Day 35
Sleeping location: Hotel Pine, Skopje, Macedonia
Distance (km today/total): 131 / 3573
Estimated climb (m today/total): 1400 / 27700
Lorries overtaken on big descent: 3
Day in three words: Pure Balkan joy
After the nonsense of the last couple of days, today was a day that was everything I had hoped from cycling the Balkans, and was up there as one of the best days of the trip so far. Things started off with a long gentle climb from my overnight spot at about 650m to the day’s peak at 1300m. This was actually really great as climbs go, a nice steady gradient up a gorgeous river valley/gorge with a decent surface and hardly any cars. But it was surpassed, and then some, by an absolutely amazing descent. 15km with hardly any pedalling or braking, at an average of about 50kph, round beautiful sweeping bend after bend. It was glorious. The only downer was seeing the aftermath of a massive head on collision between two cars near the bottom - their occupants were nowhere to be seen, which I’m not sure is a good or bad sign.
After this komoot (my route planning app) partially made up for the off-road debacle by selecting a lovely route through the wide river valley at the bottom. Lots of quiet country roads with good surfaces, mountains either side, rolling through fields and little towns listening to my “Exercise” playlist (mostly electro bangers and hardcore punk) and generally loving life. In a second mention for Morrissey in this blog, I swear I saw him driving a tractor at one point. Maybe all that far-right stuff got a little too much for him and he’s retired to Macedonia to become a farmer.
In one little town I stopped for lunch (10 little kebabs, chips, flatbread, salad, a coke and a coffee, about £2.50, god the Balkans are great) and ended up having a really interesting chat with the owner, a guy called Becim whose English was pretty good. He told me that the western part of Macedonia is actually predominantly Albanian, which explains why the Cyrillic names in a lot of road signs are crossed out. This is my third time in the Balkans and every time I learn more, but I feel like I could come another twenty times and still not understand everything. I also tried to convince his three year old daughter to pour salt on her head, but she was wise to my tricks.
I decided to end the day in Skopje and booked a decent-ish hotel (still only £20 including breakfast) as reward for the hard yards since arriving in Albania. I’ve been to Skopje twice before and it’s bang average, but it was a nice distance and I figured I could find somewhere to get some decent food and a few beers and watch the football*. Committing to an end point also meant I made some good distance today, and made up for the last two slow days. On the way into the city I saw a woman cycling whilst carrying a large wheely suitcase, which was highly impressive and made me wonder if I really need panniers after all. Tomorrow is a semi-rest day, so I’ll have a lie in and set off at a leisurely time in the afternoon.
*Postscript: this actually meant going to a restaurant and ordering two starters and two mains, which the waiter suggested was unwise, eating it all anyway, plus three beers, then waddling back to the hotel and going straight to sleep
Distance (km today/total): 131 / 3573
Estimated climb (m today/total): 1400 / 27700
Lorries overtaken on big descent: 3
Day in three words: Pure Balkan joy
After the nonsense of the last couple of days, today was a day that was everything I had hoped from cycling the Balkans, and was up there as one of the best days of the trip so far. Things started off with a long gentle climb from my overnight spot at about 650m to the day’s peak at 1300m. This was actually really great as climbs go, a nice steady gradient up a gorgeous river valley/gorge with a decent surface and hardly any cars. But it was surpassed, and then some, by an absolutely amazing descent. 15km with hardly any pedalling or braking, at an average of about 50kph, round beautiful sweeping bend after bend. It was glorious. The only downer was seeing the aftermath of a massive head on collision between two cars near the bottom - their occupants were nowhere to be seen, which I’m not sure is a good or bad sign.
After this komoot (my route planning app) partially made up for the off-road debacle by selecting a lovely route through the wide river valley at the bottom. Lots of quiet country roads with good surfaces, mountains either side, rolling through fields and little towns listening to my “Exercise” playlist (mostly electro bangers and hardcore punk) and generally loving life. In a second mention for Morrissey in this blog, I swear I saw him driving a tractor at one point. Maybe all that far-right stuff got a little too much for him and he’s retired to Macedonia to become a farmer.
In one little town I stopped for lunch (10 little kebabs, chips, flatbread, salad, a coke and a coffee, about £2.50, god the Balkans are great) and ended up having a really interesting chat with the owner, a guy called Becim whose English was pretty good. He told me that the western part of Macedonia is actually predominantly Albanian, which explains why the Cyrillic names in a lot of road signs are crossed out. This is my third time in the Balkans and every time I learn more, but I feel like I could come another twenty times and still not understand everything. I also tried to convince his three year old daughter to pour salt on her head, but she was wise to my tricks.
I decided to end the day in Skopje and booked a decent-ish hotel (still only £20 including breakfast) as reward for the hard yards since arriving in Albania. I’ve been to Skopje twice before and it’s bang average, but it was a nice distance and I figured I could find somewhere to get some decent food and a few beers and watch the football*. Committing to an end point also meant I made some good distance today, and made up for the last two slow days. On the way into the city I saw a woman cycling whilst carrying a large wheely suitcase, which was highly impressive and made me wonder if I really need panniers after all. Tomorrow is a semi-rest day, so I’ll have a lie in and set off at a leisurely time in the afternoon.
*Postscript: this actually meant going to a restaurant and ordering two starters and two mains, which the waiter suggested was unwise, eating it all anyway, plus three beers, then waddling back to the hotel and going straight to sleep
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