Beer For Breakfast: Bar to Snake-camp, to Canyon/Old road camp.

May 13, 2015

Bar is a quiet and tidy town. In contrast to Bari, there are few cars once I ride out the port gates and crossover the waterfront, up a street of cafes and restaurants with pavement seating. It is warm and not having had much on the ferry other than coffee, I intend stopping for breakfast, but first will find a hotel, not having slept either. I cycle on and turn right along a tree-lined street at the end of the block and still don't see any hotels, so continue and turn right again upon an avenue back toward the port and pass a hypermarket on the left, but still see no hotels; not until a short block before coming back to the waterfront road, where I see on the right, a classy hotel set in leafy garden grounds. I wheel the bike up to a glass reception door, lean the bike, enter and ask how much a single room is. The woman replies twenty-eight euros. You heard right: the same hotel in Ireland would set you back maybe eighty euros. Also they use the euro in Montenegro. So I check in and without unloading anything or seeing the room, return to the main street of pavement cafes, where I sit down under shaded awning to a midday breakfast of omelette with bacon and cheese and tomato garnish for three euros and a big glass of cool beer for an additional two euros, just the thing I hope will help me sleep in the afternoon.

Thursday

For 28 euros. The only hotel I found in Bar. There are others further away from the port, but I was too sleepless to go further.

"You want eggs?" a young lady with a deep slavic voice asks at the breakfast table. "Yes I do". It is well I said yes as, the other offerings of cheese, sausage and breakfast cereal aren't much cop. A few minutes later she come out and places an oval platter with two fried eggs thereon, which I duly tuck into making sandwiches from the breadbasket.

On the road shortly after nine. Another cloudless warm day in the offing. I follow the big yellow sign with a black arrow straight on for Podgorica. The road follows the coast north; there's steady passing and oncoming traffic and no shoulder, but nonetheless my heart is light setting off in a new country and I'm singing....

"......the sun-is the same, in a rel-la-tive, way-but you'r older. da-da dee da-da. shorter of breath, and one day closer to.....death! darrr-n"

Momentarily as I'm getting to death, there's an oncoming truck with convoy of traffic tailing behind and I hear the winding of another truck bearing down from behind. My heart sinks at the imminent danger, but the road is wider than it seems, as the petrol-tanker passes round me with something like a metre's breath and doesn't move into the edge of the road again until well clear of me.

Looking back down along the coast where I turn inland and climb.

Soon there's a choice of roads to Podgorica, as another road splits off on the left and climbs round and over the coast road and up the hillside on the right. This is the short route and therefore the bulk of traffic turn off here; also, on the direct route, there's a sign indicating a long tunnel, making it unappealing. With less and more intermittent traffic I continue straight, through a short tunnel where the other road passes over and laboriously climb a steep rise, whereupon I meet a recumbent touring-cyclist whizzing freely down the other side. I wave and he return the wave with a broad smile upon his face.

Once over the summit and having descended to the next coastal bay and climbing again, I start thinking I wish I'd a paper map. I've only the map of Montenegro I photographed on the ferry to go on, which is going to use a lot of battery. I should've stopped at a petrol station leaving town. They'd probably have maps in the shop. Just then there's a petrol station ahead and in the small shop a rack of maps, one of which suits my needs. A tourist map in English with photos and text on sights to see.

The alternative longer route to Podgorica is a sharp elbow off on the right. A stiff climb in now stifling heat up from the coast as I suffer effects of two nights in a row of little sleep, yes I worked late on the journal, and a dull throb in the head having also downed a whole bottle of wine the evening before. Then to see a truck high up ahead, moving horizontally across the hillside just below a rocky ridge and realising that is the same road where I'll climb before it levels out. I'm determined not to let it beat me. There really isn't an alternative. I keep the pedals turning and the cycle-computer sits at around 08.5, too slow to create a cooling draught and it is too warm to stop long for a breather, there being no shade: the hillside is clad in small tightly packed bushes with little possible ingress.

Having crested the final bit and come down a bit, I halt at the roadside and take in the view. Montenegro is province size. About Northern Ireland in area; but instead of rolling low hills, it is verdant green tree foliage up steep rising ground, fading to speckled green on grey rocky escarpment and razor ridge tops, like the scaly backbones of colossal reptiles.

Lake Skadar, the largest lake in the Balkans. The distant right is a peek into Albania.

The descend is just as steep with a few tight bends winding down toward lake Shadar, which I reach and lunch sat on a bench in the shade of a lake shore village square. I start with a cool can of beer from the shop with a bag of crisps, then move on to cheese and salami sandwich. I sit with little intention of moving again for quite a while, watching the lassie dog on a first-floor balcony looking down at a ginger cat on the grass. A little girl takes the dog for a short walk and when she return and leaves the dog back on his balcony, she brings out two tennis rackets and a ball and has a game with one of the boys playing around in the square. They leave me in peace. In many countries they'd want to know where Is from and where I'm going.

House in village square where I stop to lunch.

I return to the shop before setting off again and buy a litre carton of orange juice, carrots and an onion for dinner later.

I ride on along railway tracks and over a causeway across the edge of the lake, then through flat country following a river contributory to the lake.

I decide to stop early before reaching the urban approach to Podgorica so turn off left across the river and follow a byroad parallel almost enclosed in grassy verge and riverside willows until, coming to a layby on the left with a vehicle track off, perhaps leading somewhere well away from the road to camp.

I ride in to investigate. The track is a corridor through dwarf bushes and is increasingly rocky as the way climbs the hill in from the river forcing me off to push. The track now crossed by the protruding tops of embedded boulders and there's no give to the side of a level place for a tent as, the track goes further up across the hillside with rocky outcrop on the upper side and small bush cover still remaining on the low side. By now I've come to the conclusion that there won't be a level spot free of rocks and think also, this is the very habitat favoured by snakes with hot rocks to sunbathe upon and caverns underneath to hibernate in winter. But I continue doggedly for a little more until I do see a large snake traverse the track. I freeze. It's roughly three metres ahead. My heart is in my mouth, transfixed at it's wavy inert trunk, playing dead, as thick as a man's arm and as long as the bike. Glistening pale green in the sun, over thin grass stokes round the embedded rock of the track; it's head raised upon the foremost wave of body, still, half pointed in my direction and eyes focused. I never knew snakes could grow this big in Europe. There's no way I'm passing that. I start to turn the bike and in a flash, it recoils back on it's tail and glides down under the bushes on the low side out of sight.

I return to about a hundred metres short of the road where I had passed a flat entrance to a small field, not exactly hidden from the road and lean the bike against a fence, take my book out and sit down to read, waiting until dusk before putting up the tent.

Friday

Straight on up the laneway on the right lives a large snake.

I still feel tired this morning. The body wants to do nothing but lay back down in the tent and sleep, which I do for a while after breakfast of porridge. Eventually, I pull myself out, pack the panniers, take down the tent and pack all on the bike.

I'm on the road at quarter to ten. The road narrow and little used apart from locals. The morning cooler it being hazy. There's a low hedge either side now; across which, I see small garden size fields of cabbages. I meet a car with a trailer load of cabbages off for sale, having to pull in tight to the side to let it by. And there's the tug-tug of an old tractor in a hayfield. There are also other fields with rows of vines. And lots of small farmhouses.

In the next village I pass a school where, it must be sports day as all the children are out in the playground dressed in coloured sports stripes performing some game, while parents watch from a side-line cheering.

Podgorice is according to the map, the largest town in the country and I thought it would be a hassle getting through. But no, the highway in is wide and smooth, the drivers courteous, many giving a friendly beep of the horn as they pass. And all possible routes on well signed. But first I head to the central pedestrianized street leading onto a communist era square extending toward a domed orthodox church.

There are no end of cafes. So I take my pick and order an omelette breakfast and a cappuccino for three euros twenty. Later when I pay the waiter, who speaks English, he says "Thank you". I ask how I say thanks in serbo-croat. He tells me making me practise the hiss sound of the pronunciation. But once I'm saying it correctly and he leaves the table, I promptly forget the word.

The road on toward Kolasin follows a tight valley with turquois and foamy white river surging along the bottom of a green bushy slope down on the right and rock strata on the left, which eventually morphs into a narrow deep canyon. The road becomes narrow and then I come to a long tunnel, but there's a bike-width margin on the inside though no lighting until I come to a shaft of daylight; which, upon reaching, find is a split off taking me out on an old road with a couple of short tunnel archways. The road before the present tunnel was built: an empty road, or ledge along the canyon with the tumble of the river way below.

I decide to stop for a late lunch here and although only twenty to four decide also, that it is a perfect place to wait reading more of my book and put up the tent come dusk.

I thought this prudent: an early stop to rest and then get on the road early in the morning.

The way narrows into a canyon and a tunnel.

The old road round the outside of the tunnel.

Today's ride: 115 km (71 miles)
Total: 4,122 km (2,560 miles)

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