River Canyon Deep And Mountain High: canyon/old road camp to woodland camp, to pinetree cutting camp.

May 16, 2015

I pump up both tyres. The rear tyre is well worn, but still has a fair way to go before I'll have to replace it. I rock the crank-arms from side to side. As I expected with all the hard pedalling and hill-climbing, there's play in the bottom-bracket bearing. So sooner rather than later, I must reach a city with a good bike-shop to have a new bottom-bracket fitted. Hopefully the bike-shop will have high-end bottom-brackets in stock, as cheap entry-level Shimano components aren't designed for the rigors of heavy loaded bicycles being pedalled all day, everyday.

I don a yellow hi-visibility vest and switch on the bike-lights setting off at ten to nine: the old road re-enters the modern tunnel via a port-hole, entering the darkness and drone; though there isn't much traffic this time on Saturday morning as the tunnel curves round and very soon the daylight of the exit-arch come into sight ahead.

Back out in the open again, the road plummets to a wider valley; wherein, I pass a café with lots of people sat outside and tourist souvenir shop, and a bus parked on the gravel-apron in front. Then next see what is the cause of all the interest, an old monastery where strings of neatly dressed visitors are coming and going upon the pathway to the main entrance. And a little further I pass an orthodox priest in full length black robe. A young man with a beard, he turns and gives me a hearty wave as I ride by.

Generally there's a lot of encouraging horn hooting from passing cars. The friendly people of Montenegro.

The valley dips to it's lowest point and an anticipated climb, shown on my new map like an intestine, it folds over on itself indicating the road winds up. The valley closes in in a wall of mountain on three sides and there's a turnoff on the left. I can see the road straight on swing to the right and terrace up across the slope to that side, but can't see where the turnoff goes, or possibly climbs out; until, I've climbed a little way up the road straight on and see, looking back, that it crosses a bridge and descends back down the other side of the valley and on through an intersecting valley off to the left.

The gradient is a steady seven per cent all the way up. And I hear a constant creak coming from the bottom-bracket on each turn of the crank: a noise I first heard the Sunday morning I rode out of Lyon, which all things considered, is how long the bottom-bracket has been on the way out; also, demonstrating the longer wearing life of the better bearing in there, which replaced the one the bike came with, a cheap Shimano, it lasted two months on the road before there was play.

Reaching the crest, I sit down to rest drinking what remains of a carton of orange juice I'd for breakfast; then fill all my water bottles from a tap outside a roadside café.

The road plummets to Kolasin at the confluence of two valleys. A ski-resort town of steep pitched roofs for shedding winter's snow.

I need to buy fuel alcohol for my stove as I've only a day or two's burning left. There's a hardware shop on the way into town where I stop, with wheel-barrows, rolls of link-fencing, a cement mixer and other bits and pieces outside. Inside there's all the usual shelves of screws, plumbing fittings and electrical and bottles of clear liquid, which may be alcohol; then, turning a bottle in hand, studying the label, one of the two ladies manning the counter come over to help. I say "alcohol". She replies in broken English "No alcohol"

In a supermarket a little later, while scrutinizing the text on the side of a small bottle of clear fluid I picked up, thinking it may be surgical spirits.. A girl restocking shelves perhaps seeing my confused look, approaches. I ask plainly. She nods crosswise, takes the bottle and makes as if squirting the liquid unto a cut finger and rubbing it in with the index-finger. Then says "No. Find Surgical Spirits in Pharmacy". Of course I thought. I nod in appreciation. In the pharmacy the woman behind the counter give me a little 100ml bottle costing seventy cents. A little less than two days use, but better than uncooked food.

Kolasin in the region of a thousand metres plus over sea level, is pleasantly cool to sit and lunch in the square without trees for shade.

After lunch I turned off on a road high along a deep valley and reach about five, this woodland suitable for camping.

Sunday

I'm on the road at half eight, freewheeling down through a series of twists and turns from my campsite in a near enough level plot of woodland high above a deep chasm with the Tara river far below; eventually bottoming out in the Tara canyon, with the surging turquois river on the right and foliage rising on either side to shear rock-face speckled green with dwarf trees.

Then there's an abrupt rise. And as I climb there's a viaduct spanning the canyon ahead. When I reach the fork in the road turn right over the viaduct, with souvenir shop, a river-rafting company's office and an excursion company's land-rovers and flocks of day-trippers, I face a dilemma. This is the Tara Canyon, what I'd come to see. There's also a café and it being around ten I stop and sit down to an omelette breakfast with a cappuccino. Looking at the map, crossing the viaduct the road the other side climbs and continues to Serbia, looks an attractive option; though, I'm intending to carry on on this side, which will eventually take me to a border crossing into Bosnia.

But wait. As the land-rovers drivers hang around chatting and laughing, waiting for their excursion groups to return from walking over the viaduct where they're taking photos and marvelling at the great drop to the river below, I look at my map and road to Bosnia very carefully. It's all a national park, shaded green; and, what I haven't heeded much until now is this thing on the road called saddles, which as they imply are low points between two mountain peaks. The road that continues on the left of the canyon climbs and crosses over a said saddle with 1950m written beside it. The hell with that for a game of cards. I simply don't want to climb to that altitude and so begin looking at the viaduct across the canyon with renewed interest and look at the road on the other side, which continues and crosses into Serbia. I could be in Belgrade a Tuesday, where I could find a good bike-shop to do my bottom-bracket. So when I set off again, I cross over the viaduct, stopping to look down at the river far below, snapping photos along with Chinese excursion-goers.

There is the expected climb away from the canyon. Nearing the top workmen are putting in new metal crash-barrier. I've seem old deteriorating crash-barrier all along until now, originally painted yellow, but now flaking yellow paint on rust. They give me a friendly wave as I pass. Further up as I reach the crest of the hill, scrap-metal men with gas cylinder and torch, removing the old barrier but taking a break, aren't as friendly as I pass. One of which shouts something at me in an abbussive tone.

Once the road levels out, there's forestry to the side; big piles of logs by felled plots of trees; then the way crosses an upland plateau for a few kilometres before a long gradual descent; because of which, I reach the next town a lot sooner than anticipate with an ugly coal-powered power station on the way in. I turn off into the centre, hoping there may be some shop open to buy a cool drink or something, but being Sunday, every place is shut.

I ride back and turn out on the highway again. There's another formidable climb away from town and what I hadn't seen, is a colossal opencast mine on the slope below the road I came down into town: a series of stepped terraces quarried out of the hillside upon which, massive dumper-trucks trundle along and excavators load spoil, extending down into a basin of a hole in the valley bottom and up nearly to the right of the first uphill stretch of road I now ride. It has turned a whole formally green valley into a dusty whitish-brown great hole in the ground. And up ahead it extends, as I climb, the long ridge of hilltop up above is reduced to dusty white spoil and the hum of machines. The only nature left are pine-trees upon a narrow slitter of hillside that the road winds up through.

Once over the crest and the mine disappears out of view behind me. I ride for less than ten kilometres more upon a high rim of an opening valley approaching the Serbian border. I take a look at one old road bend round a fold in the hillside place to camp, but discover a house just below it. A little further I come to a straight cutting through a hillock with a few pine-trees and low shrubs on top to the right. I wheel the bike up off the road and find level short sward grass behind the shrubs: an ideal place to set up the tent; though, there's a farmhouse about three-hundred metres back along the road, so I lean the bike against a tree, put down my seat pannier and take out my book and read until dusk; if anyone comes in the meantime, they can't object to me stopped for a rest. As the sun goes down later, the day that had been warm turn quite chilly and I've to pull on two tops before finishing the chapter. The first time I wore so much clothes in a long time.

With the tent up, dinner is pasta eaten by the light of my head-torch which illuminates the tent perfectly, but is subdued enough not to light the tent up like a lantern. I've checked.

This cow said "no no no" and turned and walked off to cover when I asked for a photo.

Old fashion farming methods prevail here.

Today's ride: 146 km (91 miles)
Total: 4,268 km (2,650 miles)

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