Tour de (Western) Balkans 2023

After a COLD start in the snow in Macedonia, we cross the border after Debar – another fast ‘n friendly crossing with us now feeling like old Albanian hands with our greetings down to pat. Neither of us really sure anyone understands us but our merriness is seeming to rub off.

We leave the border post behind and cross open meadowland into what we now call “Albanian climbs” ie short upsy downsy snaking up and down tributaries of a larger valley. Lots of houses painted green.

Extremely respectful driving, and potholes are generally the cyclist’s best friend as the Merc drivers don’t like wrecking their suspension and drive cautiously on these roads. They all have very clean cars with Lavazh car washes dotted around in the most unlikely places. I dream of wheeling in the Trusty Stead and wheeling out a gleaming dreammachine of a bike but honestly I don’t think the sharp dudes who run these outfits would cope with something that didn’t have hubcaps.

We get a “Wie geht’s? viel Spaß!!!” belted out at us from the window of one of these dark tinted cars by a young bloke with a big grin.

We arrive in Peshkopi which will be one of the check points on the Transcontinental this year, possibly expecting a slightly bigger centre than we stumble upon. This feels like a really poor part of Albania, none of the urban sophistication that Korçë aspired to. Definitely off the tourist trail. We had booked ourselves into a place run by a lady with her son helping remotely with translation. It’s very basic and very cold once the one and only electric heater of the household is reclaimed by her gruff husband. We should be used to no heating but somehow this is COLD when you’ve been on a bike in the snow and rain. The loo and shower didn’t figure in any of the pics and was definitely of a most basic nature, complete with slightly disconcerting window straight into one of the other bedrooms.

Peshkopi has a main pedestrianized drag, lots of bustling fruit and veg shops, pots n pans shops, though we fail to find a resto anywhere that is open and serving food, only a million and one cafés with men smoking and very few women around. So it’s back to the room for pasta with ajvar and salad and we huddle under the blankets after our tea and actually both sleep like logs all cosy weighed down by many blankets.

Woken before dawn by multiple muezzin calls across the city, in harmony. Utterly special. A reminder while we stuff ourselves with cyclists’ fare that this is still Ramadan. Mrs appears with two large plates of sirene (cheese), eggs and frankfurters all chopped up and cooked together that has me vowing vegetarianism and leaves Jon as phlegmatic and as “when in Rome…” as ever. Heavy. Mind you, excellent fuel for the legs. We stock up on more delicious patisseries and bread from a busy bakery in a side street and bump into a friendly policeman for the second time (off duty yesterday, on duty today) who is keen to know whether our trip is going well and beams with pride when we assure him it is.

Onwards through increasingly impressive scenery. Atmospheric steep mountain cliffs around us with snow covered peaks and cloud-covered summits. Muslim cemetery in our first silver birch grove. Over the snow line and back down to a wealthier feeling land of ups and downs and bigger trees. Views into the distant Drin gorge and rows and rows of fading hills. We once met an American called Ham (“as in Jamón”) who was from Detroit cycling through the Pyrenees “in search of the Sublime” and we both think of him independently today.

Kukes – a modern town built after the Drin reservoir was made, flooding the old town of Kukes- had a lovely feel to it – bustling, folk going about their business, a bit of preening and showing off going on in a nice way. The highlight an exceptional meal in a resto called Xhamlliku, full of iftar diners, and we tickle the waiter by ordering several waves of random dishes from the Albanian menu and end up with a REALLY random meal. The fasule bean soup a winner. The waiter brings us three delicious puddings on the house, he charm personified.

Leaving Kukes is marred by me running into the back of Jon when a car cuts in front of him. My front wheel does BAD things to his derailer and mudguard. All fixed in due course after Bad Scenes trying to get the very old derailer back on.

More Albanian ups and downs and we turn off the main road to Kosovo into a lonely treeless road paralleling the border with occasional glimpses of the Drin reservoir, lots and lots of snowy peaks all around, through empty countryside of juniper and oak scrub. An occasional farmstead with hay ricks and maize stalk ricks, the first quince blossom, and the first 8 year olds running out cycling alongside us that becomes a bit of a theme for the day.

Less rubbish and it all looks rather Scottish particularly as we sit on the edge of a steep glen having second lunch looking down at a hidden vale. Forsythia in bloom everywhere and mini-euphorbia too. The Accursed Mountains finally appear – dead pointy and very very snowy and menacing looking. No messing with them. They’ll remain out of bounds for us because of the snow.

We eventually do a classic descent of 10km over barren rocky land with sweeping bends and a lovely gradient that requires no braking and full view of the road ahead. One of the greatest. Casse déserte style from the Izoard but less steep and no traffic.

In the valley bottom we meet Franzi and Hans, a German Italian couple off to cycle the world on bamboo bikes. In their 20s (we feel OLD). Very sweet. They had lost a down jacket earlier in the day and were cycling back from the Kosovo border to look for it. We later find out that a local family helped them find it and gave them a bed for the night and the full hospitality. How special.

Jon and I sweep on down the valley and wind up in a fancipants place that is our least favourite place to date, that calls itself agriturismo but it’s in fact a tourist trap, bland and boring. This is slight end of day knackered legs desperation. We eat overpriced food with Shannon a friendly American teacher who lives in Portsmouth with Ali the love of her life.

Before dawn the dogs get a’barking and that will be Shannon setting off to walk to the ferry terminal where we are also heading. I lie in bed and track her progress as the dog barks sounds more and more distant as she walks down through the village. Niiightriiiiiide for us with a second dogbark chorus and muezzin calls and just before 6 we all load onto the Lake Koman ferry for a 2.5 hour boatbus trip through the staggering staggering gorge. Jon and I layer up and remain outside for the whole trip gradually getting colder and colder apart from shards of sunshine and marvel at the remote settlements on the steep banks whose only connection to the outside world is this boat. The skillful skipper zooms in to pick up villagers with their sacks of wares for the market, dropping off humans and animals in other places. A lovely French family, grandad living in Tirana, cool dude water engineer, also on board, and we chat and marvel together at the sheer cliffs and stupendous beauty. Diesel boat engine smells remind me of my old boat days. It’s all mighty fine. We disembark in a mad dash of sacks bikes people scrabbling to get on and off the boat, and after a short tunnel spend half an hour warming up in the sunshine with second breakfast before hitting a 30km broken up but beautiful road above the reservoir. Jon finds this hard hard, I love it. My bike comfier on this terrain than his.

Haggle for honey and lose to a 15 year old who gives us a smaller more rubbish jar. Losing in the haggling with preteens and teens becomes a theme for the trip, and gives a good measure of how rubbish we both are at this.

Cycle tourist #5 Andreas German going Munich to Istanbul in 3 weeks. A fast man. Old school panniers like ours. Very friendly, offers us a bed in Munich.

Then it’s suddenly the flat lands and vines, figs and some citrus, less and less rubbish, and increasingly wealthier. We cruise behind a teenage Roma scrap metal motor rickshaw driver into the very lovely town of Shkoder and decide to spend two nights in the equally lovely Mi casa es Tu Casa hostel run by Alma, an exceptionally nice lady. Her house, which was the early photographer Marubi’s house for a time, is stuffed full of her lovely belongings and paintings. We chat a lot, about the world, and the Youth, and May 68, and dogs and travellers all blend into the sofa and the scenery and tuck up in front of her wood burning stove. She gives us some of her olives and we give her a cake that reminds her of her childhood as it’s an old local recipe and her dad used to buy her one every week: “you’ve given me a commotion” she movingly says, all teared up. She has lost two husbands and gives you the sense of a woman well loved and who has loved well and now beams that love on her rescue dogs and her travellers.

It’s just before Easter and the Catholic Church is heaving with folk coming to have their bread blessed (30, 40 people all jostling to get to the front of the long long table behind which the priest is running up and down briskly sprinkling his holy water), and we visit the mosque and the Orthodox church for good measure as well. The whole of Albania has a sense of healthy religious tolerance from our brief trip and nowhere more than here.

Shkoder has lovely old Italianate buildings, a really good museum of photography, another few museums sadly shut on this Easter weekend, an amazing old fortress and the shores of the exception lovely lake Shkroder nearby. Everything is green and lush as we cycle out to an old Ottoman bridge nearby through fields and orchards and cows and horses. We eat very well especially in a fast food joint where we meet cyclist #6 from Cheltenham. The ice cream in this city is also very very good.

So much that we haven’t seen in Albania, but the lasting memories will be of friendliness, epic views, snow capped mountains, great bakeries, religious mixing, very wide double beds, good fruit and veg, wilderness and remoteness, of mellow dogs, of poverty but also a sense of a country slowly recovering from totalitarianism over several generations, of pride in that recovery. I’d go back in a trice.

There is water everywhere around Shkroder and it feels fitting that we leave town along the river.