We headed out of Dubrava and straight up the hill towards Albania, going on the back road which was quite beautiful once we got up there. Our route for most of the day was much less busy and once we arrived in Albania the drivers were more courteous, giving space and we saw quite a lot of local cyclists as well as one big troupe of road cyclists who waved and shouted enthusiastically at us. Everyone in Albania is very chatty and they are excited to find out where we are from and what we are up to here. Everyone waves as we go by and shouts "hello" or "ciao". We did take one detour to get off the main road (which was much better for cycling), we then got a little lost on a gravel track, turned a corner to face a large gate with two guys in military uniform guarding it and a boy on a bike. We cycled up and asked how to get to Lezhe, one pointed through the gate to the right, the other opened the gate and the boy on the bike cycled with us to the right hand turn, his name was Alejandro!
As we approached the border, there was a long queue which we zipped past and went through the walkway. This connects to the border guards checking the cars as well, but meant that we skipped the queue. We had 15km to cycle until the lunch stop and there's a single road to Shkoder, the fleet of camper vans who arrived at the border at the same time as us, did not get past us. So the wait time at the border must have been at least 45 minutes. Once we crossed the border we saw horse drawn carts, locals on bikes and mosques. Shanky used a cash machine on his bike (another currency here) and we found a small bike service workshop on the side of the road and two young guys pumped our tyres up, which we greatly appreciated!
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| A wave from a man on a horse drawn cart |
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| Shanky using the cash machine on his saddle |
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The small bike workshop we spotted
just after Rozafa Castle - between the two rivers |
Sights of note
- Lunch along the river Bojana and under the Rozafa castle
- Children waving from many school gates, waving and shouting "hello"
- One truck carrying hay bales with 3 guys sitting on top, I waved and they all waved and smiled back
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| Rozafa Castle on top of the hill, from our lunch spot on the river |
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| We saw many mosques along the route |
Shengjin
We arrived at the beach town which seems to be a party resort for the party animals of Albania. We tried to book a room at the hotel Adria which we found online but we saw that the doors were closed and as we stood outside on our bikes, two guys came past, who turned out to be the owners/managers. They said they closed up the hotel today as it's the end of the season, but they recommended a place down two buildings. We checked in at Hotel Rafaelo and I went for a swim. We went out for pizza and got bitten by loads of mosquitos, the restaurant owner came out with some bug spray after Shanky was going mad at the mosquitos.
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The pool view from our balcony where
I took an evening swim |
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| The sunset along the beach, lovely but there were many mosquitos |
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