Leaderboard

Dorset this afternoon - overlooking Chesil Beach

We found some food and a place to stay for the night and got up early to move on to country number 15, Albania. It was pretty cloudy when we set off, but about an hour into the drive we went through a tunnel and emerged into spectacular sunshine! We found a spot in the mountains for some lunch. And on we went to Albania. At the Greek side of the border, I was stopped for a little longer than usual while they were checking my paperwork. Just as I was starting to worry, the girl let out a sigh and said "OK, you may go... After the photo" at which point her friend stepped outside with a camera to get a picture of the car! The Albanian side was pretty simple. They seemed to be there just for the sake of formality! On we went, after a brief stop for Chris to buy insurance, and two things immediately struck me: 1. Albania is a beautiful country. 2. The drivers are insane. Annoyingly, I've filled my hard drive, and hadn't planned for quite how slow hostel wifi is to move stuff to cloud storage so I need to free up more space to import the gopro photos and add them to the post. I'll edit them in later, but in the mean time we're limited to photos from my phone. We were driving to the Blue Eye, a national park to go for a hike and camp there afterwards. Sure enough, when we arrived, it was closed for the day for "construction repairs". Not sure what needs repairing in a national park, but we needed a new plan. Joe came up with a relatively simple idea. "let's go to the beach." so go to the beach we did! When I said earlier that Albania is beautiful, I hadn't seen their coastline at this point. Once I did, it multiplied by hundreds. Some of the roads were just spectacular, and the views were amazing too. Every second town seemed to be authentic, old and rustic. The ones in between were brand new tourist towns, with loads of unfinished buildings. We found our beach of choice, bought a beer at the beach bar, and then set up our tents, cooked some dinner, and watched the sun set. The next day we had a visit to Berat Castle planned on the way to our hostel in Tirana, where Joe would be leaving us. This is the day I got a bit more of a flavour of Albania, and unfortunately it wasn't a flavour I liked. I think it's possibly the only day of the trip so far I didn't take a single photo, and that's likely because I was too stressed to take my phone out of my pocket. Once we moved away from the coast, Albania seemed to lose it's chilled out nature. The views weren't as nice, and the drivers were even more crazy. We made it to Berat castle without incident (despite the best efforts of several drivers), but while sorting our bags in the car park, were immediately accosted by one of Albania's "street children". If you ever choose to visit Albania, you will meet some. Do not give them money. This is a form of child slavery. The salary earned by these children for their families is more than that of a teacher in Albania. Many parents realise this, and stop working as a result. Handing money over, no matter how wide eyed they are, is promoting this. They are absolutely determined too, and will continue to hassle you the whole time. In this instance, we had already spotted the kid's "handler" too, so weren't particularly comfortable leaving the cars. We had lunch at a distance where we could watch the cars to make sure they were safe, and quickly realised that thanks to my car being so strange here, the busloads of tourists were constantly stopping for pictures of it, so no thief would go near it. Berat castle was nice, but we were on edge, so struggled to enjoy it, and sort of rushed around to get back to the cars. We moved our bags around again when we got back to the cars so Chris could actually get back into his driver's seat, and were accosted by 2 more street children, begging for money and food as we did it. With all of my luggage just strapped to my car, and knowing how much faff is involved to get in and out, I was terrified of things being pinched so wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. My stress levels weren't helped by the road out of Berat. It is truly awful. The surface is terrible, it's barely wide enough for 2 cars in places, yet the Albanians just go for it. At one point, while I was trying to navigate some potholes, a tourbus behind me beeped his horn, and floored it around me in a blind corner. I slammed on the brakes, but was well aware that there was only one person coming off well in that situation if there was an altercation, so kept quiet. Unfortunately Joe hadn't had this realisation, and made his feelings known to the bus driver with his hands. He didn't take kindly to that, stopped, and was about to climb out of the bus. Fortunately, we managed to calm the situation enough for him to move on, and we set off again for Tirana. This bit, we timed completely wrong, and arrived at rush hour. It was absolute chaos. On so many occasions other cars were millimeters from mine. The traffic was standstill in various places too, and of course the street kids knew where those places would be. Not a good time to have the roof off. At one point a child evens stood on my silencer to try to get to us over the door. They're lucky I've got a carbon one, or I'd say their shoe would have been welded to their foot. In the mayhem, Chris and I got separated, but fortunately after both getting lost, made it to the hostel at the same time. Our host, an American named Calvin, was an absolute gent. He only had one parking space for my car, but had managed to secure another one for us while we were on the way. He also gave us a bit of a history lesson of Albania, and one point of this cleared up an awful lot of what we had experienced. Up until 20 years ago, only government officials were allowed to have cars. When the law changed, suddenly anyone could have a car, but nobody knew how to drive them. So they sort of just figured it out themselves - or not, as the case may be. We parked up, brought in our bags, had a beer to de-stress and then went out for some dinner as it was our last night with Joe. We were all pretty worn out by the day, so went to bed fairly early. We didn't rush out in the morning, as we wanted rush hour traffic to subside. That day Chris and I had a driving day planned through Shtame Pass, part of a national park in Albania. It was supposed to be a spectacular driving road. Spectacular it was. A driving road it was not. I definitely need to pull some of the gopro footage to do this one justice. The views were absolutely incredible, but the road surface would catch you out randomly. In places it was great, then suddenly you'd be missing half of the road with no warning. When we got to the top and started to descend down the far side though, the road stopped and turned into a dirt track. Calling it a dirt track was even generous. I might have been able to navigate the first hundred meters with the Westie, but Chris had no chance, so we had to turn back. We found a town a bit further along our route to decide what to do for our last night in Albania. We had planned a big hike the next day, before crossing into Montenegro, but looking at the map, the border crossing looked tiny, and Chris needed to buy insurance for his car at the border. We didn't have enough confidence that we would be able to sort that out, so decided to stay in a campsite have a bit of a lie in, and bin off the hike the next day. In the free time we had the next morning, I decided to rotate my wheels around too. My rear tyres were pretty close to the wear markers (might have had a bit too much fun on the Transfargarasan), whereas my fronts looked untouched, so I thought it would be best to swap them around before the rears became illegal! (Not that anyone would have cared in Albania anyway!) In an ideal world, I would have just replaced them, but it turns out Nankangs don't seem to be a popular tyre on the continent, and I haven't been able to find a single supplier for them. Even if I could talk someone into ordering some in for me, which I haven't managed to do yet, I'm not in the same place long enough to wait for them to arrive.

All my chores are complete so if you have room for another I can come out to play too

I know you are on holiday but Thankyou so much for spending the time to write all about your adventures. The one above is fantastic reading and really enjoyed it.

Yep, a great day, despite the mostly damp roads. Just a bit of an engine inspection, breather connections on S2000 cam cover. RAF Cosford museum The VC10 length of service.. Andy

I have had a play around with the route, to cut out the town centre of Buxton, and it is all now on high ground so wrap up warm. The views will be stunning in the sunshine that is now forecast, big skies will rule. @Trevturtle you might even need your heated gloves, don't forget to charge the batteries like me The good news is that we won't be sat outside this week and there is a real fire at our lunch stop 🔥

@jonjh1964 I hope you don't mind but I've just had a quick play with your great shot in Light room, resulting in this:

Happy to do it! It's quite nice for me to have a bit of a record of things anyway. With the numbers of countries we've travelled through and miles covered, some stuff can blur together, so taking the time to write about it here helps me to keep the memories a bit clearer! Glad you're enjoying it too!

Yep.. two weeks in a row.. I've peaked 😂

I can't make Matlock for 10.30, but will go direct to Winnats Pass via Bakewell, and hope to catch up with you at some stage late morning. Have a good one anyway.

Sorry Ash, no offence intended.Post deleted, life's to short etc.

One more if possible. Thanks.

Your not wrong, clue was in the photo too! Andy

Still available?

Not sure I can eat two, but I’ll give it a go.

I dunno, reads like a script from Yes, Prime Minister to me.

Have fun guys, hopefully the weather is good for next weekend too so i can come out to play, take it easy Andy & Becky

good price that imo, had a couple, wonderfull cars, seems to be looked after well too.... someone going to get a nice car there..

Got my Xtr2 road legal!

Sorry it's now looking like I will have to work that weekend

I've had my soggy play day today and won't be out this weekend, sorry. Have a great weekend!