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.