Magnificent Montenegro

I woke with a sound of a very different alarm than usual. Outside the window, a cruise ship blasted the valley with its horn as it slowly chugged past the balcony. I stood there in my scuds looking at the people on the ship doing likewise. Then it started to rain softly, again. Bugger.



I got going by 9am determined to make some miles today and headed over an amazing pass to the old capital city, Cetinje. The road is very narrow, two cars could not pass each over most of it and yet there were tourist coaches going up it at a snails pace. The safety barriers are crumbling and were probably designed to hold back horse drawn traffic only so if you make a mistake on this, you are going flying. The views of Kotor Bay are stunning, even on a soggy wet day with poor visibility. It would have been good to see this place on a fine day but I am still pretty satisfied.


Over the top, the weather cleared and I got some sun. That is a bit of a feature of this trip, the weather can be very different one side of the mountain from the other. After Cetinje, I moved on to the new capital Podgorica which is new and charmless modern monstrosity which is best ignored. I followed a river valley north for what seemed like 30 miles and it got progressively more stunning. A bit like the Ardeche gorge in france.



One one side of the valley is the road and civilisation and if you live on the other, bridges like this are your way home from the pub. Not my cup of tea. I went out about 5-6m on it and it was wobbling quite a bit in the breeze so I wimped out. Obviously some people use this as it has new boards on it…..but they have bigger balls than me.







The valley got narrower and then the road was just a notch cut into the sheer cliff. Every now and then you pass through tunnels, some short, some longer, some straight and all unlit with black wet rock walls so you can see nothing. I had all headlights on and could see sweet FA. A vague sheen from water reflections sometimes and occasionally a reflective stud that had survived the years. Not fun.






I got to the Serbian border and there was a noticeable change in mood. On the Montenegrin side, the guards smiled and chatted a bit. On the Serbian side, I got the 'thousand yard stare' from a guy in blue grey combat fatigues…gave me a bit of a creepy feeling. The reason I came this way is that if you go directly to Kosovo (not via Serbia first) they may deny you entry to Serbia if you want to come back later….Anyhow, the border between the two runs along this very narrow gorge with a road, a river and a railway line all in the space of 30m. The barrier has quite a few gouges out of it so somebody has had a bad day here.

There is no tourism in this part of Serbia at all and I couldn't find anywhere to stay. The scenery is great but no infrastructure. I was well off the beaten path. In fact, I only saw one other foreign vehicle all day. I prefer this sort of wandering,  looking for the underbelly….most of the time. However, at 630pm I was on a plain at over 1000m, with no sign of any town which might sport a hotel.  I was beginning to feel a bit nervous and I considered wild camping but as it was spitting again. I didn't fancy it much. Some farms about but not much else.








The sun started to set and rule no 1 is don't drive at night…..especially in rural serbia where the roads are crap,  really crap and there are loads of animals on the roads.  I was reduced to 25mph for the last hour. I promised myself that I would stop at the first thing I saw...and here I am in a 4 star hotel with a suite of 3 rooms for 20 euro a night.. Result! Except there is a local wedding on and the caterwauling of the signer is driving me nuts.