June 15, 2015
Return to Monte: near Kosovo/Montegro border to beyond Andrijevica
I feel lethargic this morning, not wanting to get out of the sleeping-bag. I wonder is it fatty food, kebab everyday for dinner when I's in Pristina ( remember I said the hostel didn't have a proper kitchen) though I did balance the diet out by eating lots of fruit.
I don't get out of the sleeping-bag until twenty past seven, a little late when temperatures get up in the mid thirties by afternoon, which is another possibility for not wanting to move. I'm drinking about five litres a day, though when sweating so much that my clothing is soaked, however much I drink is never enough.
I pack up and get on the road for nine o'clock and climb a couple of kilometres more until rounding a hairpin bend reveals the border customs building across the road. Two guards stand chatting outside the passport control booth when I approach, seems I'm the only traffic in a while and a few trucks remain parked up on either side. One guard enters and does the necessary scan of my passport and passes the time by asking me amicably where I'm cycling to. "All the way from Ireland?" he says, looking out the window at my bike. He stamps the first page in my passport neatly with a Kosovo exit stamp and hands me back the passport, then waves me on.
The way on goes downhill a little across the wooded hillside before levelling out and going up again; upon which, I turn a corner and see the road wind up the wooded hillside ahead for quite a way. The traffic remains almost non-existent as I listen to two cuckoos calling in unison.
Eventually reaching the summit I'm looking into another country. I stop to put on a top for the descent as I can feel the chill on my sweat soaked body. Then descending about a kilometre I come to more trucks parked up on a layby and rounding a bend come to the second customs building across the road. This time Montenegrin passport control. Again the procedure is straightforward, passport scan and stamp and I'm on my way.
The road reverts from smooth standard width highway to a much narrower bumpy broken asphalt road and the descent is fairly steep on stretches. The scenery alpine, verdant green hills dotted with darker singular pine-trees and blocks of forest and further down hay meadows and scattered houses with steep-pitched roofs to shed winter snows.
The road drops down and joins a main east west route along a narrow valley, just before entering Rozaje. I stop and stock-up on foods and fluids at a supermarket on the way into town. Montenegro also uses the euro so there's no looking around for an ATM. Then riding on pass town down the hill to the right of the road, I want to stop somewhere with shade to have a break, but there's no such place with short cropped grass and trees to sit under and so end up sitting in long grass verge underneath a hedge on the drive up to a field-gate with minimal shade to drink a can of beer and eat crisps.
The way on climbs steadily along the right of the valley until a summit where it passes through an eleven-hundred metre long tunnel. Then back out in the open descends abruptly with a wider valley opening up at a right-angle to the left looking off toward rocky twin peaks at the head of the valley. And on the way down I pass small fields and small plots along drives into houses where haymaking the traditional non-mechanize way is underway. Whole families, sons wifes and daughters use forks to lift mown grass up off the ground to dry in the sun. Then rake the dried graas up and build haycocks.
The road levels out by a riverbank with a smokestack industrial side of the town of Berane in toward the mountains on the right, crosses a bridge and I turn left for Andrijevica into the town centre where I stop at a supermarket for something cold to drink, buying a two litre bottle of lemon flavoured Fanta. Then sit in the shade by my bike outside the supermarket to drink, but I'm pestered by a Romany woman asking me for money. Even though I ignore her she persists in standing by me shouting "Money! money!" and her five year old daughter also shouts "Money! Money!"; both in a sneering, trying to shame me into giving them something manner, which I may have; but not when they ask in this forceful way. So I pack up and ride on and stop at a bus-shelter a few kilometres out of town and finish my afternoon sit-down in peace.
No sooner have I sat down than along come another touring cyclist. An Italian on a mountain-bike with white ortlieb rear-panniers and matching bar-bag. Yuck. What happened to the good old days when ortlieb came in a few hardwearing neutral-non-clashing colours such as dark green, red and black, even grey, that go with any bicycle colour. Nowadays they come also in stupid bright colours such as yellow and bright green which look terrible when they get filthy. His bike is white so supposedly they match and un-like South America where there's a lot of dust, Montenegro is crystal clean. Anyway, he pulled in because he assumes I've something wrong with the bike and offers to help. I'm glad to see him as I haven't seen another touring cyclist yet on this tour. He asks me which way I'm going and then draws out a map from his bar-bag.
I study his map. The problem is his map bears little resemblance to any of my two maps. I see the town of Berane, then fix my finger upon a right-turnoff just south of where we are, which climbs out of the valley and crosses the mountain. This road is not the road I intend taking, but I cannot see any other road on his confusing map, so assume it is the one. I trawl my finger along it over to Kolasin. He looks dismayed and explains "it sa stones..." and points at the tarmac. "Unpaved" I lend a hand with his English. "A yes. Unpaved. And a difficult".
On both my maps the right road which splits off right on entering the village of Andrijevica (17km south from Berane) shows as paved all the way to Kolasin. I reach the turn off around five: a narrow single road it follows a deep wooded valley with small farmsteads all along, even were the valley closes into a ravine and the road begins to wind up the hillside, there's still small houses every few hundred metres; until I've climbed far enough up to where the whole hill is pine forest, then it's possible to camp provided I find a level spot.
However I don't climb much farther when I come to a track angled off on the inside. I turnoff and soon dismount as it's too steep to ride the loaded bike up. I see a stack of firewood in a clearing upon the crest of the hill and as there are recent car-tracks, think perhaps there's a dwelling out of sight beyond it, so I push gingerly up and luckily find the track ends at a turning space by the wood-stack and there is no house. It is perfectly level and I put the tent up behind the wood-stack.
Today's ride: 89 km (55 miles)
Total: 5,384 km (3,343 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 0 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |