Generousity: Beyond Andrijevica to Rasova.

June 16, 2015

It was raining when I first woke this morning and I thought, no it's going to be a wet day. I haven't had one of those on this tour. Though by the time I'm up, the patter on the tent has stopped and looking out, the sky is clearing.

I'm on the road for eight climbing the remaining few switch-backs to the summit of the hill, which according to a spot on the map is at 1500m. To the side there's a campsite, a café-hotel and a rafting company's base.

The descent is an abrupt drop down, something in the order of twelve to fifteen per cent most of the way with a uneven potholed surface, I'm hanging on the brakes to avoid careering away. Plunging down into a deep wooded valley, where it seems nowhere for the road to go onward except for another climb. Though not. The road come down and crosses over a bridge then continues by the river along a gorge.

08.25: Bad timing: it would be nice to reach such a place at lunchtime.

It seems a fair way then, remember my cycle-computer isn't working, and I'm wondering how much longer it is to Kolasin, as I look forward to a second breakfast. Then as the gorge opens to a wider valley, there's a fork in the road in a small place called Matesevo: the left is signed Podgorica, heading to link up with the main highway which passes Kolasin. The right to Kolasin and from here on is a better road with a white line in the middle.

The day is cooling as big cumulus clouds rise up over the mountains and reaching Kolasin with the old iron girder railway bridge crossing the valley and the bare rock scar of the highway between Podgorica and the northeast along the vertical side of the valley beyond the scattered town, it has become dull and like rain. The town is a good service stop having already passed this way on the sixteenth of May. I eat an omelette breakfast and have turkish coffee in the popular restaurant by the taxi rank in the main square, then stock-up at the supermarket in the corner.

There's spots of rain when I set off, which don't amount to much and the cloud soon breaks up again. And as allude to I'm back on the road travelled over a month earlier, so I know what is coming. After descending down from the town's main square and joining the highway along the bottom of vertical valley side, it's an easy downhill roll for the next twenty-one kilometres through a gorge with a swift river below on the right. On the way I see a cycle-touring couple labouring up the other way. We wave but don't stop as the traffic is constant and at that instant a truck is passing.

Approaching the settlement of Mojkovac in a confluence of valleys, my road filters off left before the bridge into town. What follows is a quiet road along the left-side of a north running valley, eventually leading to the Tara Canyon.

While climbing gradually pass the village area along the flat valley floor which stretches out from Mojkovac in this direction, I'm stopped taking a photo when a little girl aged about ten or eleven come running up the inside of the roadside crash-barrier, calling out in a friendly tone. When she reaches me she has a bag of biscuits in hand. She takes from the bag a biscuit in an individual rapper and hands it to me as a present, saying something and giggling, then hands me a second; and a third, which I give a wave of refusal, as she would've continued doling out the whole bag of biscuits. I put the two biscuits in my bar-bag and smile in thanks. Another girl has reached us by now and they go off together giggling.

You never feel shy to ask goats for permission to take their photo.

The spot where a generous Montenegrin child gave me biscuits.

I follow the valley, climbing a bit more and descend into a side arm and climb again back out just like a month earlier. I'm heading for the woodland to the side where I camped early that afternoon. Today I stop for late lunch. Apart from leaf-mulch which is still flattened where the tent sat, there is no other sign anyone every camped here.

It now being June there are a lot more tourist traffic on the road. In the past few days from none, there's the occasional campervan that sails by, motorbikes with box-panniers and also touring cyclists. Seems Montenegro is fast being discovered for it's wonderful natural beauty.

After I've descended a good way and the road has levelled out alongside the turquoise Tara river on the right with verdant green of the gorge closing vertically either side, I'm expecting to turn a corner at any moment and see the bridge spanning the valley ahead when, two touring cyclists are coming the other way. On drawing level, they are two girls and I ask where they're from to a shout in unison reply "England!" The older girl with a northern ascent sees my bike and remarks "O a Dawes Galaxy. Ay was thinking o buy'n one."

They'd cycled south from Sarajevo, doing my intended route the opposite way, so were a source of information on what to expect with the road ahead. They confirmed it is a good road the whole way passing over magnificent high plateau with wildflower meadows to the side. They stressed they couldn't find water though. They knocked on house doors, but there was no one about.

I stop at the bridge not long after and have a celebratory beer for a good day's cycling at the café-guesthouse.

I crossed over the bridge the last time. This time I'll remain on this side and the climb up from the bridge is ten kilometres according to the girls, gaining in the region of thirteen to fourteen-hundred metres altitude; and so, meaning most of the climb to the two saddles marked on the map with spot altitudes of nineteen-hundred metres, that'll come tomorrow, will have already been done.

I set off again at six o'clock. The climb is a standard switch-back wind up the steep wooded hillside with a steady easy gradient and as expected, I have to climb quite a bit until I come to somewhere level to put the tent. It is after seven and grey clouds are closing in when the road turns in over the top and, I come to an old road detour round a rock outcrop which the current round ploughs straight through. On investigation, although still a gentle slope, there's a dead level spot midway round plenty big for the tent. I've just unrolled the tent when it starts spitting rain, so get a move on, getting the tent up and panniers inside and get in myself, just as it come on an evening of thunder and lightening and the persistent drum of rain.

Today's ride: 107 km (66 miles)
Total: 5,491 km (3,410 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	0
Comment on this entry	Comment	0