Hello again! The time has finally come for me to regale you with the tales of DAY 2! At this rate you will have Day 3 episode unlocked just in time for Christmas morning! Enjoy 🙂
Day 2 marked our first camp wake up. Thanking our lucky stars that we didn’t get blown away in the night following gale force winds that nearly uprooted a few tents. Earplugs, my friends, and you won’t hear that as it’s happening to you… A few others were not so lucky and woke in the middle of the night fearing for their lives. On the bright side, no wolf or bear attacks!
Hello morning porridge and large dollop of peanut butter. In retrospect, I can definitely say I was overeating, thinking I was going to waste away during the big rides. How do I know this? All I will say is that my bowels are not used to a double serving of porridge with all the trimmings every day at 5:30 am. Topped off with some jet fuel coffee and a pastry top-up a few hours later. Gut microbiome was being conditioned to handle a wide spectrum of beige foods.
Setting off with our stomachs full of porridge, I was riding with the mountain masochist Giulia, along with Alice, Laura and Joe. We started right off the bat with a substantial, gradual and never ending climb. We snaked our way up to a pretty fat highway that was busy and unpleasant. Joe, our fearless leader, made the superb call to divert off route and take us on the old switchback descent that clearly hadn’t been updated since this newer highway was constructed. This meant we were gravel dodging down completely calm and glorious switchbacks, lined with beautiful greenery and a hell of a view.
Normally I am not a fan of descending. It hurts my hands and wrists and I find it can be pretty scary. But this was just the right grade that you could let the wheels go a fair amount and not be white-knuckling the brakes. I loved it! Giulia was well at the back complaining that the gravel was going to give her a puncture… not how that works G! After this little foray into gravel biking, I think I need to get into it more! So fun!
The end of descent did get a bit steeper which was somewhat stressful, however, we all made it out alive. Our reward being a very pleasant riverside café second breakfast stop!
We carried on our merry way passing by views of Lake Skadar below. Ice cream stop was in order as we had a pretty significant climb ahead of us (of course we did…). There was a bit more faffing around than I normally condone – faff, for those of you who don’t know the term, being unnecessary time wasting. I may have inadvertently started an Anti-faffist movement among my peers…
However, in the end we put our heads down and slayed our way up that hill. When we reached the top we needed to find a place to have our lunch in the shade. It was a very hot day. Not presented with many options, we opted for a small depression in the cliffs next to the road and squatted around our food like a pack of hyenas.
Of course, we cycled for about 10 minutes following our lunch break and found a café at the crest of the mountain with benches and a toilet. We took another quick break anyhow. Major faff. But I was okay with it as we didn’t have to log as many miles that day. So we faffed around and lounged on a bench with a spectacular view while the wild wind ripped through us. At first it was enjoyable but then we all started going a bit squirrely and decided to get outta there.
I had another classic clip-in slow motion fall over – the first of many.
On we went and I felt like a weighed down sack after lunch – again, the panicked overeating got the best of me. It was a hard, hot slog of a climbing day.
Following a bit more climbing, we descended into a bizarre little town with abandoned Soviet era buildings and a mosque which we heard doing the call to prayer in the distance. I didn’t expect to see so many mosques during this journey, being rather dismal at Eastern geography and historical recall. A very interesting cultural surprise though.
I raided the village bakery and got a hit of meat borek (Thighs is all vegetarian… good stuff, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes I had to sample the local animal based delicacies ;P).
Our day wrapped up after a final coffee stop quite early compared with the rest of the trip. We only rode about 80km total and were treated to a beautiful camping stop by Lake Skodor. So nice to reach camp and set up well before it was dark, to have time to go for a swim/ bathe in the tepid bathwater of a lake and to even have a little solitary time to read before our group dinner.
We were jam packed into the backyard of the very kind proprietors along with their chicken coop and dog cage. Made for quite a cacophony of sounds and smells…
We enjoyed one of the most magical sunsets there along Lake Skodor sharing a delicious meal prepped by the wonderful core team. How lucky we are indeed!
We capped off the evening with a blissful yoga session led by Mike, with subtitles (aka yelling overtop of the video) by Giulia. Yoga on hard, jagged rocks – ahhh so zen.
DOTD
An Idiot Broad Abroad 