a truer north



Sarajevo from the 17th floor



Sarajevo - Dubrovnik road



first sea since Denmark



Dubrovnik, a bit like Bath

2.4 thousand miles and most everything else behind me I am in Montenegro. I spent an hour marvelling at the superyachts moored in the Tivat marina (they made me feel better about my flashy bicycle) and enjoying the crass Geordie banter of a deckhand I met on the jetty (Mark Barrett from green watch's next door neighbour...). It was a far cry from the hour, in a Sarajevo museum, that I spent despairing at an exhibition of beautiful, devastating photos taken during the city's three year seige. I was most struck by the pictures of civilians preparing to run through sniper fire to get about their everyday business, the children holding hands. It is a beautiful city now, as no doubt before; the once abundant Beeches felled for fuel have been replaced with all kinds of fruit trees which now line the streets instead. I stayed with Ossetian Zoe from Couchsurfing who indulged my vain soulsearching and later emailed me this poem

in the fragile velveteen
of the wind of your passing
you seek
a truer north
an internal horizon
beckons with whispery promises
- an ineffable tensing of self
made up of pounding blood, sun warmed metal, flashing tar
you seek
in burning muscles and miles
a truer north

which made me feel all deep, and touched. Thank you, Zoe. Gracious hosts abound, but not two (long, mountainous) days later in Dubrovnik where my Couchsurfing requests were futile; the hospitality presumably innundated. I wandered about the pristine old town looking for bullet holes (a recent habit) then spent some hours on the beach watching gaggles of chicken white, lobster red and occasionally quite comely English girls preening and burning (*excuse me, would you watch my bicycle while I take a swim?) - wondering if I shouldn't just pay for a room and stop a night or two. In the end I thought better and left to struggle smugly defiant up a few more hills before sleeping badly in an olive grove. But not before I'd been flagged down on the road by American Jeffery who knew who'd built my bike despite it being from Somerset and invited me to stop on his boat just South of Tivat the following evening. So here I am taking morning sun on the prow after deep, air conditioned sleep; full charge in my devices and best muscovado in my coffee. It's nice to mix it up.

lake Skadar, straddling the Montengrin & Albanian border

the Albanian border