Tivat towards Tirana

From Tivat I took the scenic route across mountains skirting the Balkans' largest lake, a vast blueness far below, uncooling. There were many turtles crossing (and, a sad sight, crushed), scant shade to stop and no wells to drink until evening; a constant taste of thirst and the hot stench of fennel. Mainly it was beautiful.  A day's toil. A mere 1500m, squandered the next morning in one spectacular fifteen minute downhill splurge to the flat Ulcinj road. There on Montenegro's Southernmost beach I procrastinated two days with my Polish friend Grzegorz who had also been a guest on Jeffery's boat. We cooked egg and chips on the beach (good), raced stoves to boil dehydrated pasta Napolitana (not so good), built increasingly elaborate driftwood sunshades and played on the paddle boards Greg had for rent.


As I head South into summer, and especially since I got caught out a little above that lake, I've taken to riding later into the day, until the almost dark. It means a cooler effort of enjoyment not endurance, and in that spirit I drink a few beers from the roadside kiosks to go faster. It also means, in nightfall, a greater urgency in camping, more brazen pitches or that I'm forced to beg people their plots, their gardens, their courtyards and kindness. The nightly uncertainty and the occasional necessary sociability does me good. I enjoy trying to ignore the twilight looming where-to-sleep anxiety: another beer, another ten miles, another mp3 selection - there'll be somewhere. And there always is. I've not paid to bed down since the cabin to Denmark. Not from any frugality (much) or, insomniac, the sense of futile expense, but for the value I get from the unpredictability, the nightly problem and its resolution, the always different often special sleeping situations,  the curious children, interfering animals, compromises, risk assessments and it always being ok; always still being tomorrow in the morning. A degree of vulnerability seems so often key to valuable experiences.


And riding before one and after six opens the afternoon right up for all kinds of leisure. Reading writing swimming napping eating drinking even making friends; but mostly eating and reading. My Kindle is crumby and grease flecked. I'm in Albania now. There is a tangible good will: thumbs ups, waves, high fives from the kiddies and today two icecreams gratis in the long afternoon.