Author: ninemilesperhour

1st DECEMBER 2018

After yesterday’s crossing of the Llogara Pass, I’m still a little bit dazed when I wake up. One of the first things I do is go downstairs to check on my front tyre, as I feel there’s a good chance it will have deflated overnight. It has. I just pop the wheel off and take it back upstairs with me to fit a spare inner tube. When I leave I ask the old lady who runs the place if I can fill up my water bottles. She invites me in and then fills my containers with chilled water out of her fridge, rather than straight from the tap. It’s not much, but it’s a nice touch.

As I’m so close to sea-level, I decide that I’ll have a look at Dhermi beach before leaving town. The cobbled access road makes getting there a chore, but it’s nice enough, although understandably quiet on the first day of winter. The odd thing about this beach is that there’s a giant sculpture of an upright fork, that looks like it has been thrust, prongs first, into a rock just offshore. It is a surreal spectacle and brilliantly out of place. There’s a restaurant that overlooks the site, so I’m guessing it has something to do with them, rather than it having being stabbed there by some angry God. With the beach visit over, I push my ride back up the stupidly steep hill to the main road and continue cycling south.

I’m only covering the short 18km to Himarë today, as I’m still suffering after getting over that mountain. Even so, I still need to climb to a height of 380 metres (1,200 feet), shortly after being on the beach at Dhermi. The hills are ridden in slow motion today, past tough Mediterranean scrub and herds of goats with bells clanking around their necks. Again, I stop on numerous occasions. I just feel drained and numb after yesterday. I get to thinking how I would have coped with this three months ago, when I was fitter at the end of my summer trip. A lot bloody better than I’m doing now, I’d have hoped.

I drag myself to the top, before a steep downhill takes me right into the touristy seaside town of Himarë. I’m staying at a guest house that’s up a bumpy dirt track, and run by couple in their fifties who are disarmingly friendly. Anthoula, the wife, sits me down on their outside patio and gives me a lovely strong Greek coffee while I rest my legs. Her husband, Nikolla, goes one better and joins me with a shot of home-made Raki as a welcome drink. Although, this Raki is made from grapes, it bears no resemblance to wine whatsoever. It is pure, clear spirit and warms my throat accordingly. I think I’m being clever and say ‘Gëzuar,’ the Albanian word for ‘Cheers’ as we chink glasses. Nikolla then surprises me by telling me he speaks Greek and that Himarë is esssentially a Greek town. Apparently this coastline was far easier to reach by sailing from Corfu than it was by crossing over the mountains from inland Albania. I’ll certainly vouch for that !

After chatting to them for a while they show me to their biggest room, where they’ve upgraded me as I’m their only guest. The shower is lukewarm, at best, but I brave it. However, the electric blanket is a treat, and is destined to remain on all night. Although the temperatures float around the mid-teens during the day, they drop to low single figures at night. There’s no central heating or double-glazing here either, so the temperature inside is usually very similar to the temperature outside. I take a walk through town and down to the seafront for a look before it gets dark. The town’s decorated Christmas tree somehow doesn’t look right with a Mediterranean beach sunset as a backdrop.

The next day I remain in Himarë, as it’s a relaxing and picturesque spot, and I also feel that a day of inactivity is just what I need at the moment. With today’s warmth and sunshine, the seafront looks beautiful, if a little deserted. For lunch I visit a take-away place for some Byrek – an Albanian filo pastry slice that can contain cheese, meat, spinach or any number of other fillings. I quite fancy spinach, but there are only two cheese ones left. I take both. I eat them while sitting on a beachside bench and struggle to get through the first one, let alone the second.

After a joyously lazy day in Himarë, I get set to carry on down the coast to Piqeras. I’m approaching these hilly sections in small, manageable steps as I’m still not used to slogging up steep slopes all day. The guest house owners say Goodbye and Nikolla comes downstairs to see me off. He takes a couple of selfies of the pair of us, and then videos me as I bounce down the stony dirt track away from him. I leave town along the seafront, but it’s not long before I’m climbing again. These hills really are a struggle, although I do get some lovely views of beaches, coves and the turquoise blue sea from my high vantage points.

I’m climbing up another big hill towards the town of Borsh, when I see a half-built house, clinging to a roadside cliff and overlooking the sea. I’m able to walk right inside the concrete shell and sit with my lunch while gazing out towards the Mediterranean. I continue up the hill through Borsh, where I meet a donkey walking down the main street in the opposite direction. At first I think it might be lame as it looks to be hobbling, but then I notice it’s front legs are tied loosely together so that it can walk but can’t run away. The donkey and I are both travelling at roughly the same speed. Nevertheless, when I reach the top of the next hill I’m able to look back and see the last two headlands that I’ve cycled round far below me in the distance. Maybe I am getting slightly more used to this cycling routine again.

There’s an easy downhill to end today’s ride and that gets me into the small village of Piqeras by mid-afternoon. I’m in a guest house on the main road, where the owner’s teenage son valiantly carries my bike up to the first floor with most of my gear still attached. I take a seat on the outdoor balcony and polish off some more left-over road food, while enjoying a great view out to sea. The Mediterranean looks calm but ominously grey and brooding, with Corfu island and its dark, mountainous north coast sitting just off to my left. It’s quite a hypnotic sight and I sit there for at least an hour taking in the panorama. Eventually I decide that I better have a shower, but I spend the first few minutes shivering under cold water before I work out that the red and blue indicators on the shower tap are the wrong way round.

That leaves me one final day’s cycling before I get back to Sarandë where I finished my trip in the summer. My morning starts with a bang average breakfast of dry sliced bread and feta cheese omelette. I cut the omelette and put it on top of my bread like an open sandwich, thankful that a cup of strong coffee is offered to make the meal more interesting.

At first I’m on a familiar rollercoaster of uphills and downhills, descending to fifty metres above sea-level at one point and then rising back up to over three hundred. I’m taking every opportunity to stop for breath as per usual, but just after Lukovë village the road flattens out and my day becomes a lot easier. Then, with the afternoon becoming bright and increasingly warm, it’s a gentle trundle for the remaining 20km into Sarandë. It feels quite good to be back, with the town still looking all sunny and Mediterranean despite the onset of winter. My phone tells me that it’s currently eighteen degrees.

I’m staying at Hotel Veli, which is about four streets back from the seafront. The guy who greets me is falling over himself to be helpful, getting me a jug of fresh water and dragging a table outside onto the balcony for me. It reminds me of Basil Fawlty when he’s being cringingly nice to his supposedly more important guests. The poor bloke keeps thanking me for choosing to stay there, as they obviously don’t have many visitors in the winter. When I’m left to my own devices I’m straight into a shower that is roastingly hot and, unlike most others recently, will stay hot indefinitely.

The following day I take as a Rest Day in Sarandë. Breakfast is served in the hotel’s basement restaurant by the guy who runs the place. I tell him I wouldn’t mind seeing the ruins of the Ancient Greek town of Butrint, and he suggests getting a bus there because it’s only 100 Lek (about 70 pence). In the end I opt to cycle as it’s only 18km away and the road is pretty much flat. Plus, I have the freedom to stop wherever I want on my bike. It turns out to be such an easy ride after the last few days, especially as I’m not weighed down by heavy pannier bags and camping gear. I zoom along the seafront in the sunshine, then slightly inland and past the giant Lake Butrint.

On the way I pass a few old, abandoned bunkers by the roadside. I can’t quite believe that I’ve neglected to mention them so far. They are everywhere in Albania, a legacy of the bad old days of communist dictator Hoxha. He was so paranoid about the country being invaded that he had almost 175,000 of the dome-shaped, concrete structures built. Apparently the bunkers accounted for two percent of total government spending during the twenty years in which they were being built. And while materials and resources were being channelled into bunker construction, roads and housing were left to suffer. Most of the ones I’ve seen are the smaller model, only large enough for two people to stand in and fire guns through slits in the wall. They look a bit like giant concrete mushrooms, with a fat stalk and a grey, domed roof. After Hoxha died the country opened up to the rest of the world again and the bunkers became pointless. Most were simply left where they stood as removing them all was such a huge expense. Some of the larger ones have now been converted into cafes and homeless accommodation, which will hopefully have old Hoxha turning furiously his grave.

I’m at the Butrint site in no time and spend an hour or so checking out the modern castle and the 2,500 year old amphitheatre. I’m so close to the Greek border at this point that my phone decides it’s going to jump one hour ahead onto Greek time. This confuses the hell out of me for a brief moment until I work out what has happened. Then I retrace my tracks, back along the same road to Sarandë, where I shower, grab a spinach Byrek and stock up on road food for tomorrow. I’ve deliberately been taking small steps along the mountainous Albanian coast in an attempt to get used to the regime of cycling once again. Tomorrow though, I won’t be afforded that kind of luxury. For tomorrow’s ride I have no choice but another long slog up a mountain pass before I can cross into Greece.

 

30th NOVEMBER 2018

Breakfast has been arranged with Veli for 8.30am to give me what I think will be enough daylight to get me over the Llogara Pass. The food is more standard today, with cappuccino, two fried eggs and a kind of round, Albanian soda bread called kulaç. Mind you, this is about all I can eat as I’m still pretty full from yesterday’s feast. Veli wishes me Good Luck for my mountain crossing and says ‘I cannot imagine how difficult this will be for you.’ At the same time his eyes are saying ‘you’re not gonna make it.’

It’s a beautifully sunny morning, with both sea and sky a calm, pale blue over the bay. This is exactly the sort of conditions I would have hoped for, as crossing these mountains in the rain would be horrible. I’d already known about the Llogara Pass on my first visit to Albania in the summer, but at that point I’d chosen to take an inland route instead. The combination of a buckled rear wheel and me being a wuss were the main reasons for that. I could have taken the same, easier road again but I wanted to avoid simply retracing my steps. This time I’ve checked all the elevation profiles and know exactly what to expect – a gradual uphill to start, then a sudden steep slope and 23km (14 miles) of solid climbing to the summit.

Leaving the guest house I set off slowly, trying to pace myself. I’m hugging the coast for about 8km, past tourist accommodation and restaurants that look sad and deserted in late November off-season. At Orikum the road heads inland and the gradual incline begins. I’m trudging past a roadside farm when a dog in a ploughed field notices me, barks loudly and then starts running towards me. I’m really not in the mood for this today as I’ve got enough on my plate with the mountain pass. I stop and pick up a couple of decent sized stones and motion to throw them at the advancing hound. When it sees what I’m doing it stops dead in its tracks. It looks like I’ve found a new dog defence strategy, and the stones go in the back pouch of my cycling jersey in case I need them again quickly. In fact I’ve found Albanian dogs to be fairly timid. They will sometimes bark and run alongside me, but if I shout at them aggressively they stop. So far.

The first steep little uphill gets me so out of breath that I have to stop halfway up. I knew I’d be making plenty of rest stops today, but I didn’t think it would be quite so soon. The road continues upwards, and I continue stopping to catch breath. I slog my way up to the Dukat village turn-off, which on Google maps looks to be just under halfway to the top. Then it’s a smooth, wide hairpin and a couple of gradual kilometres. I’m starting to get into a rhythm now and moving up the pass quite well. I get to thinking that I’m coping pretty well at this point. Then the steepness kicks in with a vengeance.

At the foot of one long, sharp straight I can see kids at the far end selling fruit from roadside stalls. In turn, they can see my tediously slow progress and the amount of times I have to stop before reaching them. I’m sure they are laughing at me in Albanian as I creep past. The terrain, which was Mediterranean scrub in the foothills has now become more wooded as I’ve cycled higher. I can look back at the sea far below me in the distance and gauge just how far I’ve climbed. However, I’m using any excuse to stop now as I’m really beginning to struggle with the road becoming even more steep. At every stop I feel a little dizzy and just stand there, straddling my bike and gasping for air. At times I swear I can actually hear the blood pumping in my ears. I’ve also got a line from the song ‘Vow’ by Garbage in my head – the bit where Shirley Manson sings ‘I nearly died’ over and over. If it’s not a premonition, then it’s certainly how I feel. I’ve never been this wrecked on a bike before. My right thigh is now shaking.

I make it to Llogara village and I’m almost ruined. I continue trying to ride in spurts of fifty metres, then stopping and gulping for air. At one such stop I simply stand there, shake my head and gasp ‘I’m fucked’ out loud. Then I decide to do something that I’ve never done on a cycle trip before, no matter how big the hill. I get off and push the bike. My legs and lungs just aren’t functioning well enough to allow me to ride to the top. I’ll still get myself and the bike to the top under my own steam, only I’ll be walking. It’s probably going to be just as quick as cycling for fifty metres then taking five minutes to recover. I know I hadn’t prepared for this trip, but my lack of stamina is still a shock to me.

I’d seen on Google maps that there were four tight hairpin bends close to the summit, so I know when I’m getting very close. These turns are so sharp and steep I think they would have ended me, had I still been cycling. The road levels out just before the top of the pass, so I get back on my bike and casually ride the remaining distance. There are some people at the top who probably think I’ve just ridden up the entire hill, and I’m not about to tell them any different. I’m greeted by the stunning sight of a bright, low sun on the Mediterranean Sea some 3,500 feet below me. The Llogara Pass comes up the inland side of the mountain, and I will descend down the coastal side. I stay at the top for a while to take in the view and recover, but the sun will be setting in an hour so I need to press on.

The downhill is fast and steep, with a series of long switchbacks taking me back towards sea-level. I have to put my kagoule on as it’s so cold with the wind that’s created by my descent. Even then, my arms still shiver uncontrollably on the way down. About two hundred metres below the summit there’s a large concrete viewing area where I stop to take more pictures. A local guy is arranging a parachute on the ground behind him, asks where I’m from and tells me that he’s going to fly. A woman who’s with him is filming the jump, and also letting him know when there’s sufficient wind blowing up the mountainside. When the time is right he runs down the slope, his legs still doing cartoon-like revolutions as the wind lifts his parachute and he glides off into the sunset.

The remaining downhill is a series of long zig-zags, my hands clasping the brakes tightly on corners. Then the front wheel begins to feel heavy going round bends and I’m finding it difficult to steer. It takes me a couple of minutes to realise that it’s almost flat. As it’s nearly dark now, I just pump it back up and hope that it lasts for the remaining 10km to Dhermi. Thankfully it does.

The village itself is around two hundred metres above sea-level, but my accommodation is on a road that leads down to the sea. I’m checked in by an old Greek Mama, all dressed in black, who shows me to a room on the second floor and the view I get of Corfu in the distance. The panorama is gorgeous, but the two storey climb was the last thing my thighs needed after today. I’m straight under the shower, which is amazingly hot. After a while I just sit on the bottom, hang my head and let the steaming water massage my scalp and the back of my neck. I’m so knackered I could easily fall asleep in this position.

After today’s exertions I’m in a bit of a daze for a while, like I’ve got early morning stares. My legs feel so heavy and all my energy has been sapped. But the end result is that I made it over the Llogara Pass in one piece. And for that I’ve got to be thankful.

 

 

 

 

28th NOVEMBER 2018

I wake to the familiar spatter of rain outside and try to get my head round having to cycle in the wet again. At least my drenched clothes from yesterday are now dry as I left the air-con on all night, set to a toasty thirty-two degrees. The same waitress who checked me in yesterday is now rushing round serving breakfasts, and brings me a standard plate of omelette, bread, tomato, cucumber and a cappuccino. By the time I’m ready to leave the rain has lessened to a drizzle. It’s not heavy, but it will still soak me through eventually.

The road out of Lushnjë is long, flat and straight, my least favourite of conditions. I trundle along slowly, still feeling really underdone and not yet ready for big distances. My right tricep and left foot are aching too, no doubt protesting at this sudden burst of exercise that’s been thrust upon them. I’m still on familiar roads through the bustling town of Fier and then downhill to a junction just past Levan. The last time I stopped here I took the road to Tepelenë and the mountainous interior, but today I’m off to a city called Vlorë on the coast.

A new motorway has recently been constructed between here and Vlorë, but I’m relegated to an old road that was probably once the main route before a motorway was built. My road runs roughly parallel to the motorway for the entire distance to Vlorë. I can see and hear traffic shooting past as I ride on rutted, bumpy streets, through towns that are dying a slow death having now been bypassed by the motorway. The road continues to be shitty and uneven right to the outskirts of Vlorë, before a nice downhill takes me into Albania’s third largest city. Dozens of high rise hotels and apartments stretch back from the sea and cling to mountains that surround the city. These mountain tops are shrouded in dark grey cloud, promising more rain after a dry afternoon.

Cycling into the city I see my third convoy today of what look like government cars. There are about six black cars with darkened windows speeding past, basically telling everyone to get out their way with sirens blazing and lights flashing. It feels like the president has been visiting Vlorë today. Later I find out that today is Albanian Independence Day and also ‘Flag Day,’ which explains the amount that I’ve seen flying or draped over car bonnets.

My accommodation is the Fjortes Hotel, which sounds grand but is really just rooms above a petrol station. I’m told it’s safe to leave my bike chained up outside the petrol station, but I’m not so sure – we’re right next to the train station in the middle of town. They assure me it will be OK as they are open twenty-four hours and have CCTV, so I put my faith in them. My room is an odd, narrow affair with a posh sofa bed running along one side. I don’t think I could even fit my bike in the space that remains. The shower takes about three minutes to warm up, but when it does the water is roasting hot and just what I needed after today’s cool conditions. I visit the local Big Market for some munchies and veg out for the evening. I’m still trying to get used to this cycling regime again, and the first few days have been predictably painful. I knew this would happen though, and the only way through it is just to keep going.

The next morning I’m contentedly having breakfast downstairs, happy to see that my bike is still chained up where I left it. I’m only cycling a very short distance today to a guest house just south of Vlorë. The reason for this is that tomorrow I’ll be going over the Llogara Pass, which at 1,027 metres (3,370 feet) is going to prove a challenge. I figure even if I ride for 10km today, it will still make tomorrow’s cycle a little less intimidating. Trundling this short distance will almost feel like a rest day and should set me up for my attempt at crossing the mountain pass. I leave Vlorë along a seafront that looks muddy near the city, but improves the further south I cycle. I’m just plodding along when a ringing bell alerts me to a chain of three professional looking cyclists that wave as they speed past me. If they are heading over the pass today, they look far better equipped to succeed than I do.

I reach my guest house to find an old guy in a fedora-type hat painting the outside fence. He speaks almost no English, but seems very friendly and beckons me in. He shouts for his English-speaking son, who checks me in and shows me around. The son’s name is Veli, probably in his mid-thirties and clearly the one who runs the guest house. He says if I want he can cook me a meal to celebrate Liberation Day (one day after Independence Day). I have a shower, then go and join him on a deck that sits right above the Mediterranean shore. It’s a wonderful spot on a sheltered bay, with turquoise blue water below us and a mountainous national park on the other side.

For an appetiser I’m served sardines on bruschetta along with a plate of green olives. Normally I wouldn’t touch olives, especially green ones, but I make a special effort as I’m in the Mediterranean. I find if you eat them separately and actually try to appreciate the taste, then they’re just about palatable. The large glass of red wine certainly helps too. For the main it’s roast chicken with a sort of mushed, baked bread as an accompaniment. There are plenty of little side plates too with feta cheese, tomatoes, lettuce and olive oil with balsamic vinegar. Veli is a chef by trade, running the family villa in the summer and working as a barman in Luxembourg during winter. He lived in Italy when he was growing up and worked as a Japanese sushi chef for four years on Lake Garda. It’s safe to say he knows his stuff.

For dessert it’s local ice-cream topped with freshly cracked almonds. While getting the ice-cream, he brings out a small bottle of part-frozen Greek ouzo. We have a couple of shots each and I’m reminded that the Albanian word for Cheers is ‘Gëzuar’. Then the old fella joins us and spills his first shot all over the table. Pretty soon the bottle is finished. Veli tells me that I’m invited to join them for their evening meal and a drink tonight, which is music to my ears. Across the bay there is a red glowing sky above the mountain’s silhouette after an early, but spectacular sunset.

Before I join them at night I go down to the seashore and dip my toes in the Mediterranean. Being nearly December I’m assuming the water will be cold and brace myself accordingly. I’m then amazed to find that the water feels lukewarm, in fact the sea temperature seems warmer than the air. Meanwhile, Veli has started a fire in his outside cooking stove, shaped like a suspended metal half-barrel. He is fanatic about cooking with fire, despite the extra time involved, as he doesn’t like or trust gas and electricity. I had told him earlier that I loved Japanese food, so tonight he’s going to show off his skills and cook some local fish tempura-style. As I am their only low-season guest, he’s able to take me into the kitchen and shows me how to prepare the fish and make tempura batter. He’s also kind enough to share a beer with me while doing so.

Once the fire is hot enough, he heats some maize oil in a wok. With his accent I think he is saying ‘Mice Oil’ at first which would have been a little distressing. He dips some small red mullet into his tempura batter and pops them in the wok where they sizzle away satisfyingly. We eat them about two minutes after they are lifted from the pan. My God, they are delicious – a little bit crispy on the outside and beautifully tender on the inside. The process is repeated with some chunky slices of eel, before he grills some sea bass over the fire. All the peppers, tomatoes, lemon and chillies we eat come straight from their garden too. I sit there with a dumb, half-pissed smile and realise that I do feel really priveliged to have been asked to join them in this feast.

We have a couple more beers, but I decide I better curb my intake if I’m to get over the Llogara Pass tomorrow. With the clear night sky, it has started to get quite chilly, and I use my room’s air-con as a heater until I turn out the light. It’s been a great day, and as I drift off to sleep I can hear the relaxing sounds of the Mediterranean gently lapping against the shore. I try to make the most of this tranquil moment as I know getting over that huge mountain pass tomorrow is going to be far from relaxing.

 

24th NOVEMBER 2018

I wake around 9.00am to find Joe is already sitting in the lounge, laptop open and catching up on some work. My breakfast is a heady mix of Cheerios and banana, before I say Goodbye to Joe and head out of Tirana. Although I’m starting back in Albania, I don’t really want to be retracing my steps from the summer, so I’m going to stick to the coastal route this time. There are certain occasions where I will have to revisit places though, and today’s return to Durrës will be one of those.

There is a motorway from Tirana to Durrës, but of course I can’t use that on my bike. A couple of easy junctions get me out of the city and onto the alternative main road heading west towards the coast. I’ve got about 40km to cycle today, so just take it slowly on a road that is horribly bumpy and potholed in places. For lunch I stop on a hill and watch an amateur football match that is taking place on a pitch below me. At one point I’m messing about with my panniers, when I hear the sounds of cheering and realise that I’ve missed the only goal of my lunch break.

I carry on slowly past the town of Pezes, where a stern, old, communist-style monument dominates its road junction. Then before I know it, I can see the Mediterranean and I’m on a stony, messy downhill towards Durrës. I reach the coast about 10km south of the city, but I’m so out of practice that I struggle along lazily for these final kilometres. All day I’ve been asking myself why I do no training in between cycle trips ?

The Durrës beachfront has a very different feel to when I was here two months ago. Then it was a calm, sunny thirty degrees with people milling around on the promenade and in restaurants. Today it’s about fifteen degrees and cloudy, with a fresh wind blowing in from the sea. There must have been a storm recently too, as the once sandy beach is now covered by masses of seaweed. A lot of restaurants have closed for the winter and there’s not many braving a walk along the seafront today. I almost wish I hadn’t seen the place looking so sorry and quiet, as it was one of my favourite spots from the summer.

My accommodation this time is a three storey B&B run by an Italian lady who could be aged anything from forty-five to seventy-five. She lives on the ground floor along with two dogs and three cats that she brought with her from Italy. She is very hospitable though, and gives me a big glass of red wine and some parmesan cheese on arrival. For dinner I just polish off my road food, as it has started to pour with rain outside. It’s pretty chilly at night and I even take to turning on the room heater, which would have been unthinkable back in September.

For the next two days I remain in Durrës, amidst rain, thunder and lightning whilst waiting for a weather window. I’m treated to ‘Italian’ breakfasts, which means they are based mostly on bread, but she does mix it up with feta cheese, biscuits and ridiculously strong coffee. My nights are plagued by the piercing, screechy sounds of cockerels calling, which in turn sets off the local dogs. I’m in the second largest city in Albania and it sounds like a farmyard outside.

It’s still raining on my third day, but I decide just to cycle anyway, for fear of going stir-crazy otherwise. When I left Durrës in September I had been cycling for three months and was actually quite fit, so managed the 85km to Fier easily. Now I’m only on my second cycling day and about to face a brutal, all day headwind, hence the reason I’ll only be travelling 53km to Lushnjë today. The wind is strong and in my face from the moment I get down to Durrës seafront, and my progress is painfully slow. These roads are flat and straight, so the wind is constant and I take an age to cover the first 20km to Kavajë. There are a few spits of rain, but I just carry on in my t-shirt, sheltering under bridges till the showers pass. Soon the rain gets heavier, and soon I’m donning my kagoule.

The next section of road is a motorway that I cycled illegally in the summer because the detour onto minor roads was far too long. I decide to use the motorway again, as it’s the most direct route to Lushnjë and will get me out of the rain more quickly. However, I might have angered the Road Gods as rain starts to pelt it down furiously as soon as I get near the motorway. A guy with a roadside fruit stall beckons me to join him in sheltering under his canopy, but stupidly I carry straight on. Five minutes later I regret that decision as I am drenched through to my skin. My socks are soaked inside my boots and I can hear them squelching every time I turn the pedals. Once the rain passes I’m still dripping wet and still fighting this draining headwind. If the cops pull me over now I wouldn’t care. In fact I would welcome a lift for the final few kilometres to Lushnjë.

Eventually I do crawl my way to town and find Pilo Lala, which is a restaurant with rooms for rent above. A powerful looking waitress takes both my pannier bags and marches me upstairs with them. I’m straight into a shower which is deliciously hot, but sadly only for five minutes. My room does have air-con though so I set it to ‘heat’ and take turns hanging all my wet clothes from the vents in an attempt to get them dry. It looks as though I was correct in taking the motorway option, as a massive thunder and lightning storm hits town thirty minutes after my check-in. I’ve come slightly inland getting to Lushnjë, but tomorrow I’ll be heading back to the coast and onto new roads that I’ve never travelled before.

22nd NOVEMBER 2018

I’ve ridden a bike once in the two months since I flew back from Corfu. And that was only a four mile round trip from my sister’s place to a shopping centre in Clydebank. I was reasonably fit when I finished the first leg of my trip in September, but since then I’ve been an inactive lump of laziness. All the stamina and fitness I gained in the summer will have to be built up almost from scratch again. I’ve already accepted that the first week of cycling is going to be painful.

It’s 7.00am when I leave my sister’s place by taxi, my bike already packaged up the day before and ready for the journey. The girl at the British Airways desk at Glasgow Airport gets me all worried by saying I won’t be able to fly without a return ticket or a visa for Albania. I point to the large package beside me, tell her it’s a bike and that I’ll be leaving the country overland, which causes some raised eyebrows on her part. Plus, although I can stay in Albania for ninety days without a visa, the very nature of my journey means I cant give her a definite date for departing. This isn’t going well. I’ve not even left Glasgow and the trip could be in jeopardy. Our discussion goes back and forth for a while, before she phones her boss, who tells her within thirty seconds that I’m OK to fly. Thank Goodness. That was a blooming stressful drama over nothing.

After my morning tensions, the one hour flight to Gatwick is uneventful. Then it’s a three hour wait for my flight to Albania’s capital, Tirana. This is a new route for British Airways, so the flight is only half full and I have two seats all to myself. We approach Albania down the Mediterranean coast, just as it’s getting dark. For some reason I have an uneasy feeling of foreboding, which I hope is just down to nerves before starting a new trip. I know once I get going I’ll be fine, but that doesn’t stop me feeling anxious beforehand.

When we touch down I see that Tirana Airport is tiny, looking to be not much bigger than Southampton’s. I didn’t realise that it’s the only airport in the whole country, so every single flight is an international one. Customs is an absolute formality, which is a bit of a relief after this morning’s British Airways desk melodrama. I lift and drag my bike outside to the taxi rank, because I’m not about to unpack it and cycle into a strange city in the dark. The cabbie puts the back seat down to fit my bike and, like a fool, I instinctively walk round the left-hand side of the cab to get in the passenger door. The guys asks ‘You like to drive ?’ because over here the left side is the driver’s side. I couldn’t have looked more like a bumbling UK tourist if I’d tried.

I’m being hosted for my first two nights in Tirana by an American couchsurfer called Joe, who lives above a restaurant near the city centre. He comes downstairs to meet me and, along with an Argentinean bloke called Ariel, we carry all my gear upstairs. Joe is the deputy head of an international school in Tirana and rents a huge, modern three bedroomed apartment all by himself. He hosts people continuously as he’s still a traveller during school holidays, plus I think he just likes the company. He has pizza delivered from the downstairs restaurant and we all dig in. Joe is working tomorrow so heads off to bed early and I sit and chat to Ariel for about another hour. He’s probably in his mid-twenties and has just hitch-hiked through Mongolia and Russia to reach Europe ! Then tiredness overcomes me, I shower, climb into bed and am asleep in an instant.

By the time I wake up the following morning, Joe has gone to work and Argentinean Ariel has left to catch a bus to his next destination. He feels guilty and thinks he’s cheating by not hitching, but I don’t blame him as hitching or cycling out of a city can be a nightmare. Joe recommended the Tirana free walking tour so I head into the main square to join that. About ten of us meet on the opera house steps and are led by a guy called Gazi, who turns out to be mates with Joe. He gives us a potted history of Albania – from being ruled by Illyrians, Romans, Ottomans, Nazis, Communists, until finally opening up to the rest of the world. He takes us on a wander to show us the square, mosques, churches, parliament and other buildings. It’s quite interesting, but I’m just plodding around half-heartedly due to a thumping headache.

There is a road called George W Bush Street, named because he is the only American president to have ever visited Albania. We are told about a little cafe near the airport where George Dubya went for a coffee while on his way to catch his flight home. To this day the cafe owner won’t let anybody sit in the chair that Bush used. Throughout history Americans have been mostly good to Albania, and they are very well thought of here, thus explaining the amount of US flags you see flying around the country.

Gazi tells us what it was like during communist times. He says he was only eight when communism ended in Albania, but can still remember how poor his family were before that. The country was ruled over by a dictator named Hoxha, who even severed ties with former communist allies Yugoslavia, Russia and China during his rule. This left Albania with no friends and in a similar position to where North Korea finds itself nowadays. Travel and communication with the outside world were almost impossible, while all media was in the form of state-run propaganda. If someone did manage to escape the country then the authorities would punish the family members that remained. People would think twice about running if they knew that one of their siblings could be killed as a result. The country was ruled by fear, and you couldn’t trust anyone in case they were a communist party informer. It’s difficult to imagine that all this was happening a mere thirty years ago.

Hoxha died in 1985, and this allowed his more liberal replacement to reach out and connect with the world again. By 1991 communism was finished, and Albania has gone from a basket-case country in isolation to being a full NATO member and waiting on its European Union approval. The changes in those twenty-seven years have been both rapid and enormous. One detail I find extraordinary is that during communism hardly anyone outside the ruling party was allowed to own a car. Then in 1991, suddenly everyone became a driver on the same day. Maybe this could go some way to explaining the dodgy Albanian driving standards I have witnessed.

When the tour is over I go shopping for some road food, before heading back to Joe’s flat. My head is still banging so I lie down and end up crashing out for an hour. On waking I remove my bike from its bin bag packaging and set it up for tomorrow’s ride. Joe gets back from work in the late afternoon and asks if I want to join him and his mates at a basketball game tonight. As I’ve never been to a basketball game before I take him up on the offer.

We meet all his American teaching buddies at a bar next to the school for a pre match beer. Strangely this seems to cure my headache. They all tell me that I’ve arrived late as the city was bouncing with Scotland football fans a week ago. Apparently they don’t get many away supporters at Albania matches and the locals said they had never seen so many fans from another country. I think it will go down in Tirana folklore, and even the taxi driver from yesterday called it ‘Scotland Night’. Then it’s off to the match via a takeaway shop where I have some kind of chicken wrap with salad.

The basketball takes place in front of maybe 150 people, in a cold cavernous concrete stadium that looks like it’s a relic from communist times. There are only six teams in the Albanian Super League and both the sides playing tonight are from Tirana. We are supporting Partizani as one of their players knows the teachers, and they also seem to have a couple of ‘guest’ Americans on show too. They win fairly convincingly, something like 82-60, but I wasn’t paying that much attention to the score. For me the standard looked pretty good, but then I’m not exactly an expert on basketball. The Americans kept laughing at how bad the players were.

We head back to Joe’s flat afterwards where we sit and chat for a while. I’ve been feeling better as the day has worn on, but I hit the sack about 11.00pm as I’m still not quite myself. I’m off to Durrës tomorrow which, at only 40km distance, will be a nice gentle way to break back in to this cycling malarkey.

 

 

 

 

OCTOBER 2018

I’ve finished my trip. I spend a couple of more days at Rob’s apartment in Sarandë, being a tourist by day and an alcohol drinking nudist in the evening. On my first full day we take a walk up to the ruins of Lëkurësi Castle, which sits high on a hill above town. Looking inland I can see the hills I cycled over yesterday, and the route I took along the dry valley floor to reach Sarandë. If I look out to sea in the opposite direction, the Mediterranean is flat and calm below me. Both sea and sky are the same colour of hazy light blue, looking almost like they are joined together. From here I can also see the dark, hilly outline of Corfu Island’s North coast. This will be my destination for a direct flight back to Glasgow.

Two days later I get on the Sarandë to Corfu ferry with about five minutes to spare, due to me misunderstanding the difference between sailing times and boarding times. It’s a one hour crossing and the thing that hits me most is how green Corfu looks compared to the dry Albanian mainland. My first stop on the island is Corfu Town for some Euros, and then it’s an easy 10km cycle to the fairly posh Hotel Pontikonisi. This accommodation clings to a seafront cliff, with reception on street level and the five floors below descending to a private beach. The location is superb, with brilliant views of the Ionian Sea and over the tiny Mouse Island, which looks almost square-shaped from my vantage point. I go downstairs and have a refreshing swim in the sea, before lazily falling asleep on the shore.

My other reason for choosing this hotel was that it’s very close to the airport, which will only leave me a short cycle tomorrow. In fact, it’s so close that the airport’s flight path runs over the sea directly in front of the hotel. As we’re on a high cliff, the planes are flying just above our height when they pass. I’d seen a few guest reviews warning about loud aircraft, but I didn’t really care. It is noisy, but it’s such a cool spectacle. Later I go for a walk and find a concrete causeway in the sea, only wide enough for pedestrians or bikes, which sits right underneath the flight path. Locals are used to the sight, but there’s a constant gaggle of about twenty tourists all lined up with smartphones and cameras to capture the moment a plane zooms in overhead. It seems silly not to join in the fun for half an hour.

The following morning’s breakfast is an all you can eat buffet, where I gorge myself on my favourite Greek food of stuffed vine leaves. I take a short cut to the airport by cycling over the plane spotters causeway, then begin my pre-flight ritual of wrapping my bike in bin-bags. I had toyed with the idea of just abandoning it, because buying a new bike would cost almost the same as transporting and repairing the current one. In fairness though, the old thing has done me proud, so I decide to stick with it.

The airport is chaos. I have to carry two heavy pannier bags while shuffling my packaged bike through a teeming mass of waiting passengers. I’m sent to the far end of departures to have my bike scanned in a machine that doesn’t work, before I have to manhandle it all the way back round to the same Oversize Goods door where I started from. I’m starting to get a little stressed by this point, and having serious second thoughts about bringing the bike back with me. I do cheer up somewhat once the groundstaff accept my bike and I pass through security. Then I realise I’m sitting in a departure lounge that’s dominated by Brits flying home after package holidays. I try to amuse myself by guessing which people might be British before I hear any giveaway accents. Mind you, it’s hardly a challenge when I’m surrounded by an army of chavvy, tattooed families with kids called Shanniqua-Rose or Blaze. My God, this is depressing.

A four hour flight transports me from a sunny thirty degrees in Corfu to a slightly less sunny sixteen degrees in Glasgow. However, I’m not really too bothered as I know the temperature difference could have been an awful lot worse. I retrieve my bike and set about unwrapping it, all set for a short cycle back to my sister’s place. Unfortunately the spindle used to reattach my front wheel has been bent during the flight. It’s so twisted that I can’t even remove it from the wheel, and thus my bike is now unrideable. Well played Thomas Cook Airlines. Grudgingly, I fork out for a cab as I still need to get the bike back to my sister’s. Returning with this bike has caused me nothing but stress, hassle and expense. I knew I should have left it behind ! And, with that uncharitable thought, the journey is over.

One of the best things about going on these trips is that you really appreciate seeing family and friends when you get back. This time is no exception, and  it’s great to see everyone again. But then, all of a sudden, two months seem to have passed like they didn’t even happen. Winter is just about to descend and I’m not looking forward to a painful cascade of cold weather, Brexit news, Black Friday and the hideous three month run up to Christmas. I’m missing my cycle trip ! It gave me a goal and such a sense of purpose, even though I was probably more free than I’ve been in years. Now the trip has ended I feel rudderless and at a bit of a loss. I need to get back out there while I still have the opportunity, because I know I’ll regret it later if I don’t. Plus, I’ll probably be too decrepit to cycle big distances in a few years time. So, at the end of November I’m going to head back out to Albania and pick up from where I left off. It looks like this return to Scotland wasn’t the end of my trip. It was just an intermission. Let’s see what happens after the break !

 

 

 

 

8th SEPTEMBER 2018

If all goes well then I’ll be cycling the final 85km of my trip today. Strangely though, it doesn’t feel much different to any other day of the journey, and I know that last days can sometimes turn out to be a little anticlimactic. In keeping with this trend, today starts out very normally indeed. However, it is not destined to end that way.

Breakfast is self-service, but a pretty average offering of cereal, bread, cherry tomatoes, pickle and feta-type cheese. I sit outside the restaurant while eating, happy that my view compensates for the mediocre food. There’s a hazy morning sun rising low over the surrounding mountains, and a light, shrouding mist has left them indigo blue in colour. The silhouette of one peak is almost perfectly triangular. I make multiple trips back inside to re-stock my plate, reasoning that I might as well go for quantity if I’m not going to get quality.

As I’m leaving I take the opportunity to fill my bottles from the hotel’s outdoor water tap. Tepelenë is famous for its mineral water – a bit like an Albanian Evian or Highland Spring. The water is drawn from fresh mountain springs that surround the town, and I’m now filling my water bottles directly from the source. It’s probably the freshest, coldest water I’ve had on the whole trip. I’m not quite sure how the hotel has managed to tap into the natural spring water though. I suspect it’s similar to the bloke who diverts electricity straight into his house from the National Grid to avoid having to pay for it.

Today’s ride starts with a few small hills, then I’m travelling along a flat valley floor between two chains of mountains for the next 50km. It’s actually fairly warm, but a strong tailwind pushes me along nicely through the bustling city of Gjirokaster, then onto a village called Jorgucat. I’m only 10km from the Greek border at this point. I need to travel West though, up and over a mountain road that will lead me to Sarandë and the finish line. A car passes me as I turn towards the hill, and a woman in the rear leans out the window to take my picture as she looks back.

My final big hill is winding and steep, with a horrible looking drop off to my right. There are a number of roadside memorials dedicated to those who have plunged over the side, and a worrying lack of safety barriers. Tight corners have protection in the form of metal crash barriers, but straight sections are far less secure. Here, two foot high concrete blocks have been positioned above the precipice, but there are huge gaps between these blocks. The blocks and gaps alternate, so the road edge looks like it has a series of turrets above the rocky descent. Disconcertingly, most of the gaps are longer than the width of a car. It’s bad enough cycling on the side of the road next to the drop-off, but at times I also have a gusty wind blowing off the mountain and pushing me alarmingly close to the edge. This makes me nervous, so I take to cycling right along the white lines in the middle of the road when there’s no cars about.

The road zig-zags upwards, which thankfully means the wind isn’t always blowing me towards the abyss on my right. Stopping to rest becomes a regular thing, but I’m encouraged that plenty of drivers are tooting and waving today when they see I’m climbing this slope on a bike. Just before the summit I’m passed by the same car that had the woman photographer in the back seat. Again she points the camera backwards out the window and snaps me as they pass. Again I find this slightly odd.

At the top of the pass there’s a cafe, some horses roaming wild and a handful of cows with bells clanking round their necks. And then it’s downhill, for almost 20km. The descent is so sharp and twisty that I’m using both brakes almost the entire way down. After a while my hands start to ache due to all the braking, and also from vibrations through the handlebars from bumping down this narrow road. I’ve moved from exposed, rocky cliffs near the summit to a section of shady, cooling woodland in the foothills. Then I follow a river downstream that looks like it’s flowing through a man-made channel. The water is an unbelievably clear blue, with plants on the riverbed that make it look like an aquarium. For my final 15km, the road flattens out and I’m pedalling into a headwind, before one final, nasty climb gets me into Sarandë.

After changing my mind a few times, I’ve finally decided to let Rob, the nudist couchsurfer, host me. He seemed cool enough when I messaged him, and I figure there must be a reason that he’s received all those hundreds of positive references. I just have to try and find my inner nudist for a couple of days. When I get to town I visit a hotel for a lemonade and to use their Wi-Fi in order let Rob know I’ve arrived. He’s waiting outside his apartment block when I get there and gives me a big hug when we meet. I suddenly realise that I’m glad our first meeting is in a public place and that he’s fully clothed. Then he helps me upstairs with my gear to a second floor apartment he’s renting from Airbnb for two weeks while he’s in Sarandë. My bike goes outside on the balcony, which spoils the view of the Mediterranean, but only slightly.

We go down to the seafront for a beer, and he tells me a bit about himself. He’s a fifty-five year old American, who was once married, corporate, religious and in the US military. Then he got divorced, started to question the way he was living his life and sold everything so he could travel. He also has a decent US Air Force pension that allows him to indulge this lifestyle. If it is a mid-life crisis he’s going through, then it’s a spectacularly good one. He says he got into nudism when he was renting a big, four bedroomed house at Key West in Florida. He kept one room for himself and rented out the other three as holiday lets. At first he didn’t realise that Key West was famous for being a nudist destination, and was continually declining requests that asked if his accommodation was ‘clothing optional.’ Eventually he accepted one group of guests who then spent their whole time at his house in the nude. In the end he just followed suit, and is now a convert. Although, he tells me that here in Sarandë he only goes naked in the evening.

After a couple of beers it’s back to his apartment where he has a shower and then begins cooking. In the nude. I’d be petrified when cutting food in case I had a mis-hap. Not to mention all the hot pans and boiling water ! He seems quite happy though, and carries on like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Then it’s my turn. I go for a shower and, when I come out, I just don’t bother putting any clothes back on. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel a little awkward at first, but gradually it loses it’s weirdness. I think he’s on a mission to get the whole world nude, as he believes people are more honest and open once they’re out of their comfort zone. It’s also a condition if you want to be hosted by him. He says he feels uncomfortable being naked if his guests are fully clothed. But then, I find sitting there bollock naked with an absolute stranger ranks pretty high on my list of strange and uncomfortable experiences too.

Still, once I get over the nakedness, Rob turns out to be an interesting guy. I see him more as an old, shaven-headed hippy than anything else. He’s always challenging social norms and questioning why we do things. Instead of idle chit-chat he takes a real interest in his guests, trying to find out what motivates them in life and what makes them tick. He also drinks like a fish. On his kitchen worktop there are four full bottles of spirits – one vodka, one gin, one bacardi and a bottle of fernet liqueur. There are also a handful of tonic mixers and some lemons and limes, but not nearly enough to dilute all that alcohol. He seems to think we’ll be able to polish off all the spirits in the next couple of days.

We chat for a bit before Rob puts on a film called ‘We’re The Millers.’ I seem to remember it being quite funny, but that might have had something to do with all the gin. As predicted, the tonic runs out fairly quickly, thus putting an end to our alcohol consumption. Apparently guests at Rob’s place (male or female) normally sleep on the same bed as him, but that’s just a step too weird for me. I settle down on the couch and reflect on an unusual evening, but mostly on the fact that I’ve completed my journey.

It’s been quite a trek from when I set out at the beginning of June, way above the Arctic Circle in temperatures of two and three degrees Celsius. Since then I’ve cycled 5,000km (3,200 miles), crossed twelve countries and am now basking in the Mediterranean with temperatures in the thirties. I was quite slow and podgy to begin with but now I’ve got fitter, lost weight and I’m far browner than when I started out (well, parts of me are). I’ve learned a lot, been lucky enough to have met some great people, and got to see their countries through the eyes of a local. I’ve tried every single peculiar food and oddball beverage that’s been offered to me and I’ve even become a part-time nudist for a weekend. All things considered, I’d say that constitutes a successful trip !

 

 

 

 

 

6th SEPTEMBER 2018

Chocolatey pastries, cappuccino and custard filled croissants form the basis of my final artery-clogging breakfast in Durrës. I say Goodbye to my hosts at the hotel, who have been excellent and don’t even charge me for any of the coffees or beers they provided me with. I’ve had the most relaxing few days, and I’m a little sad to be leaving.

Although I’ve made it to the Mediterranean, I still need to make my way a further 250km down the coast to finish in Sarandë. Three cycling days of around 80km should do the trick, providing my back wheel holds out. I know I could probably have sourced a replacement wheel in Durrës, but I’ve taken quite a fatalistic attitude to whatever happens in the next few days. I’ll obviously be happier if I make it to Sarandë, but if I don’t then it won’t be a disaster. If the bike dies, then I’ll just start hitch-hiking.

I freewheel the big hill I normally walked down to get to the beach, then past the amphitheatre, port and seafront hotels on the south side of the city. The first 30km fly past on decent roads and with me full of energy after my days off. However, just when things seem to be ticking along nicely, a sign for a motorway rears its unwanted and ugly head. I ride up to the huge roadsign at the start of the motorway in the forlorn hope that cyclists aren’t included in the list of banned traffic. But, sure enough, there’s a picture of a bike with a big red circle around it. Buggeration.

The next ten minutes are spent consulting Google maps to find an alternative route that avoids the motorway. I do find one but the detour is enormous and involves plenty of hills. I’m so focused on finding a road that bypasses the motorway, that it takes me a while to notice there’s an exit 2km further along the motorway itself. If I can make it to there I’ll have better options for a detour, so I decide just to get my head down and go for it. I’m at the next exit in no time, although I know I’ve just willingly broken the law. It seemed silly to take such a massive detour for a distance I’ve covered in a matter of minutes. Getting this far has given me more route choices, but then I find that my new detour is in a shockingly bumpy condition. I also see that the city of Lushnjë is only 12km further down the motorway.

So, emboldened by getting away with it once, I rejoin the motorway. I just keep pedalling, looking straight ahead and moving forward as quickly as I can. All the time I’m thinking what I’ll do if the cops pull me over, but my plan doesn’t come to much more than pleading ignorance and smiling a lot. I figure as long I can make it past halfway it would be easier for the police just to let me continue rather than sending me back. A solid stretch of fast pedalling gets me to Lushnjë, only to find I’m greeted by a further 4km of motorway on the way to my destination of Fier. By this point I’m past caring, think ‘Fuck It’ and just keep going. Despite this attitude I’m still pretty relieved when I make it to the end.

Once I’m off the motorway, I pull over at a disused petrol station to have lunch under some shady trees. As I’m eating my sandwiches and granola bars a skinny black snake slithers alongside the forecourt wall in front of me. After the adrenaline rush of my illegal motorway ride, the remaining 25km to Fier pass very slowly into a slight headwind. I arrive by late afternoon and find my way to the Prince Hotel, a new-looking establishment on the outskirts of town. My bike goes in the downstairs restaurant, and I head upstairs to a gaudily coloured pinky-purple room that looks like it has time travelled here from the 1970’s. Fortunately for me, the room rates seem to be from that era as well.

My room has no Wi-Fi, so I go downstairs to the bar to faff around on my phone. I have a bottle of Peroni which costs me the equivalent of £1.20. This gets me thinking about the very first beer I had at the start of the trip. That was way back in Honningsvag in Norway and was also a Peroni, but up there a single bottle cost me £7.60 ! The decreasing price of beer has almost mirrored my progress South through Europe.

The next morning I go downstairs for one of the best breakfasts I’ve had on the trip – two fried eggs, two spicy sausages, three rashers of bacon, three kinds of cheese, salami, hot bread and some kind of tomato gnocchi. It’s good to have something a little bit different to my normal fare, and besides, I’ll need the calories with heading back into the mountains today.

My first hill arrives on the way out of town, then it’s downhill for a few kilometres to a town called Levan, where the road splits. I’ll be following the inland road through the hills to Tepelenë, while the coastal road leads to Vlorë, Albania’s third largest city. My road looks newly constructed, with a large safety margin at the side so I can cycle safely. The Vlorë road has now been superseded by a motorway and looks very much like the neglected, bumpy backwater that it has become.

At first the gradient is gentle, but there’s no cloud cover today so I’m just dragging myself slowly up the incline. Annoyingly, my calves feel achy just below the back of my knee too, which I put down to the many times I climbed that steep hill up to my hotel in Durrës. Towards the halfway point of today’s ride the slope increases dramatically, and I find myself slogging up one side of a steep valley. Beside the road there’s a bare cliff face rising to my left, soaking up the sun’s rays and reflecting them back onto me as I struggle past. My ever efficient sweat glands pump out rivers of the stuff, which runs down my face, drips off my nose and gets under my sunglasses.

After conquering that hill I emerge on to a long, sloping valley floor. From the point I enter the valley, I can see the road climbing off into the distance with another huge, steep climb to finish. If there’s one thing worse than a horrible, plodding hill, it’s being able to see the full extent of it stretching out in front of me beforehand. I trudge in slow motion up the valley floor, but the summit in the distance doesn’t seem to be getting any closer. It’s like one of those weird dreams where you’re running, but then you look down and realise that you’re not actually moving forward. Eventually I slog my way to the foot of the final climb, a huge gradient that slopes up to the left. There are groups of locals selling fruit at the roadside on the way up, although the only product that could tempt me at the moment is water. I make a drinking motion with my free hand, but not one of them has any water to sell me.

I make it to the top of the ridge a gasping, sweaty mess. I don’t even pedal on the descent, instead I just sit there and let gravity do the work for me. The wind that my speed creates actually makes me feel a bit cold on the way down. All that sweat from the uphill climb is now cooling on my body. Then it’s a few ups and downs alongside a turquoise-blue mountain river all the way to Tepelenë. By the time I reach town my head is sore and I’m feeling pretty tired. The hills and the heat have seen me finish all five of my water bottles today, and that hasn’t happened in weeks.

I’m staying just off the main road at Hotel Lord Byron, which is set in a peaceful spot above an aqua-coloured river. The main reception is in a rustic, terracotta tiled building in the middle of an apple orchard, and the town is surrounded on all sides by mountains. It could almost be a summer’s day in the Scottish Highlands.

At night I polish off the remainder of my road food for dinner. I think I’ve eaten more bananas and nuts on this trip than I have in the previous decade. I’ve also got a decision to make about my nudist couchsurfing offer in Sarandë. Part of me thinks it would be fine once I got over the initial awkwardness. The other part of me thinks it would just be too weird. Provisionally, I’ve already accepted the offer, but as the day draws closer I think I might just chicken out and cancel.

The bottom line is that I only have one proper day of cycling left. Another 85km tomorrow will take me from here in the mountains down to sea-level at Sarandë.

 

 

 

3rd SEPTEMBER 2018

Having achieved my goal of reaching the Mediterranean, I earn myself a couple of days rest and relaxation in Durrës (Doo-Rez). I’m staying in a nice, touristy part of town, only a short walk from the seafront and its chilled-out promenade of restaurants and beaches. From this setting, it’s hard to believe I’m in Albania’s major seaport and second largest city, home to some 200,000 inhabitants.

On the first morning I retrieve my bike from the hotel’s lock up garage and freewheel down the big hill to the beach. I don’t think the trip will be complete until I dip the bike’s wheels into the calm, blue waters of the Mediterranean. Plus it should make a good photo memento to mark the end of the trip. I’m glad there’s not many people on the beach as I feel a bit of a numpty pushing my bike through the sand to the water’s edge. Nevertheless, I find two different people who are happy to act as photographers and capture the moment I could finally say ‘I’ve made it!’

Getting back to the hotel and up that insanely steep hill leads to me sweating like a maniac once again. This is highly peculiar, as I’ve been to plenty of hot destinations but never sweated quite so freely before. I’ve developed a theory for this; I believe that I’m now much more efficient at sweating than I used to be. I remember my sweat glands having to work overtime when I went from a Scottish winter to a Fijian summer earlier this year. My body’s attempts to cool me down meant that I ended up producing far more perspiration than my sweat glands could cope with. This excess sweating then led to my glands becoming blocked, which caused a prickly-heat rash that plagued me for the next two weeks. On this trip though, I’ve become accustomed to the heat far more gradually as I’ve cycled slowly south. My body is used to having to cool itself down, and now it seems that my sweat glands are working at their optimum efficiency. At least that’s my theory. There has to be some reason for me being such a Sweaty Betty lately.

My remaining time in Durrës involves exploring the city, visiting the beach or spending time chatting with the hotel owners. Two days off soon turns into three. Breakfast at the hotel is always served on an outside verandah, and usually consists of pastries from the nearby bakery, washed down with strong local coffee. Before these breakfasts, I never knew that croissants with custard through the middle even existed, but now I’m an enthusiastic convert.

There’s some worthwhile sights around town too, from the Great Mosque to an old Venetian Tower that’s now been converted into a trendy bar. The main drawcard is Durrës Amphitheatre, built two thousand years ago by the Romans and situated right next to the city centre. In Roman times it could hold over 15,000 spectators, but now it’s lying in ruins and looks a bit sad. I’m astonished to learn that the modern city had been built on top of this site, and it was only rediscovered and excavated in the 1960’s. This leads to the rather odd sight of modern houses and flats towering over it and surrounding the arena.

I spend a final evening down at the seafront, complete with beer and seafood tagliatelle, before joining the hotel owner and his son for a chat. The old guy always addresses me in Italian, even though he knows I don’t speak the language. He persists though, as Italy is just across the Adriatic and he’s so used to having guests from there. Despite the language barrier, he’s a good bloke and always makes sure I’ve got a beer or a coffee in my hand. Through his son, he asks me what my perceptions of Albania were before I got here, and if I thought it would be like a country in Africa. I tell him that, if anything, I thought it would be more like Russia because they only broke away from communism in the early 1990’s. He seems quite happy with this, but says that there’s been some huge changes since then. He tells me that twenty-five years ago hardly anyone in the country owned a car.

His son is a good kid. At first I thought he was in his early twenties, but it turns out he’s only sixteen and still at school. He’s helping out at the hotel for the three months that Albanian schoolkids get off for their summer holidays. One of his big ambitions in life is to live in the USA or the UK one day. He’s completely starry-eyed about both countries and is always asking me about jobs, money and life in Britain. When I tell him that everyone in the UK is guaranteed a minimum wage he is absolutely astounded. ‘I would work one hundred hours every week !’ he says, and I believe that he would. But then he tells me that my cycle trip is a ‘beautiful thing’ and that life isn’t all about work and money. He’s got his head screwed on for a sixteen year old kid. The father offers me another bottle of Tirana beer, so we continue chatting for the next hour about the UK, Albania and life in general. It’s been lovely chatting with them, and a nice way to round off my time in Durrës.

At night I notice I’ve received a reply from an American couchsurfer who has said he could maybe host me when I get to Sarandë. He sounds like a cool guy, with over four hundred positive references, whereas most people only have a handful. I had read some of his references and every single one of them had said what a wonderful human being he is. He replied that he could only ‘maybe’ host me for two reasons. Firstly (and ironically) he’s actually in Scotland at the moment and might not get back to Sarandë in time. Secondly, he wants to make sure that I’ve read the ‘My House’ section of his Couchsurfing profile, and that I’d be happy to participate in a nudist environment. I’d only really paid attention to his references. Oh Crumbs.

 

1st SEPTEMBER 2018

Breakfast at the Open Doors B&B involves helping myself to a large continental spread of cereal, bread, cheeses, juice and tea. There’s also a friendly old lady rushing between kitchen and dining area who’s cooking hot food to order. I opt for fried egg and a freshly made pancake that’s so huge it covers my entire plate. It looks a bit lonely on its own, so I drown it with lashings of sticky honey.

Before leaving I inspect my distorted back wheel, which is in a worse condition than I first thought. As well as being warped, one of my spokes has managed to rupture the wheel rim and force its way through. Fortunately my wheels are double-rimmed or the spoke would have pushed straight through, puncturing the tyre and causing all sorts of mayhem. I’m convinced this is another repercussion of me crunching over that pothole while speeding downhill to Sarajevo. The fact that this incident happened a full week ago suggests two things – Firstly, the wheel damage may be manageable as I’ve already cycled 300km since then. Secondly, I really should be checking my bike more thoroughly.

All this back wheel drama gets me thinking about the best way to approach the next few days. I’ve only got 350km left to cycle in just under two weeks, which means I could probably nurse the bike along slowly and still make the distance. However, there’s also a chance that my rear wheel will buckle completely before I reach my target of Sarandë. If that happens then the trip ends wherever I stop.

The solution arrives when I think back to my original goal of wanting to cycle from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. In my mind, I always thought that reaching the sea and ending the trip would be synchronised. I’d even chosen my route to purposefully avoid the coast until my final destination at Sarandë. I imagined that getting to the Mediterranean and relaxing for a few days would be my reward for finishing the trip. Now though, my circumstances have changed somewhat. With the threat of my back wheel collapsing, I decide I’m just going to head for the sea as soon as I can. To achieve that, I have to keep going for another 100km and this will see me reaching the coast at the port city of Durrës. And if I do make it to the Mediterranean, I’ll have completed what I set out to do. After that, I really don’t care if my wheel falls off and disintegrates into a thousand pieces.

With all this sorted in my head I leave Shkodër, taking the main road south out of town. This street is absolute chaos, with cars triple parked, cyclists on the wrong side of the road and a cacophony of car horns as a soundtrack. On the outskirts of town the road arcs round a tall, rocky outcrop that has the imposing ruins of Rozafa Castle standing upon it. The castle is named after a woman who was used as a human sacrifice and walled into the castle foundations to appease the Gods. It was believed that this sacrifice would keep the castle walls standing and bring good fortune. Not very lucky for the unfortunate Rozafa, but the castle walls are still upright over two thousand years later.

I only cycle a short 40km today, trundling along gently and nursing my back wheel until I’m just past the town of Lezhe. My accommodation for tonight is a sort of petrol station / motel hybrid, which seems to be quite the thing in Albania. It’s a decent enough place to be fair, but there’s something strange happening with the rooms. Every single power point will only accept plugs that have plastic-like flexible prongs. Try as I might, I cannot force my fixed-prong plug into any of the sockets. I’m not sure if this is a deliberate ploy by the motel, or that I’m just being dumb. Either way, I’m not able to recharge anything electrical.

Breakfast the following morning is taken in the petrol station’s cafe, so I lower my expectations accordingly. Lucky that I do really, as it’s bang average. My food consists of an omelette accompanied by half a dozen slices of tomato and cucumber. For afters I try not to injure my mouth on bread rolls that have clearly just escaped a microwave, meaning they are rock hard on the outside and volcano hot in the middle. I am given a side dish of pickle though, which does make the rolls taste marginally better.

When I leave Lezhe I discover that Sunday must be wedding day in Albania. A convoy of cars passes me with a guy poking out the sunroof in the lead car. He’s standing up and facing backwards while filming the whole procession. This camera car acts like the traffic police, stopping every other vehicle on the road just so they can get some pre-wedding footage. I also find that nothing makes the whole parade happier than sounding their car horns continuously.

Despite my rear wheel worries, I’m flying along this morning and eat up the first 20km in no time. Then my road widens to dual carriageway and soon expands to become a motorway. Bollocks. This means I’ll have to find an alternative route as I’m not allowed on the motorway as a cyclist. I have to move 5km further inland, where a smaller road runs along the foot of a hill and parallel to the motorway. It’s a bumpy ride though, and slows me right down. At one point I reach a bridge that is under repair, with two rough looking blokes directing traffic around it. The diversion is a temporary track beside the bridge, all gravel, mud and rock, which does nothing for my wheel and spokes.

After the town of Thumanë, the road becomes a bit odd. Some sections have been resurfaced with beautifully smooth new tarmac, while others are simply dirt track. I’m caught up by two old Swiss guys who are also avoiding the motorway while heading for the capital, Tirana. One of them cycled this same stretch of road in reverse last year and tells me that the full length was dirt and gravel back then. I’ve almost reached the town of Fushë-Krujë, when the road becomes nothing more than a collection of compacted rocks. I’m now cycling at a snail’s pace on the stony base layer of a road that’s yet to be constructed. If I could have chosen any conditions to avoid today, then this would have been high on my list.

I get over the rocks unscathed, then join a dual carriageway that will take me all the way to Durrës and the coast. Tbis road is downhill for the most part, and with traffic speeding past, it subconsciously makes me quicken my pace too. The riding is easy now, and the closer I get to Durrës, the less I think about my back wheel.

I reach the city by mid afternoon and find that my accommodation is situated on a stupidly steep hill near the coast. I begin slogging up the bumpy narrow street, but I’m putting in so much effort that I’m practically bouncing the bike uphill. This is silly. What’s the point of putting all this strain on my rear wheel when I’m so close to finishing ? I get off and push for the final fifty metres.

I’m checked in to the family run Hotel Gega by a man in his fifties, who uses his English-speaking son as translator between us. I’m sweating like a pig in a sauna after that crazy hill, and must look absolutely knackered. The owner sees this and sits me down in the bar area, giving me a glass of chilled water and a strong coffee to help me recover. I sit there talking to the owners and just chill for a while. There are a couple of tall apartment-type buildings in front of the hotel, but in between them I can see some tantalising glimpses of blue that mean I have reached the Mediterranean Sea.

In the evening I walk down the opposite side of the steep hill and towards the sea. I get there just before sunset and people-watch while the big yellow orb dips below the horizon. The atmosphere is so laid back and relaxed, with people sitting outside restaurants and families taking an evening stroll along the beachfront. I’m not really sure what I expected from Albania, but this is lovely.

I go for a pizza and beer and sit there quietly munching, while I reflect on everything that has happened in the last three months. Bloody Hell ! I’ve just cycled all the way from the Arctic to the Mediterranean !