July 28, 2012
Now, what are the chances of that?: Zabljak - Matasero
NOW, HONESTLY, what are the chances that you'd decide to ride from France to Mount Ararat, through the old Yugoslavia... and meet two other French cyclists with the same idea?
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Alex Habert and Lydie Riera live in Guyane, which is part of France on the north-east coast of South America. Originally they are from Le Mans and from Font Romeu, which is near Perpignan. It was in Guyane that they thought, for their first bike tour, of riding to Jordan. But that gave them a problem with Syria, which isn't a place to be at the moment. So when Alex saw a picture of Mount Ararat and how beautiful it was, they thought they'd go that far instead.
"We've never done this before but we can't imagine that we'd ever want to travel by car again," Lydie said. She has given up her job in the government environment service and he has taken unpaid leave from civil engineering. Our routes have just coincided because they gave themselves seven months for their trip, of which the first was spent riding south through France to visit friends and relatives they rarely see.
After that they went along the Riviera, into Italy, then through Slovenia before heading inland to travel south through Bosnia. The coast, they said, was too busy and too hot.
"Bosnia is interesting," Alex observed, "because there are three social groups: the Christians, the Muslims and the Orthodox. So you can go to sleep to the call to prayer and wake to church bells."
You can follow their blog at http://alexlydie.uniterre.com
Steph met them when she spotted their bikes at a bar in Zabljak. The town is a node - we have already met riders from Poland - and an entrance to the national park and the Tara canyon, the deepest in Europe at 1,3km.
When we got to the canyon, the beauty was like being hit in the chest by the bass notes of a church organ.
The Tara wriggles and chatters over rocks, busy but narrow, at its foot. Pines balance on one foot on the slopes, desperate to stay upright. This was a Saturday in mid-summer and yet there was barely any traffic. We felt sorry for those who did drive through, because their journey would have been over in 20 minutes. For us, the organ played for perhaps an hour, perhaps longer, as we bike-strolled along its length.
Rocks overhung the road and shadows added tone to the colours and the shapes.
Just as the mountains seemed to be diminishing, so they rose again into a fresh crescendo. And we had it all to ourselves.
Well, almost anyway, because pedalling busily the other way came another Pole, a stocky man with shaved dark hair and just rear panniers.
"I love riding in the mountains," he said. We told him he had a whacking climb to make into Zabiljak but it didn't depress him. "I love the hills. I had to ride across Hungary..." - he waved his arm from left to right in a flat-as-a-pancake gesture - "...and that was a catastrophe for me."
We told him we were headed for Albania. He laughed. "Albania, you can never camp. You ask and they say 'You don't need a tent - come and sleep in the house.' The problem is that they do drink a lot and they expect you to, too."
In time our bliss came to an end. To applause from darkly-dressed men who looked like guests waiting for the start of a family function, we turned on to the busy road south. It ran through a lesser national park but we saw little of it because there was barely room for everyone there. We put our heads down and reeled off the 20km as fast as we could.
Tonight, safely off the road, we are camping in a flat field beside the now shallow Tara.
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