5.
Albania.
It started off fine. The border area looked just like all the other borders which I’d crossed through so far. The border guards and customs officials were grumpy but friendly at the same time. (I can’t quite explain this.) The road was quite good for the first few miles; it was just like Macedonia and I didn’t understand why everything that I’d read about Albania said that it was stuck in the 19th Century. Then I entered the town of Peshkopi and was suddenly transported to some strange third world country. The tarmac came to an end. Nay, the bloody road came to an end! There were shops and houses lining the street but no road, just mud. They might have been repairing or building a road, but there weren’t any signs of workmen or materials, just mud. I thought it was a very strange situation!
Just after Peshkopi, I took a wrong turning. I didn’t realise at first, but should have known that something wasn’t right, as I’d turned onto a road which looked brand new! It was a small single tracked road which headed north. According to Google maps on my phone, it would eventually lead to my intended destination, but it weaved around all over the place and was very hilly. I made the decision to retrace my route back to Peshkopi, before heading to the bottom of the valley, where a main road ran north. That decision was more of a mistake than the wrong turning, but I didn’t know that as I descended down to the valley bottom towards the ‘main road’.
After crossing the raging Black Drin river via a very rickety looking bridge, I discovered that the main road wasn’t a main road after all, heck, it wasn’t even a road! Our usual dog walking route is a track on Ilkley Moor was a hundred times better than that road in Albania and that was the main bloody road of the region! Forget the 19th Century, for the next couple of days I was back in the Dark Ages!
It was what it was and I had no option but to slowly head north pushing my bike as the deep ruts and large rocks stopped me from riding. I felt extremely lucky that it hadn’t rained recently, as it would have been impassable. Google maps said that it was called the SH31, so I obviously named it the “Shit 31.”
I had hoped to get through Albania in as little as two days; the ‘road’ only doubled the amount of time I was there to four days, but I didn’t know this then and I was starting to panic! A few miles further north, I reached a junction where I had another decision to make. Either carry on following the Shit 31 north towards the town of Kukes, or head west on the Shit 34? This looked like a shortcut on the map, but it went over the mountains to the west, whilst the Shit 31 skirted around them. I hadn’t quite got used to the way that Albania worked yet, so I took the Shit 34 over the mountains. “Sod it, things can’t be worse than the Shit 31,” I thought. (Oh yes they can!)
The Shit 34 wasn’t in any worse condition than the Shit 31, but instead of being relatively flat, it was very hilly. It went up and up into the mountains and was probably the same at the other side, but unfortunately (or fortunately?) I’ll never know, as I didn’t get that far.
Whilst trudging up the steep ‘road’, deep in my own thoughts, mumbling and cursing at my stupidity for deciding not to follow the only decent road in eastern Albania, I had let my guard down. Usually I was very security conscious, as I was travelling alone in strange countries with nobody else to rely on or back me up. I was in a very vulnerable situation in a remote area of the most lawless country in Europe and it nearly bit me on the arse!
Due to me wallowing in my own self pity, I hadn’t noticed a man walking towards me from a rough meadow next to the track. Every Albanian that I’d met so far had been friendly yet extremely inquisitive about what the heck I was doing there.
He was next to me before I even realised he was there and he wasn’t in the least bit friendly! “Passport! Money!” He yelled in broken English, whilst waving around a very large and sharp looking farming implement. My senses suddenly woke up and went into overdrive. I dropped my bike and took a few steps backwards. Fortunately, my dog stick was on the side of my rucksack and not in its usual position, strapped to my handle bars. I instinctively drew it as he advanced threateningly towards me. I knew about the fearsome reputation that the sjambok whip had in South Africa, but he obviously didn’t. (I was carrying it just for protection from dogs, but he didn’t like it either!) After striking the shoulder of the arm which was wielding the ‘sword’, he dropped it, with a slightly stunned look coming over his face he muttered a word which I didn’t understand, but probably translated into English as something like “bastard!” His day obviously wasn’t quite going to plan and it could’ve ended there and then, but he made the decision to try to steal my bike. (I’d have really been in trouble if he had!) As he turned around and bent over to pick it up, I took the opportunity to make a double handed swing of the sjambok right between his legs. It must have hurt like hell, but I didn’t care as he had brought it on himself. He was shrieking in a high pitched voice as I wisely decided to put as much distance as possible between us by riding back down the way I’d come. I’m not normally a violent person, but I’m no pushover either and I’ll always be glad that I had the means and the will to defend myself on that lonely Albanian road. I mentioned the incident to an Albanian bloke who I got talking to in the town of Kukes and his response was to laugh and say that he would face worse punishment if his community found out what he’d tried to do, as Albanian Kanun (tribal) law, was very specific about crimes against travelling guests. I felt relieved!
Soon, I was back at the crossroads where I made the only decision left to make and headed north on the Shit 31, which would eventually get me to the town of Kukes. Whilst riding north, I decided not to let one incident spoil my judgement of a whole country. During their retreat of 1915, the Serbs had had to contend with a lot of problems with Albanian tribesmen, so it was quite appropriate that I’d had a little encounter too!
Albania is a remarkably beautiful and mostly unspoilt place, but it’s obviously a hard existence for the locals in the rural areas. I passed numerous small fields where families (men, women and children) were doing the back breaking work of clearing and growing crops on their steeply sloping land. The mechanisation which transformed 20th century agriculture obviously never reached Albania. Despite this, the people looked relatively happy and I received lots of smiles and waves. Not many tourists probably go through this area, so I might have been a bit of a novelty. Because of this, there was another small problem that I had to contend with: children! The little sods would stand in the middle of the track so that I had no choice but to stop. They would then demand “SWEETS! CHOCOLATE!” and they didn’t believe that I didn’t have any. (I’d already given most of it away!) After being stopped several times, I was beginning to get a bit annoyed. It was late afternoon and with only a few hours of daylight left, I really needed to find somewhere safe to camp. Therefore, I avoided children like the plague. They didn’t like these tactics, so they threw stones at me instead. Little shits!
Just before dusk, I came to a ‘road’ bridge over the Black Drin river. There was a patch of grass with a fire ring next to it which was obviously used by shepherds and travellers. “Sod it, it’s nearly dark and I won’t find anywhere better.” As I was putting my shelter up, a young shepherd herded his goats across the bridge. I carefully watched his dogs, but they seemed friendly enough for a change and I gave the shepherd a cigarette whilst he sat with me for a bit. He didn’t speak any English, so we communicated by using our hands, a bit like charades. During this ‘conversation’ he bared his teeth, made claws with his hands and pointed at both his dogs and my campsite. I got worried! He then showed me to what was probably the safest place to sleep at that location. It was on top of the girders at the other side of the bridge. A tree had grown next to the bridge and one of its branches had grown to form a barrier on one side so that you wouldn’t fall off. I locked my bike to the bridge, lifted my bags up, tied myself to the tree so that I couldn’t fall off the other side and had a great night’s sleep (except for being woken up at some point by the far away howling of wolves!) I awoke at first light to see a bloke in a lorry having a right good laugh at me asleep up there. Was the shepherd joking about sleeping up there? I didn’t know and I didn’t care, as it had worked for me!
That morning was pretty much the same as the previous day, except that the scenery was a bit wilder with the track going up the side of a gorge. This meant that there were less people, so I didn’t have to contend with the packs of feral children. The road got worse before it got better. I saw two 4x4s on a bit of a tour. They’d stopped where a section of the track had disappeared into the gorge below. I couldn’t get past, so had to wait until they’d bridged the gap with a plank of wood. Rather them than me; at least I could stay well away from the long drop to the river far below. A bit further on I came across an old woman tending to a herd of cows. She stared at me with a bemused look on her face, whilst I propped my phone up to take a selfie on a ramshackled old bridge. “What’s up, hasn’t she seen a Yorkshireman wearing ragged clothes on a pushbike before?” No, probably not!
I reached tarmac again at about mid afternoon and it was an amazing feeling that the roads would hopefully be a lot better from now on. (They couldn’t be any worse!) After consulting Google maps, I discovered that it was the same road that I had turned around on the previous day. I could have saved quite a bit of time and energy if I had carried on and not taken the ‘shortcut’ in the valley! But no, despite the problems which I had encountered, I was really glad that I took that route, as it meant that I had seen the real Albania and I wouldn’t have missed that for anything. My map also showed me that it was mostly all downhill until I reached the town of Kukes. Yeah!
A little bit further down the road, I saw a sign which stated that funds from the EU were being used to reconstruct the roads in Albania. The new road was better than a lot of the roads at home and we were paying for it! It’s good news for the locals though, as life looks to be very hard in rural Albania and the new roads can only improve things. I felt lucky to have seen things as they have been for centuries, before the EU comes along and changes everything.
Now I was back on tarmac I had to contend with the pesky children again. I managed to zoom past most of them before they even noticed but once I reached a flat section at the bottom of the hill there was no avoiding them. It was late afternoon and I was trying to get a shuffle on to reach Kukes before dark, when I came across a particularly obnoxious little sod. His family were loading bales of hay onto a trailer in their field, when he ran across the field to the road. When he saw that I wasn’t going to stop, he tried to push me off my bike and I had to swerve right across the road. It’s a good job that there wasn’t any traffic around! I felt a bit sorry for him, as after I had finished shouting at him his father dragged him away by his hair. I gave his father a cig and to prove that I’m not totally heartless, I gave the kid my last emergency chocolate bar. (I was near civilisation now, so it didn’t matter.)
Kukes was just like all the other towns which I’d passed through in the Balkan countries and Europe as a whole. All the trappings of modern society were in stark contrast to the brutal reality and privations of rural Albanian life, just a few miles away. Albania is slowly becoming a civilised country, but the difference between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ is much larger than any other European country that I’ve visited.
After changing some Euros into Albanian Leks at a very modern looking bank, I checked into a very cheap but good hotel in the centre of Kukes. I needed to sort my clothes out as they were filthy and literally coming apart at the seams, there followed a fun evening of sewing and cleaning.
The next day saw me riding on a brand new dual carriageway. (E851) It was a bit surreal as I was having problems convincing myself that I was still in the same country as the day before! The contrasts in Albania really are huge and there’s no middle ground like at home. Although the roads at home are all in the middle as they’re pretty knackered, but not as knackered as the poor Albanian roads. I then came to a tunnel through the mountains which wasn’t on the map. There was a no cycling sign at the entrance. If I had to go around, it could’ve added days onto my journey and in most countries that’s exactly what would’ve happened. Fortunately I was in Albania where things work a little bit differently (no culture of health and bloody safety, yet!)
Next to the tunnel entrance was a fenced compound for the emergency services. They probably don’t have very much to do and to ease their boredom they came to talk to me. After a while, they phoned somebody who had a pickup truck and I got a lift through the tunnel. Yeah! It was about 4 miles long and very dark as they hadn’t finished the lighting yet. I’d have really struggled if I’d have risked going through it, although it had crossed my mind!
After the tunnel, the road was fabulous. It was easily the best road that I had the pleasure of riding on during my long journey. I couldn’t believe my luck! It started high in the mountains, which meant that it was all downhill to the coast. I managed more mileage in the next two hours than I had done in the previous two days. Whoosh!
(This was the route that the northern Serbian army used during their retreat in December 1915. They were probably just as happy as I was about it being downhill all the way to the coast. The retreat in the north was much more costly than the southern one; the atrocious winter conditions on the Plain of Kosovo and the northern mountains resulted in the enormous casualty rate which I previously mentioned.)
Late in the afternoon I turned north onto a road towards the border city of Shkoder, my aim was to get as close as possible to the border with Montenegro before nightfall. Dusk saw me frantically searching for somewhere safe to camp. I was in a rural area and there were dogs everywhere. Eventually, I found somewhere safe. It was a roofless ruined building on the edge of a field, well away from the farms and villages. My bike became a makeshift door and I settled in for the night. The next day would see me leaving Albania and I was feeling a bit melancholy about it. Except for one small incident, Albania and its people had been very good to me. Yes, even the pesky children! I fell asleep listening to the distant howling of wolves. I wondered if they could have been dogs but they sounded like wolves and that, to me, was a fitting end to my time in that wild and beautiful country.
It should be noted that although Albania was technically neutral, the war had a great impact on life in the country. After declaring independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1912 and being recognised as a country by the European powers in 1913, the country of Albania collapsed after the outbreak of war in 1914. Their newly arrived King, Prince William of Wied quickly fled the country, returning home to Germany to rejoin the army. Thus a leaderless Albania quickly reverted back to tribal rule.
In order to protect the Greek minority in the south, the Greek army took control of the southern districts in October 1914. The Italians weren’t happy about this, so they decided to also land troops in southern Albania, capturing the port city of Vlore (Vallona) and the island of Sazan. (Saseno.) Early in the war, Serbia and Montenegro captured northern and eastern parts of Albania, which kept the Central Powers out of Albania until after the Serbian winter retreat of 1915.
Afterwards, an extension of the Macedonian Front was formed by mostly Italian troops in the southern portion of Albania, whilst the rest was occupied by Austro-Hungary for the duration of the war.