Making up for lost time

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

I should also mention, my travel buddy is into proper photography, rather than the stuff I've posted so far which is all taken on my phone. His Instagram is here:

https://instagram.com/chrisramsayphoto?igshid=587ni1crcw2u

 

He's generally a few weeks behind in posting things on this, particularly while travelling as he needs to find the time to go through and edit photos etc. but stuff since I arrived should be appearing on there shortly. Also, if anyone is interested in seeing the Norway and Arctic circle leg of the trip that I missed by being too slow building my car, you can have a look on there now! 

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

After the Fort, we set off south. Weather was looking reasonable, so the hood stayed off. We stopped off at a park for a walk. It was nothing remarkable, but the views were nice!

 

 

After that, we carried on in the general direction of the Romanian border with a couple of campsites in mind for the night.  And that's where we found it. 

 

We found the nice road in Ukraine.  I'll need to get some of the footage off my gopro to prove it exists, but in typical gopro fashion, it's not been behaving itself so I'll have to come back to it later! 

 

Edited to add in a photo - unfortunately, the gopro somehow didn't start recording until the end of the really twisty bits but at least caught my reaction, and you can see that there's an actual good road surface somehow!

 

 

It seems skiing has recently become a thing in the Carpathians, and with it, investment has come. Several ski resorts had been built or were in the process of being built, and the twisty mountain roads had been treated to a fresh layer of tarmac. 

 

We had been behaving ourselves, but it was comforting to know that they're pretty relaxed about speeding in Ukraine.  After a failed trial period where the punishment for speeding was being verbally reprimanded by the officer who caught you (wonder why that didn't stop people?) fines were introduced - but you have to be more than 20km/h over the limit to get one, and it comes to the equivalent of about £7. If you somehow go in excess of 50km/h above the limit, that fine gets doubled to a whopping £14! That being said, this road had a speed limit of 90km/h - which I only managed to get to once. I was in no danger of losing £14!

 

After a good bit of fun, we took a detour to our first suggested campsite. It wasn't any good, so we decided to move on to the next one, but it did provide this illustration of how unevenly split the wealth is in Ukraine still (although significantly improved since the soviet era). Just a guy, casually walking his cow, next to a gold topped building. 

 

 

Another 10 minutes down our new favourite road we found a better prospect for a campsite and parked up for the night. We timed it just about perfectly, with some heavy wind rolling in just when we finished pitching the tents. 

 

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

The next morning we set off for the Romanian border.  Some more of the same sorts of roads - nice, fast, winding corners, with the odd Ukrainian soldier holding a Kalashnikov giving me funny looks.

 

 

We tried stopping for a coffee, but having used up the last of our cash on fuel, we couldn't find anywhere that would take card and just carried on.  The border crossing out of Ukraine was much easier than the one in, although I did get told off for having my gopro mounted on the rollbar, even though it wasn't turned on.  The Ukrainian side of the border was the first time that anyone checking the car documents has noticed that the DVLA for some reason decided to register my car as green (which clearly it isn't).  I explained to them that this was a mistake, and that the DVLA couldn't get me new documents quickly enough, so advised me to just fill in the "change of colour" box and take it as is.  Border security didn't seem convinced, but once they checked the VIN, they were happy to let me through. 

 

From that checkpoint, I drove across what seemed to be a very old wooden bridge.  I'm glad nobody was coming through from the far side at the time as there was no way it was wide enough for two cars, and I'm still not a fan of reversing the Westie when I've got a big bag blocking my rear view!  The Romanian checkpoint was a little friendlier, even though they made an effort to scare me.  Initially they asked if I was carrying any goods that I needed to declare - drugs, weapons etc. (I wasn't, so all ok there!), before then asking whether I was married, followed by "why not?" when I said no!

 

But once again, after many photos, I was allowed through.  We pulled in to buy the Romanian vignette (road tax) on our phones and then carried on down the road.  Unlike Ukraine, where the villages are spaced out with lots of farmland in between, Romania seemed to largely have villages built where ever there was a road, so you just went from one village to the next with no space inbetween.  The meant that the first 20 or so miles were slow progress, limited to 50km/h.  Eventually we got into a bit of free space, and were able to carry on on some really nice roads again, climbing back up the mountains. 

 

 

Our next stop was Barsana Monastery, which is home to some of the tallest wooden buildings in Europe, including the church at 57m tall.  It was pretty much on our route, and was absolutely beautiful.

 

 

 

 

 

We drove on to our camp spot for the night and set up next to a river just as it was getting dark.

 

The next day we had a hostel booking in Brasov so we could wash ourselves and our clothes, but it would have been rude not to take a peak at Bran's Castle (Often thought to be Dracula's Castle (although it really isn't but still looks about right anyway)).  It was massively touristy, and completely rammed, and quite expensive, so we took a walk down the road and climbed a hill where you could get a good view of the outside instead.

 

 

On the next leg of the drive, Chris was leading in his MX5, and I couldn't stop watching it and thinking how thankful I was for the quantum dampers in my car.  His car was being thrown all over the road, despite having some pretty decent HSD dampers on it, where the Westie wasn't struggling at all.  It actually got to the point where he had to pull in for a break to get out of the car for a few minutes.  We adjusted his damper settings to be a little bit harder which improved things a little, but he was still not having a fun time with some of the bumps.  It really made me appreciate just how incredible these quantums are though.  Even with fibreglass seats and a relatively light sprung mass, the fact that they just soak up the bumps so well really makes them worth the extra spend for me.

 

We were feeling pretty tired by the time we reached the hostel, so after cleaning ourselves up, we went out for a meal rather than trying to cook something.  The waiter at the restaurant also tempted us into trying some local plum based liquor which I'm sure contributed to the great night's sleep I had that night!  That was needed, as we had a big day driving ahead of us the next day.  You might have heard of it before since it was once called the greatest driving road in the world by none other than Clarkson, Hammond and May back in their Top Gear days...

 

...The Transfăgărășan Highway.

[Ian Kinder (Bagpuss) - Joint Peak District AO]

10 hours ago, AndrewOBW said:

...The Transfăgărășan Highway.

 

Not jealous at all ................much,.........................well maybe..........................enjoy...😎

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

Definitely falling behind on updates waay too far.  I'll try to speed up, however this one needed gopro shots - so laptop and wifi rather than updates on the phone unfortunately.  Whilst I've got data on my phone and could technically use a hotspot, my laptop has a power issue at the moment and only works while plugged into the wall.  Hence I've been delaying until reaching another hostel.

 

I need to open this post with some kudos to a certain @AdamR.  The settings applied to the car on his advice were really great for this one!

 

When we set off from the hostel, it was still sunny, but there were a few threatening clouds.  These grew as we approached the mountains.

 

 

We had planned to stop off somewhere before getting to the mountains to make a few sandwiches (and for me to take the lead - as great as the MX5 is, it's not able to go around a corner as quick as the Westie!), but didn't really find a suitable stop, so just carried on going.  We were greeted with miles and miles of this:

 

 

And this:

 

 

  We only hit a couple of bits of traffic during the morning run, and everything we did catch up with immediately pulled to the side to let us past.  The locals obviously know what they've got and are watching their mirrors closely.  At this point it was certainly the best driving road I'd ever been on, but it still had more to offer!

 

After our lunch stop, the roads continued to twist and bend, and the views got more spectacular. 

 

 

 

At the top of a load of switchbacks over the valley, we pulled in to take a couple of photos.

 

 

A couple that had just gotten married had a similar idea!  Chris's poor MX5 looked disappointed that it wasn't shown any love though!

 

 

Our mini photoshoot was cut short by the weather.  The rain started tipping down quite heavily, so it was hoods up for the next stint, which unfortunately means no photos.  We got stuck behind a string of cars anyway, which really took away from the excitement so we pulled over for a break.  It seems that on the downhill stretch we caught all the ignorant drivers that we'd avoided on the uphill section, including one Jag driver who seemed determined to block us into our little break spot by parking straight across the only surface we could easily drive out over, but oh well.

 

Once the rain reduced a little bit, I took my hood off again.  I don't think I set my front cycle wings low enough at the rear, as when I'm driving with the hood up on a wet surface, the front tyres seem to flick up gravel, which bounces off the rear arches, off the inside of the hood, and all over the interior (and my hair), so hood down driving is definitely more fun!

 

The rain was stopping and starting all the time, and especially with the intermittent tree cover, Mike's freewheel configuration had just about every setting used on it for the wipers at different points.  On a twisty road like that, the more intuitive and easily accessed the controls the better, and looking at the gopro footage, it gave me so much freedom to tweak it to keep the windscreen clear!

 

The gopro was mostly covered in water droplets and a good chunk of the remaining video is stuck behind an Audi driver (who was determined that all the horsepower in his car should mean he was faster than us) holding us up around every corner before shooting out of reach on the straight bits so there's not much of interest to post photos of!  We stopped off for a coffee on the far side and then carried on to find a campsite. 

 

Unfortunately the campsite we were aiming for that was supposedly public land turned out to be a farmer's field.  It was promptly suggested that we turn around.  We obliged.  It was getting dark, and rather than risking the same thing happening again, we decided to drive the extra hour and a half to Ruse in Bulgaria.  After all the fun of the day, that was a pretty miserable drive due to a combination of the darkness, the rain, and some not so well surfaced roads, but we made it to our guest house, cleaned up and found a restaurant around the corner.  It was only after we had each sunk half a pint and ordered some dinner (without knowing the exchange rate) that we realised it was a pretty fancy restaurant.  Fortunately, the exchange rate was pretty good, and the meal, including a couple of pints equated to less than a tenner each!  With Bulgaria added to the list, this took me to 13 countries in the Westfield so far, with plenty more to go!

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

After the extra driving we did the night before, we didn't have to roll out of bed quite so early in the morning, so we treated ourselves to no alarms.  It made very little difference though - once your body has been conditioned for 7am starts, it's hard to lie in!  After some breakfast, we started driving towards our first stop in Bulgaria - Krushuna falls.  I was needing some petrol, but a lot of the petrol stations in Bulgaria are seemingly cash only so I had to use up the last of my cash to put some more fuel in the tank.  I probably would have gotten away without topping up, but I'm not very confident in the calibration once it drops below half a tank, as it seems to fluctuate and drop to empty pretty quickly.  I've got a Spiyda gauge wizard between the sender and the Koso dash, but I think it needs something else to make the signals match up properly.

 

When we got to the falls, we realised it was a paid admission place, and we needed to get more cash again.  We realised that despite being a massive help in actually building the car, Chris hadn't been in the Westfield yet.  It made no sense to take both cars back looking for a cash point, so we shuffled my bags from the passenger seat into his car, and set off in search of some cash.

 

When we arrived into the nearest town about 10km away, we turned down a side street and ended up behind a police car.  Sure enough, he held his little "stop" sign out the window for us to pull in.  "No problem" I thought.  We weren't speeding or anything, so it's just a routine stop.  Everything on this trip is legit, so I'll just show him my documents and we'll be away. 

 

My documents. 

 

Which are in my bag. 

 

On the seat of Chris's car.

 

Fortunately, the police officer pretty much just wanted a photo of the car.  He asked for the documents, but didn't seem too fussed when I explained that they were 10km away in Chris's car.  He was happy enough for me just to show him my driving licence which I had with me, as long as he could take a photo of the car!

 

We eventually found a cash machine and made our way back to Krushuna falls.  It was a nice little park, which looks to be very busy during tourist season, but it was dead when we were there.  We took a couple of photos, made some soup for lunch, and carried on.

 

 

Next stop was Plovdiv, where my friend Joe, from back home in Ireland, was going to be joining us for a few days.  It was a bit tricky working out where he could join and leave us, but he figured out he could fly into Greece, and get a bus to meet us in Bulgaria.  We arranged to meet at a hostel in Plovdiv, where we'd spend the night before going a little north to find a mountain to climb in the morning!

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

Joe arrived pretty late, so we thought it would be best to let him sleep until we had to leave. This meant that his first experience of the Westfield was 5 minutes after waking up. We were also staying in the old town, so it was on cobbles. I can imagine how trhat must have been for him!

 

We had a 90 minute drive to the start of our hike. Joe commented several times that the westie was a lot more comfortable than he had been anticipating (glad it wasn't just in my head!). The hike was up to Raisko Praskalo, the biggest waterfall in Bulgaria at 124m.  Given that this was initially planned as a "hiking and driving" trip, it caught me a little off guard that this was my first proper hike, but it was refreshing to get out for a decent walk.

 

 

 

 

Sometimes you need some people in the photo to give some perspective of just how steep the hill was:

 

 

 

Although it was a bit cloudy higher up, I was pretty thankful that it wasn't too windy. If this tree is anything to go by, we were pretty fortunate! 

 

 

When we got to the waterfall though, unfortunately we were well and truly in the clouds.  At best I think we could make out 24 of the 124m of waterfall! 

 

 

We weren't too disappointed though, the rest of the views were spectacular, and the rain had held off, so a good day all in all! 

 

 

Fortunately we were able to camp at the bottom of the trail, so when we finished the hike we treated ourselves to a well earned meal before bed! 

 

 

 

 

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

Having one big hike under our belt, we decided to continue the tradition the next day with another big one around Seven Rilla Lakes.

 

We had about a 3 and a half hour drive to get there, then a chair lift up to where the hike started. The chair lifts stop running at 4:30 and we figured on about a 4 hour hike, so getting there at lunch time seemed to work.  We hadn't quite anticipated the pricing though. After paying for parking, we only had enough money for chairlifts up, so had to add an extra 2 hours to the hike back down to the cars!

 

It was a little chilly at the start of the chair lift. 20 minutes later, we were surrounded by snow!

 

 

Very different views to what you see if you Google the place but it was absolutely beautiful anyway. We hiked up to the summit but it was above the cloud line, so we didn't stay too long! 

 

 

By the time we got back to the chair lift, it was nearing 5 o'clock, so we would have missed the last lift down anyway which made us less annoyed about the extra few km back to the cars. We also came across more great views on the way down. 

 

 

We had planned to camp nearby, but realising how cold it was at this altitude, we thought it would be best to drive a little lower down before making camp. We found a spot down a dirt track away from a main road to set up.  Chris's mx5 needed a little shove once or twice when it got stuck, but the westie made it without issue thanks to the realisation that I can sit on the tunnel and drive it with all 4 corners in view to navigate the tricky bits!

 

It was made a little difficult by the fact that my clutch pedal had been acting up though. It had started "popping" when I was releasing it a couple of days before but was working fine and I just hadn't had time to diagnose it, but suddenly it has become quite hard to press more than half way.  I assumed an old favourite garage yoga position with my legs over the roll bar and head in the foot well to find this:

 

 

The nut at the back of the clevis had wound itself off. Sure enough, in not being quick enough to diagnose and fix the issue, I'd damaged the thread too, so couldn't just nip it up.  Instead I had to take the pedal out of the way entirely, wind the other nut out until it bound at the end of the threads (not sure how or why, but it did), and then use this as a reaction to allow me to wind the other nut back out. After much swearing, the end result was a very high clutch pedal, but at least it was working again! 

 

 

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

 After the cold the previous day, we thought it would be a good plan to move further south to Greece for some sunshine. Of course, that lined up nicely with a thunderstorm where we were going! We booked a hostel in Thessaloniki for some shelter and set off early to try to get there ahead of the weather.

 

At the border crossing, I got pulled over by the Bulgarian security. "nice car, but you've got a problem" he told me. He then went on to say that I hadn't paid the road tax, or vignette. I had, and I knew I had done it right, as it had been checked by the police when we got pulled over for a photo op the previous day (oops, forgot that from my last post!). He looked a bit bemused when I whipped out the receipt, and then tried to claim that I'd mistyped my registration, confusing a 0 with an O (I hadn't), before acting as though he was doing me a favour and letting me off this time. 

 

The clouds were looking a little threatening on the way down, but didn't quite look like they were going to break. Joe was getting a little nervous with my optimism about staying dry though, so about an hour out from the hostel we pulled over to put the hood up. The hostel was down a maze of one way streets and sure enough we had driven past the garage entrance before we realised it. We pulled over and I ran in to ask them to open the garage for us, and while I was doing that, the heavens opened. I had to do a loop of the block to get back to the garage, and in the streets there, that took 10 minutes, just about enough time for me to stay dry inside! The frustrating thing was that if we hadn't stopped to put the roof up, we would have made it in the dry!

 

Once we were checked in, showered, and fed with some gyros, we cracked open a couple of beers and sat down to relax (and post a few updates on here). The hostel (Crossroads hostel) was one of my favourites so far. Only space for 14 people, ran by two best friends who just decided to set it up about 5 years ago. Hadn't been packed as full as possible for maximum profit, but just to a comfortable level, and had a really relaxed vibe.  We spent a good bit of time chatting to two of the other guests, one Austrian and one Swiss. The Austrian was just in the final few days of his trip, having been to a load of the places planned in our next few weeks, so we got plenty of pointers, and the Swiss guy was from 10 minutes down the road from a few of our other potential hikes!

 

Plenty of people have told me I'm crazy for driving the Westfield on a trip like this, and if I'm honest, I couldn't wholeheartedly disagree, but this Swiss guy, at 19 years old and fresh out of school, had cycled from Alps down to Greece on his mountain bike. That's commitment!

[Greenstreak-Andy D]

What an epic trip! Really enjoying the read!

Andy

[Kingster]

On 11/10/2019 at 08:01, AndrewOBW said:

 

At the top of a load of switchbacks over the valley, we pulled in to take a couple of photos.

 

no idea why you went there... 

 

😍

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

In the morning, we packed up the cars again and drove out of Thessaloniki.  The roads there were pretty narrow with steep hills and cobbles.  Not exactly what the Westie was built for!

 

 

We were aiming for Meteora, our southernmost point on the trip, and probably one of the points I was looking forward to more.  The weather was looking pretty changeable, so we weren't sure whether we would do the hike that day and move on in the morning, or just find a place to camp and get up early.  As we drove down, the weather wasn't looking too promising though.  

 

 

Some of the roads were pretty good fun though, even with a few painted kerbs to kindly show the apex of the corners!  Not sure if it had been used for some sort of hillclimb event in the past.

 

 

By the time we got there, it was 3 o'clock.  We had a 4 hour hike, sunset was at 7, and we weren't sure where we were going to camp.  My vote was find a campsite, take it easy and do Meteora in the morning, but I was outvoted, and off we set on the hike.

 

The views were spectacular.  These gnarly pillars there were once part of the seabed, but were lifted out by earth shifts thousands of years ago.  Monks then found refuge in some of the natural caves in them from pillaging Turks.  Then the Turks learned how to climb, so the monks built monasteries for extra defences.  6 of the 24 monasteries are still active today.  We parked in the town and hiked up through the trails, which I'm really glad we did.  There were tonnes of coaches up the top, with tourists all fighting for the photo viewpoints.  We had the nice peaceful hike up, and then could wait for gaps between buses to get our photos.  Glad I didn't drive up too, as the coach drivers were not exactly careful.  Witnessed one properly smash up the front of a Punto, and a few near misses too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We got back to the cars and made plans for camping.  Chris had a couple of potential locations saved, so we went for the first one of those about 20 minutes down the road.  It was already getting dark, so I was really hoping this would be a success.  Some of the comments about this campsite were that there were "sometimes some dogs around" but otherwise it had decent reviews.  The so-called "dogs" turned out to be more akin to wolves, and were bl**** aggressive, so as we left there before even getting out of the cars and set off towards Chris's second option.  This one was uphill by another 10 minutes or so according to the sat nav.  About 2 minutes in, we hit the worst fog I've ever experienced in my life.  By the time Chris had realised I wasn't in his mirrors, he was afraid to stop on the road so figured it would be best to continue until he could find somewhere safe to pull in.  Trouble was he couldn't see, so couldn't see any safe pull in points.  With the not great visibility in the westie, coupled with the dominator lights (which were reasonably ok at the start of the trip, but seem to have deteriorated really rapidly), I really couldn't see much and was in the same boat as Chris.  It would have been dangerous to stop, dangerous to try to turn around, and dangerous to continue on.  Trapped in that catch 22, I figured it was best to try to rejoin Chris, in the hope that the campsite was suitable.  Had Joe not been in the car, it would have been even worse, as generally, only one of us could see the road lines at a time, so when I couldn't, I was relying on Joe's directions.  We eventually caught up with Chris after what seemed an eternity.  The campsite was a bust.  Nowhere to pitch the tents at all, so we needed a plan C.  We decided to book a hostel instead of risking another failed camping spot, and set off back down through the fog.  It seemed to have dissipated a bit on the way down, but still wasn't a great experience.

 

Lessons learnt:  No driving up mountains with low hanging cloud at night time.  If you buy Furore Dominators, bin the bulbs and buy some good Phillips ones straight away.

 

 

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

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.

[Geoffrey Carter (Buttercup)]

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.

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

1 minute ago, Geoffrey (Buttercup) - North Yorkshire AO said:

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.

 

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!