohrid and Lake Prespa. This is a pricey park to spend the night though with an entrance fee the equivalent of €13 (600 dinar for the vehicle and additional 100 dinar per person)! Having spoken to fellow travellers who visited the park recently and were only charged for the vehicle, it is possible the additional 200 dinar was a nice little tip for the ranger!
There is a very nice park-up along a narrow spur road with a beautiful view of Lake Prespa, which had barely any passing traffic, so we were a little surprised when three 4×4 vehicles on a tour parked up around us and took their groups to the view point where they gave them some local information about the area. However, the good thing about being this high is that it is pretty cold out of the sun, so it wasn’t long before we had the place to ourselves again.
There are lots of hikes in the park and the next morning I set off on the hike to Magaro Peak. The first section is a steep hike up through forest and into a gully but eventually you reach a crossroads at a saddle. There is a choice of two directions but both go to the same place. I chose the steeper of the two and after another 30 minutes or so of climbing along a ridge and around a cirque there was a traverse across to the peak. The views from the peak aren’t actually as good as the views from the route up, where you can see both Lake Ohrid and Lake Prespa at the same time.
For the route down I looped around the other way which Is a bit longer and the views definitely weren’t as good. There had also been a forest fire come through this area recently and there were still lots of patches of slightly smoking ground !
Having hung around the South Western corner of the country for a while it was time to start heading north and the next stop on our clockwise circuit around the country was Mavrova National Park and the Monastery of Sveti Jovan Bigorski. Unlike Galicica, there was no fee for entering this park. It is a beautiful drive following a winding river through a narrow gorge and is home to the country’s biggest ski resort in Mavrova town.
The monastery of Sveti Jovan Bigorski (St. John the Baptist), is a Byzantine monastery from 1020 which has been painstakingly restored and, from its hillside perch, has stunning views of the surrounding mountains. While the monastery itself was quite busy with visitors, there were very few people elsewhere in the park and we spent a quiet night on a grassy picnic area next to a river with only a couple of cute stray dogs for company.
We ventured into Mavrova ‘town’ the next day which is no more than a village really but it is in a lovely setting overlooking Mavrova lake where we visited the abandoned roofless church of St. Nicholas with its impressive tiled floor. What’s even more impressive is that since 1953 the church has been submerged on and off through the seasons by the lake depending on the water content and yet it’s still standing. There are even objects in the church which suggest that it is still in use despite the new church in town.
Albania
With our stressful drive through Peja on our first day in Kosovo not far from our minds, we made sure we were properly prepared for the crossing into Albania, which subsequently went without a hitch, although we were a little flummoxed as there didn’t seem to be a Kosovo border.
Every border crossing we have ever done has entailed two crossings, a border to leave one country and a second border to enter the next country. After passing through the first border and assuming it was the Kosovo border, we drove for several kms wondering where the Albanian border was before looking at our passports to see that we had already been stamped in. Oh well, that was easy!
Unlike the Kosovo border there isn’t anywhere at the Albanian border to buy insurance for the motorhome, so we drove to the nearest sizable town of Bajram Curri (via a very narrow bridge that we only just managed to fit), where we parked on the main square about 100m from a Vodaphone shop and bought a couple of local Sim cards for €25 each (the most expensive we’ve had so far and with hindsight completely unnecessary because our Kosovo Sim continued to work throughout our time in Albania).
About 500m in the opposite direction we found a shop selling border insurance, although they couldn’t as they had run out of paper(!), luckily there was another one that they directed us to, with paper, a 100m away.
Lastly, in between the Vodaphone shop and the insurance shops was a bank, so that was the currency sorted as well. With the usual new-country-admin taken care of, we hopped back into the camper and headed for the remote village of Valbona in the Accursed Mountains.
After five days of hectic sightseeing in Kosovo we were ready for a couple of days R&R so we found ourselves a lovely little campsite next to a river, aptly named Riverside Camp and settled in.
Unfortunately, on our second evening there, we managed to give ourselves food poisoning from our BBQ’d burgers and ended up staying another 4 days feeling pretty rough. This wasn’t ideal, as we had only bought insurance for 2 weeks and had now spent almost a week in the same spot, so we needed to get our skates on. However, we couldn’t resist stopping off briefly at a lovely swim spot on the drive out of Valbona, which looked too good to pass up.
We also spied a couple of Hoxha’s concrete bunkers on the drive, which we were excited about until we started seeing them everywhere. Hoxha’s (Albanian Leader between the 1960’s – 1980’s) had over 750,000 of these bunkers built in every corner of Albania.
It is said there are an average of 5.7 bunkers for every square kilometre. The bunkers were generally erected in groups of three with interconnecting tunnels. As a result, Albania is said to be the 2nd most tunnelled country in the world after North Korea. Of course, much like Tito’s bunker in Bosnia, the bunkers were never used and were a huge drain on the country’s economy.
Although we were leaving Valbona, we wanted to stay in the mountains and visit the ‘next door’ town of Theth. However, while you can hike between Valbona and Theth in 6-7 hours, it takes the same amount of time to drive between the two as there is no direct road. You can take a ferry between Fierze and Koman to break up the drive, which is supposedly very pretty (although no quicker), however it is quite pricey at €150, so we opted to drive instead, which afforded us lovely views of the mountains and the dammed river Drin below us.
The drive to Theth by-passes the city of Shkodra on the Albanian side of Lake Skadar, so after a cool night spent in the mountains, we got up super early and headed down to sea level to make an early morning visit to this attractive town and its fortress.
Rozafa Castle, dating back to the 4th century BC is definitely worth a visit and while, as with all ruins, you have to use a little imagination, there has been enough restoration work here to make it interesting, which is helped by English information boards and a small museum. The 13th century church is the most intact building inside the perimeter walls and was in use up until the 15th century when the city fell to the Ottomans and the building was converted into a mosque and later still, an ammunitions depot.
From Shkodar we started the long winding drive back up into the mountains towards Theth.
Having been in beautiful, quiet, laid back Valbona we had been lulled into a false sense of peace and tranquillity. So we were very much taken by surprise by the masses of people, mini buses and tour groups on the road to Theth. I suppose it was the last Saturday in August, so perhaps it was a bad weekend to drive up there, as everyone was enjoying their last hurrah before heading back to work, but despite the road being in good condition and fully paved the whole way, the drive was a nightmare. It just isn’t quite wide enough for a motorhome and a car to pass each other easily.
This meant that we had to slow down and pull over for practically every vehicle we met on the road – and there were a lot. This became very tiresome after two hours of driving the mountain road so by the time we’d reached the pass at 1700m we’d had enough for that day and spent the night there, with a view to heading down into Theth, which is at 600m, early the next day.
Funnily enough, the road down from the pass into Theth which was only paved a couple of years ago is slightly wider (although it is steeper with more switchbacks) so it would have become easier if we had carried on, but regardless, we had a cool night up high without any noise from the town to disturb us.
Once we were in Theth we headed to the large trailhead carpark for the Blue Eye hike, a beautiful walk that ends in a turquoise pool of water (hence the name), fed by a small waterfall. The water was really cold but oh so clear and it was a refreshing swim after a hot hike up here. This was a lovely walk but doing it early is key, because on the way back, there was a long line of people walking the trail in and the large car park was full.
After the hike we visited the 19th century village church (which is said to have been used as the village hospital in the communist era (meaning that most locals over the age of 25 were born there) and Kulla Tower. This is a 400 yr old stone tower where people were held during a family blood feud before they were either killed or spared – at least that is how I have interpreted the sign. See what you think!
That night we relocated to a campsite on a meadow just outside town, where the music from the bar by the river (they are clearly big ABBA fans) and the noise of the zipline were less audible, ready for the big hike to Valbona Pass tomorrow.
Having set off early for the hike we passed through the centre of Theth on the way to the trailhead. A dog that we had seen the previous night in the central cark park decided to come with us and in fact came all the way to the pass. That’s a hike of around 7.5km to the pass and 1250m of vertical. He must have figured that hikers having lunch at the top were worth the effort !
The hike from Valbona to Theth or the other way round is lauded as the best hike in Albania. We could only do half of it eg. To the pass as its too far for an out and back in one day. However although the pass has spectacular views most of the hike on the Theth side is spent in the forest and views are few and far between.
Like at Bobotov Kuk in Montenegro there were some dogs at the top of the pass although this wasn’t as inhospitable as that peak. I’m not sure if these are all commuters like my hiking buddy or actually stay there.
After a punishing hike, we enjoyed a couple of beers and a meal at a local restaurant for our last night in Theth, before getting up early the next morning to do the drive out of the mountains – which was far easier without all the traffic to contend with.
With time running out in Albania and some miles to get under our belt, we headed out of the Accursed Mountains and started the drive towards Lake Ohrid and the border with North Macedonia, stopping on the way at the town of Kruja.
There isn’t much to the town of Kruja itself but it does have a very good castle and museum complex as well as a bazaar to nose around, and it kept us happily occupied for a good few hours.
We particularly enjoyed the ethnographic museum (which is laid out in a beautiful 18th century Ottoman-style house).
They have made a real effort to provide lots of information about the life and social customs of that time using information cards, interactive screens and videos, and even a virtual reality dressing-up room, where you can ‘try on’ the different traditional costumes.
Kruja’s narrow, cobbled Bazaar is mostly filled with tourist souvenirs but there are a couple of little gems hidden amongst them, including a shop with traditional felt products such as slippers, lampshades and different types and sizes of Qeleshe (white felt skull caps). Apparently, you can tell which part of Albania someone is from by the height and shape of the Qeleshe they wear! The owner wasn’t keen on us taking photos but he did invite us downstairs into his workshop where he patiently answered all our questions and even demonstrated how he made his own felt from a pile of wool in the corner.
Our final destination in Albania was Lake Ohrid and the small fishing village of Lin, although we made a small detour to visit Golikut Bridge and the Royal Tombs of Selca first.
Golikut Bridge is a 2nd century, 3-arch narrow stone bridge that was part of the old Roman road Via Egnatia that ran from Durres on the Albanian coast to Istanbul and it’s incredible to see this piece of history still standing. Yet you could easily miss it with no fanfare or signposting to highlight its significance. In fact, it would look completely forgotten if it weren’t for a brand new, half-finished gravel road leading part way down to it before ending in a ploughed field.
The Illyrian Royal Tombs of Selca (the remains of the ancient city of Pelion and its necropolis) are apparently in the same vicinity but the road is currently being built and despite having the GPS co-ordinates from the UNESCO website we still couldn’t find it (they aren’t big on sign-posting their attractions in Albania). The torrential rain that fell soon after visiting the bridge also didn’t do much to motivate our efforts, so we’ll have to save this attraction for another time. With the completion of the new road no doubt mass tourism will follow. Whether that’s a good or bad thing, who knows, but at least we should be able to find it then!
We had no such problems locating the pretty little fishing village of Lin on the shores of Lake Orhid. Said to be one of the oldest inhabited villages of Europe, a short walk through the village up onto the peninsula takes you to the ruins of a 6th century Paleochristian basilica. Some of the mosaic floor is still intact but we were unable to see it as it is now covered by sand to help preserve it.
While visiting the church we heard some rustling In the grass and were delighted to see a wild tortoise pushing its way through.
A little further along, on a small rocky promontory sits the Bunker Church. The site was previously a tiny church but a concrete dome was placed over the top to create a bunker as part of Hoxha’s crazy bunkerisation project previously mentioned.
We have deliberately not visited Southern and coastal Albania at this time due to the heat but intend to spend some time there on our way home when the temperatures have cooled!
FromAtoB 