Albania
Arriving in Albania brought with it the biggest culture change we’d experienced so far.
We started our first day there with a detour into the city of Shkodër to find a supermarket and somewhere to buy gas. It was chaotic. People were cycling everywhere, on paths, on the wrong side of the road, with no helmets in sight! Thankfully, the cars were patient and were very tolerant of cyclists.
We then started to head in the right direction for another 60km. It was about 28C, but there was a breeze and intermittent clouds, so it felt much more manageable than the previous day on the climbs!
As it was time for our day off, we decided to detour over to the coast - and treated ourselves to a little (but absolutely lovely) cabin for two nights a few hundred meters from the sea.
Continuing our route the following day ended up being the most physically demanding day so far - the temperature was in the low 30Cs and it felt HOT. We’d had a slower start to the day than we anticipate, as our route took us over a bridge where one of the sections was subsided. It seemed to still be open to pedestrians, but this involved climbing over two barriers in the centre of the bridge and unloading our panniers so we could pass our bikes over to each side.
Our relief was short lived once we got to the other side as we realised we needed to carry our bikes up and down a steep footbridge!
The Albanian people are really friendly and one car stopped for us, and they went into their fridge in their boot (of course) and pulled out some ice cold drinks for us!
We thought there would be a shop to buy some bread for lunch, and there wasn’t - but to be honest, it was so hot we weren’t really hungry.
I really hit a low point in the afternoon, where my headache was so bad I couldn’t see out of one eye properly. But luckily, by that point we had made it to a town and we sat down for a while in the shade and ate some snacks! Since then, we’ve been much better at making sure we take breaks in shade and don’t get heatstroke.
We stayed in a lovely little campsite on our last night in Albania, with an incredible view out to the mountains.
To make sure we didn’t get caught out in the 15km climb the next day, we made sure we got ann early start to make sure we got up the 15km climb before the afternoon heat. We also had three cafe stops and still managed to get into North Macedonia in good time and over to Lake Ohrid before the rain came.
