Thunder, lighting and a big down pour welcomed us as we arrived in Valbonë. An inauspicious inception to our friendship with the one of the places that everyone seems to rave about in Albania.
By the time we set off for Valbonë, we’d been in Albaina for a whole 24 hours and as so often happens when we cross a border, we had no local currency. Stopping in Bajram Curri, helpfully the ATM spitting out two 5,000 LEK notes – the equivalent of a £50 note in the UK – something that would bound not to impress the local market holders as we shopped for veg before heading up into the mountains. In the end someone in the bank showed us to a Western Union office round the corner and the person behind the counter very kindly swapped the notes.
A stunning drive up in the heat, the air becoming hot and pallid. The thunderstorm that greeted us a welcome relief clearing the air.
We definitely find that we sleep well when we are high up in fresh mountain air. In the heat back in our car park in Istanbul, we only managed 5 or 6 hours each night. Up here it’s easy to get 7 or 8.
Waking early, Juliet and I had our breakfast – we tend to have yoghurt – and since Konya in Turkey where we bought some of the nicest 10% fat we’ve generally been going the whole hog. Back in Bajram Curri and our first venture into Albanian shopping we think we’ve managed to buy 22% Mascarpone or something similar and we have that with some fat stewed plums that we bought at the same time.
Leaving the campsite we walk up the valley for a few miles, before Juliet heads back and I continue up as the path steepens. Rising out of the valley below, at times so steep it becomes a bit stop start as I recover my breath.
Near the top of the climb the path becomes more perilous as the slope falls away 800M to the valley floor below. My vertigo starting to kick in I wonder if I will make it to the pass into the next valley. Just around a corner I see a person stopped and I ask if she’s OK, to which she said she was getting vertigo.Two kindred spirits, we coach each other up to the pass at the top.
Spectacular views open up over both valleys. By this time I’ve learn’t that she’s called Shoku and is from Quebec in Canada. She’s been working in the Czech republic for the last few years as a teacher in a primary school and is travelling before she heads back to Canada. We take photographs of each other and go our separate ways. She down to Theth, me back to Valbonë.
Earlier on the way up I bumped into a couple from Byron Bay in Queensland Australia and I’m reminded of a cycle ride I did from Sydney up the east coast of Australia, through Byron Bay. Somewhere around there in Queensland I met a rare fellow Cyclist called Jeff who came from Quebec and we ended up cycling together for a number of weeks. I love the way sometimes current travels seem to connect to past journeys and people.
On the way back down, I get more of an understanding of how popular Valbonë is as I stop every few minutes to talk to people who are coming up the same way as I am now going down. Lots of people from Australia. Some travelling for a month or two and going to weddings in places like Italy. A couple from Texas. Families with youngish children. A few people from Leeds, A lovely couple from Kerala in India who are currently working in Oxford and most improbably four lads from Northampton only a few miles from where we live. They take the piss out of Peterborough. I wasn’t so sure that they really had much of a leg to stand on.
Nearing the bottom I text Juliet and she walks back up to meet me. We walk down to the van hand in hand. The valley atmospheric with the clouds of the previous day still surrounding the peaks above us.
Albania is a wonderful place and Valbonë certainly didn’t disappoint. While this is our third visit, we know that we will be back as there’s much to explore and on this visit we will only briefly touch the very north.
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