30/7/19 Godinje to Shkoder

56km  Total 2,689km

Today was another brilliant day of riding.  Only 56km, but over 1000m of climbing and so many stops for photos.
Here are just a few.

The women's monastery island that we visited yesterday

The road we'd just come along

Giant chestnut forests

Our highest point for the day, about 500m , before the descent into Albania

Looking towards Shkoder

After the success with our farmstay the last couple of days, I decided to try another one.  They're lovely people and have been assisted by USA and Sweden to set up agritourism in Albania.  Their farm has huge covered areas for growing tomatoes, melons, okra, peppers, eggplants, etc - all organic.  Also oranges, mandarins, lemons, olives, pomegranites etc.
They finally served us some dinner at 9pm, then proceeded to sit there and watch us eat!  The food was great and they are so keen to please us, but it was a bit weird having to eat in front of them. 

Saida, her husband Davey and his father Ahmed.  Saida is due in about 2 weeks

Our farm stay in Godinje

Well, we've just had an unbelievable farm stay in Montenegro.  This family were simply brilliant at looking after us.  Melissa, Marcia, Melena, Anna, Vallemeer and Aleksandar.

Day 1 and we went on a boat trip with Vallemeer and Marcia out onto Lake Skadar.  Vallemeer has minimal English, so his daughter Marcia goes along on the trips to translate for him.

Just off shore were ruins of a prison set up by the Turks.

The lake is huge, lots of birds, surrounded by spectacular peaks, but with very little opportunity to go ashore as so rocky and steep.

We stopped along the way to visit an orthodox christian monastery - there's a men's one, but the 80yo monk doesn't like visitors so we avoided him and went to the women's one instead.  Sister Tania showed us around. She was so serene, exuding peace and contentment.  But who knows how or why she's ended up on this little island.  She is from Serbia, has travelled to various parts of the world and has been on the island for 18 months.

The top of the hill on the monastery island, with the mountains of Montenegro in the background

Unfortunately we'd only booked one night at the farmstay and they didn't have any rooms left.  It had started raining and high winds and thunderstorms were predicted, so rather than us putting up our tent in their yard, they found us another place about 100m away.  After their place though it just didn't rate!

We'd run out of money as we hadn't planned on the boat trip, so that afternoon we had to get into Virpazar, about 4km away, to get some money from the ATM.  It had started raining, but we figured we'd be OK.  But we got drenched!!  To add to our woes, the ATM went down after it had processed the $350 transaction but before the money had come out.  So now we're $350 worse off!  We'll try and recoup it from the bank, but who knows how that will go....

Day 2, and the rain is pouring down.  We have to go to Bar to get some money - it's a 30min train trip from Virpizar through a tunnel in the mountains.  Given the rain, we asked Valemeer to drive us to the train station.  Along the way he phoned up his cousin from Bar and arranged for him to pick us up at the tunnel on the Virpazar side and take us to the bank to try and sort out lost money.  We didn't have any success with that, but at least we managed to get some from ATM successfully this time.

The place we stayed in last night is horrible so we decide to head back to the farm stay to put up the tent even though it's still pouring with rain.  We stayed dry though.

The family at the farm stay are so good at looking after us - the food was exceptional - everything home grown, including tomatoes, capsicums, honey, jam, chickens, pigs, eggs etc.  And they wanted us to sleep in their living room rather than out in the tent.

27/7/19 Cetinje to Godinje

47km  Total 2,633km

What an awesome day of riding.  We took our time getting going, with 2 coffees at the local cafe on our way out of Cetinje.

A brief climb on a busy road, then we turned off on the old road.  Very rough at the start, but spectacular views.  Just hard to look at them when you're also having to look for big potholes.

We're heading to Lake Skodar, on the border of Montenegro and Albania.  Once we'd descended into the valley we crossed over the start of the lake.

The parents of our AirBnB host from last night had a little roadside restaurant along the way with stunning views. And a cute little dog keen to be given some of our food.

The rest of the ride to Virpizar was well above the lake with fantastic views.  Fortunately we only had a short day - gave lots of time for photos.

Tonight we're in a very tiny village in a farm stay where the daughters speak great English and the food is all locally grown and cooked by Mama.

26/7/19 Grahovo to Cetinje

59km  Total 2,586km

Our AirBnB hosts cooked up a fantastic breakfast for us this morning.  Just a shame we couldn't eat all - too huge!

From Grahovo, we took the old road.  Avoided going down to Kotor Bay as figured it would be too crazy on the roads with so many tourists.  The old road was fantastic - barely a car to be seen all day.

Yet again, it was warm - because we're up at about 800m it wasn't too hot though and no huge climbs, but constantly up and down.  All the little villages were pretty much deserted, so nowhere to get water along the way.  I was carrying 2.5L, but it wasn't enough.

The whole area is covered in craggy limestone and low shrubs

Cetinje isn't too impressive.  Looks like it's missing out on the tourist dollar being away from the coast.  Staying in a basic airBnB for the night.  Struggling a bit with being on the road for nearly 3 months and now in a fairly poor country.

25/7/19 Trebinje to Grohovo

55km plus 10km around Trebinje Total 2,527km

We tried to get on the road early today to avoid the heat - it always seems to take 2 hours from when we get up to being on the bike, no matter how much we try.  We were going by 8am today - a good start, but already it was warm.

We headed east out of Trebinje to a border crossing at 1000m rather than going down towards Dubrovnik where the roads would have been crazy.  Followed a river for the first 15km, then the uphill began.

The higher we got, the more spectacular the views.

Another straight forward border crossing except had to avoid the cows wandering across the road.

I booked accomodation through booking.com at an almost deserted place - Grahovo.  Eventually found the place by recognising it from the photo in the booking.  At least there were plenty of places to put up the tent if we couldn't find it!  But our sim card doesn't work in non Euro countries so we had no way of letting them know we'd arrived and had to sit around for about 30mon waiting.

They're great hosts - Dragida and her mum Tanya.  A bottle of wine on arrival then Tanya, who loves cooking, made us some little dough balls called preganice - a specialty of Montenegro along with some kajmak, honey and cheese. Then she brought us some apple and cherry cake for desert.  Also provided some cherry liquer, strawberry cordial, cucmubers, and will cook up some breakfast for us in the morning. :-)

24/7/19 Trebinje

The heat the last couple of days, or some water Dermot drank has given him diahrroea so we've laid low in Trebinje for a couple of days.  It's a lovely mediteranean style town near the Montenegro border.  Lots of big open spaces and plane trees that were planted 120 years ago.

Morning coffee - lucky to find a seat

More morning coffee - surrounded by the plane trees

The centre square has a market every morning selling fruit and vegies, honey, dried herbs, clothes etc.

The locally grown peaches and nectarines are delicious

Cheese and butter - we tried some cheese but it was pretty strong

The town shuts down around 2pm and comes back to life about 6pm.  A sensible way of living in this climate!

The town doesn't seem to have been affected by the Balkan wars.  A few monuments for the victims of fascim in WWII.

After sitting around for a couple of days, I went on a bit of a tour of the town.

The local swimming spot - water is diverted from the river, then returns to it.

Hercegovacka Gracanica

The inside

Great view of town from the top of the hill where the church is.

And here's the road we'll head out on tomorrow - you'll have to look hard.