Dennis

Tues - Wed 26th-27th Sept

We actually went back to Camping Kranea at Himare, where Dennis and wife are still running their 20-odd pitch site behind the beach road. It is compact to say the least but the beach access is superb and the water was warm. The only complaint was that everyone else is from Germany or German speaking. It is getting very boring.

Dennis was pleased to see us after eight years, even asking after our children who he seemed to be able to remember.

Rather disappointingly, we couldn’t order fish for dinner as he had none left by 7pm and so it was seafood pasta and a large pork steak with Albanian Red. Then a pleasant sleep in the very compact pitch (have I mentioned that already?) before the alarm went at 06:30. Unfortunately it was next door’s alert and they must have had an appointment somewhere, although frustratingly, they left at the same time as we did.

The route south from there is spectacular, as the mountains tumble straight down to the sea. We remembered seeing a sinister naval tunnel last time and were eager to find it again.

Suddenly it was there, maybe not so sinister after all and it now has a signpost too. I’m pretty sure it has been used on a film but have no idea which.

In the hills we succumbed to a roadside vendor of honey, rather than those selling toasted corn 🌽 lower down, or even vegetables at a roundabout. 

Actually roundabouts are very convenient places to stop in Albania; an unusual concept but it is very popular and conventional drivers need to take extra care. Also they have picked-up the bad habit of double parking, probably from France or Spain but unlike there, they don’t use their hazard warning lights.

“The Investigation” gathered pace with a red flag…

Also we have a reg plate of dubious quality and I can’t translate the alphanumerics to anything valid.

So the next day we went for the border and wisely picked a lonely crossing which we hoped would be easy and it was. There were only a few cars ahead at the Albanian side and it didn’t take long.

The Greek side asked everyone to get out and go to police windows. There the guy flicked through the passport pages and then flicked again. Then he put them on the magic reader thing but I don’t know what that does. Maybe it picks up the number and reaches into a huge EU database to see if we troublesome Brits are likely to overstay our EU allowance.

He then started to ask questions in a very hard to understand accent and all I could hear was “three months”. In my border crossing brain fuzz, I didn’t immediately convert this to 90 days. If I had, I would have realised that he was concerned that we might indeed overstep the 90 days in 180 allowance. Why can’t these officials all use the same units?!

We were in Greece and it soon began to look different. The litter bin game soon lost its appeal but if you ever want to play along the rules are this.

One point for a bin with lid - not attached

Two points for a bin with a lid - attached 

Three points for bin with lid - closed

There are variations and forfeits which are essentially linked to the number of dogs and chickens in any one bin.

We stopped for a coffee at a spot looking over towards Corfu, or maybe a peninsula. Then made our way through Igoumenitsa, a possible embarkation point for a ferry back to Italy.

What way are we coming back?  Ferry, or road through Macedonia - Serbia - Hungary? We still have no idea but there’s no rush.

A return to the Albanian Rivièra

 Monday - Tuesday 25th - 26th Sept

Slowly we made headway through rain and traffic, towards a beach site that has good reviews and is conveniently on the way. The offline OsmAnd maps that we are using on the iPhone, are proving to work well but we are still learning the complexity. There’s loads going on inside the app and when we were directed off the main road, towards the blue part of the map, it looked OK but a few doubts crept in as we covered the 15km or so, as instructed. We went through a strange settlement and were clearly reaching the end of the road, when the road ended but not at the blue of the sea.

After turning around off a hardcore surface because it just stopped, we believed the map and drove onto a slightly sandy surface for the last km and into some pine covered dunes. Then there was the campground with a few others who were there before us.

It is really a beach shack that has camping and what turned out to be a good cook. As with everyone in Albania, when you say you are English, there’s a link to someone, somewhere. In this case the guy that greeted us, immediately said that he had worked in Billericay in a restaurant , for over four years, before coming back to help his parents here, at the beach café / restaurant.

We sampled their joint creation, as Father offered us a mix of fish for two because we couldn’t decide on which ones! It was a banquet. Really, you can’t beat ultra fresh fish. We couldn’t decide on the beer either,

The campsite fee was the usual €5 each and the ‘banquet’ was very reasonable too. It beats ‘wild camping’ to save the fee, which is what we have seen people doing. I think when you are charged €5 each to camp somewhere, then trying to avoid this is rather unfair. In Theth for example, there were several camper vans from Germany and Austria, who were on the outskirts of the village and saving that small fee. I think that is stealing stealing from the village.

We stood to admire a large MAN truck and the couple were planning to go to Saudi Arabia via Iran. Well Iran would be good (if I dare as a Brit) but Saudi? Really? I was immediately worried for the couple who I doubt have had a shakedown trip. This truck weighs over 8T and everything I have read says that less weight is better. How do you extricate an 8T truck from sand? Probably only with another one.

The beach season is definitely over here. it’s quite messy and a bit derelict and we are forming an opinion of Albania. I had a quick look at the toilet electrical distribution. I didn’t want a longer one. It didn’t help.

We moved on the next morning and decided to continue along the coast towards Himare where we have previously stayed and actually our mood improved as we got to the stunning coastline that we remember from our trip north in 2015.

Near the top of the crazy road that hugs the mountains, we stopped at an unconventional spot for lunch, a derelict concrete ‘thing’. The view was stupendous. Nearby were beehives and the guy who was there to tend to them, checked our UK plate and then scrolled through a few phone pics, showing us one of a young woman. His English extended to the words “daughter” and “Manchester”.

Then he showed another pic, this one was his car. Guess what, it has a UK plate!  Another piece of data for “The Investigation”.

A guy pulled in and got off his pushbike and we exchanged the time of day. He’s a Swiss called Adrian and is on a ride from his home in Lucerne to Greece. He has three months off work and wanted to ride to his fairly recently bought house in Greece because he wants to have the bike there. His wife had told him that he could take the bike on an aeroplane but he fancies the ride and is doing very well, despite not looking or dressing like a several week touring on a bike kind of guy.

I was interested to hear where he is going in Greece and when he said the Peloponnese I was even more interested to hear that he likes the Mani. In fact the house is there, at Stoupa. Exactly where? Neo Chori. Do you know it? Yes we know it, we first went to Stoupa twenty years ago and we will probably go there on this trip.

He was impressed. We took some selfies and then he made a proposal. Meet me at Patriko’s bar on 24th October at 6pm. We said that was the absolute latest we could expect to be there but, well maybe. So we shook hands all round and off he went, down the long hill to sea level.

It’s amazing what you learn by exchanging just a few worlds of greeting with a stranger.

Moving south in Albania

Sunday-Monday 24th - 25th Sept.

Theth will become a victim of its improved accessibility because the Albanian way doesn’t appear to appreciate ‘nature’ and all that can go wrong with it when people gather. 

At the moment it is a beautiful place, sitting in this almost inaccessible valley, cut off completely during the winter. I think things could go downhill.

For example, generally in the country, rubbish bins are not controlled. This isn’t a matter of what day the binmen come, although I’m sure that regularity is essential there. The minimum standard of rubbish control could be achieved by closing the lids on the big wheeled containers. These are the ones where the lid curves over and is pulled from open to closed from the back to the front. The others have big flip lids that presumably blow off.

If these lids were fitted, maintained and used properly, then the wild dogs wouldn’t be able to get in them and empty everything onto the ground.

These photos were taken in a village during our drive south.

The other improvement will be when Albanian people finally decide not to ignore rubbish strewn everywhere and actually try to clear-up. At the moment they don’t appear to see litter as out of place.

We stopped on the way down from Theth at a small shop for fruit and veg. This is what the shopkeeper looks at whilst waiting for the next customer.

It is good that almost every house in Theth seems able to open their rooms to guests and also provide a meal. Our host was already full for dinner which is why we walked to Shpella. A camper said he would be leaving at 5am to go back to Tuh-ron-oh. That’s what I thought he had said in his N. American accent.

It was actually Tiranë and they were going back to the UK, where he lives “Cambridge area”. The young chap and his brother were very none committal about where exactly they live or which pharma company he works for.

He was proud to tell me that they had just finished the Peaks of the Balkans walk and I was impressed; 180kms, 10,000m accent / descent and ten days. Wow. He speaks with that accent as “I’m half Thai and “went to the International school out there”. Then they continued to pitch their tent in the rain and the valley continued to fill with water, lightning and thunder for the rest of the night.

At Shkoder a waitress had asked if we were British, as she heard the accent. I told here that she spoke well but sounded American, which she blamed on the TV. She then asked “ is it Br-ish, or Brit-ish”?. Of course I said “British” and mentioned that she should try to never drop her Ts. She said she’d heard other British guests say “Br-ish” but we did our best to convince her that “Bri-tish” is correct.

It was in Theth that I saw an out-of-place Range Rover Sport showing UK plates. It was being driven in a very non-UK way by an Albanian-looking guy; not the sort that I would tell to not drop his Ts. Curiously I grabbed a pic of the registration number and later managed to do a lookup on it and rather surprisingly it’s taxed and MOTd until next Spring!  This might be the start of an investigation, though it is severely hampered by very little internet access.

Our brief time in Theth was similar to those weekends that you endure in the Lake District where the rain never stops - Seatoller comes to mind. The static and unending lightning was something else though. That was a new experience and didn’t end the next morning. First we needed to drive back over the pass and down to the main road. This is about 28km in total and is a significant drive up and around very tight hairpins on a very narrow road.

You need to be ready for the local drivers who hurtle around bends but it doesn’t always end well. We came across a couple of cars that had ‘impacted’ quite badly at the front offside corners. They will be customers of the many car repair and breaker yards that we would see during that day’s drive south.

We were in for a disappointing drive because Albania is not at its best on the road towards Tiranë and between there and the coast. The best similarity is China where nothing seems to end and there’s one place after another, with no centre, some huge garish buildings and a lot of unfinished or derelict places. It was everything that Toby and Sabine disliked. 

I was amazed at the number of car ‘breakers’ and realise that many places must buy cars to then park them, removing parts as required. There are dozens of these, many appearing to specialise in Mercedes or BMW and yes, Range Rovers. I saw lots of UK plates but always RR or Mercedes and eventually photographed a few more ready for “the investigation”.

The lightening didn’t stop and neither did the rain. Near lunchtime the sky ahead looked ominous and the traffic slowed to yet another crawl and we watched and heard the rain get heavier and the cracks almost instantaneous following the flash.

In particularly slow traffic and with almost darkness at 2pm, we pulled underneath the rusty canopy of an old fuel station.

Here we could at least stop and get out without getting drowned and we had lunch. Most of the time we quivered under the flashes and bangs and then looked as water poured through a hole in the roof. I think that a vehicle gives good protection from a direct lightening hit as the arc jumps the gap to the ground after the current flows through the metalwork. I was wondering what would happen under a metal canopy when the supports may or may not have been metal- it was hard to tell.

In the middle of all this a car stopped, just before our pull-in and the hazards came on. The slow traffic stopped and then tried to get past in the deluge. No-one stopped to help. We looked and became a bit concerned and then I decided to go and help because it was only a small car. There was a woman in it, already on the phone, so I motioned that I was going to push. For some inexplicable reason she got out and still on the phone, did a full circuit, stopping at the passenger door and opening it, before I motioned to her to get back in, as I AM GOING TO PUSH.

So I did get her off the road. She was still on the phone when she applied the brake and stopped me pushing the car undercover. She’s probably still there now, on the phone.

 

Theth - in the Accursed Mountains

 Sat-Sun 23rd -24th Sept

I knew I had cursed the weather by fixing a fly-screen to one of windows. It was sooo hot, around 30 max but still in the mid 20s at bedtime.

First of all a few knowledgeable people started to tie-down their motorhome awnings and then the wind picked up. We just packed away, knowing that it was likely to get wet. The wind started to really blow but the warmth continued.

As we went to bed the rain started but the radar didn’t show much, just a storm out to sea that was moving east of north. So we went to bed in the heat.

Later the wind blew something off or over on a big Sprinter 4x4 next to us and we woke and started to fret!

It was decided that the porch overhang should be dropped and then secured with a guy to stop it flapping. It was also decided many trips ago that I would always do this. So I did. I got wet. Apparently I wasn’t very wet.

Then we settled down again but I kept seeing flashes so I made the mistake of looking at the amazing lightening website at blitztortung and saw this. Each dot is a flash and the white are the latest.

It was only a matter of time before it was bedlam. However we were safe and dry, although it would have been better if I had remembered to close the front vent under the windscreen. Then the driver’s footwell wouldn’t have filled with water. I hope that is the simple reason why that happened.

The last three days has been great. Three meals a day and three lake swims each day too. On the final morning not only did we buy fresh bread at the campsite but also 2 x 1.5litres of fresh milk. That should keep us going.

We said goodbye to Toby and family, who have not really taken to the Albania they have visited and are driving to catch a ferry from Dubrovnik to Bari. We explained why the Albanians  haven’t yet developed a sense of pride in their surroundings, mentioning about the country only ‘recently’ opening-up.

Toby looked at us quizzically and it was evident that he doesn’t know about Enver Hoxha and the extreme communism that kept the country closed to the outside world until the early 1990s.

On Sunday morning after drying out a little, we drove up the narrow mountain road to the high pass and then down into the remote valley and village of Theth. We had failed to do this in 2015 as then the road was narrow, gravel and exposed. Since then it has been widened and tarmaced and the only risk was the drivers coming towards us.

This place is special; like nowhere we have been. It is clearly opening up but is something of a tourist frontier.

Many houses provide guest accommodation and most allow camping too. So we settled at one, between three other camper vans … from Germany of course.

The main street runs alongside the river

This is a particularly fancy hotel and we sat and has a coffee outside when there was a sudden flash and instant bang; not a power cable but looking at them that could easily happen. It was just normal for today and that night too!

We met a lone walker at the edge of the ‘village’. He’s from central Denmark and is intending to walk from here to Valbona. He will start in a couple of days, by which time the weather will be back to its settled best.

We walked the entire circuit of this place and tried to ignore the rubbish and litter. This is strewn about, probably pulled around by the many stray dogs. We also earmarked a restaurant for tea, which was the result of much work by the chief researcher. Bujtina Shpella was a great find and we arrived about 5mins before the weather closed in. There was another storm, this time in this valley and the rain came down and the lightening flashed, the lights dimmed and then we were deafened by the thunder.

Fortunately the food and drink was great (2,835 LEK which was paid on a card) but could also be paid in Euro (100 LEK - €1) and we cheerfully managed not to think about the unattended Landy a 10min walk away down a stony track and across a field.

I had earlier stopped a young chap who was walking away from where we were heading and asked if he worked at Shpella because is was wearing their polo shirt.

He’s from Guildford and Benedict’s brief story is that he has a PhD in Theoretical Physics from Durham. We knew this to be true as he said “the more I learnt, the less I realised I know”. This struck a chord with Dawn and the conversation continued.

He rode his bike here but got locked down during Covid, found himself in a remote mountain valley and started to ‘take-in’ stray dogs. He walked all over with them, at one point there were 15 puppies.  Now he “can’t go back home” as he doesn’t know what to do with the dogs. He’s been trying to get formal work but it seems impossible to get through the bureaucracy of working outside a main centre of population.

We encouraged him to go somewhere and use that incredible qualification and intellect. Hopefully he will and that should also please his parents.