Manuel and Derya found some nice rooms with an older woman for 30 euros. So Ais owed Pugz a coffee in a cafe! The rooms were much better and had heating! The woman was very kind to us. She made us coffee in the morning and allowed the others to use the washing machine, free of charge. Manuel had a laptop with him and could use the house wireless connection. We settled in for a day's sight seeing. We could also cook there which helped the budget. (That kept Ais happy!)
We walked up to the fort at the top of a hill edge and had a great view over the fjord. We spent some time exploring the fort, as it had various usage over the years, right up to the Second World War. We also spent time exploring the small atmospheric streets of the old town.
We left Derya and Manuel the next day as we were getting worried about our timescale. We hoped to meet Pugz' brother in Istanbul on 19th December and as far as we were concerned, we were a long way from Istanbul.
So although the weather was not at all pleasant, (windy and wet, our favourite!) we decided to head on. Derya and Manuel decided to sit out the bad weather and Ais was just feeling a little jealous of their warm, dry room!
We started the ride out of Kotor through a 1.5km tunnel. Despite the tunnel not being so long really, we were a little worried. It was slightly uphill and tunnels always seem loud and dark places. It is difficult to judge the size and speed of vehicles coming behind you and the road in tunnels are always narrow. Thankfully, everything went ok on our ride through this tunnel.
The ride was uneventful and the rain held off. We only had a few rain showers. However, the road we cycled along had so much rubbish along it. Not only litter, but builder's rubble too. This disappointed Ais as she had seen numerous adverts on CNN about Montenegro and its 'wild beauty'. Unfortunately, the 'wild beauty' is not along the coast. It is much more built up than we thought. There were many bilboards along the coast advertising 'land for sale', 'houses for sale' and adverts for Italian, Irish and English developers. Maybe this is how Spain was in the 1960s.
We stopped in a small town called Petrovac and were surprised to find that many of the houses advertised 'Rooms' but no one was interested in letting us have a room in November! I think everyone had closed up their rooms for the winter and were not interested in opening them up for one night only. We finally found a man who did motorbike touring and had apartments to rent. He didn't mind that we were staying only one night and repeatedly told us that we were 'crazy to cycle the whole way to Istanbul'. He was clearly interested and got out a map of the Balkans to show us where he had gone on his motorbike. He then gave us the map! We had been searching for a map of Albania with little luck, as ours had a scale which was a bit too big. Yet here, someone was just handing over a map. Although it was of similar scale to what we had, we appreciated the map as it had some smaller roads on it and as we had learned on this trip, two maps are always better than one!
Then came the day of the rain (or floods, I should say!) We set off as normal. It was still windy and drizzly, but what is a little drizzle to us at this stage! We even decided against wearing our waterproofs as we always get too hot. But about an hour into the ride the rain got heavier and we stopped to put on our waterproofs.
As we were doing this, a man approached us with a bag of Sharon fruit (expensive in England, rotting in the trees here!) I thought he was trying to sell us some and I really did not want them so I was a bit cold towards the man. But eventually, through Pugz' Italian and sign language and the man's few English words, we worked out that he was giving us the fruit and that they needed seven more days to ripen in the sun. I did feel bad about giving him the cold shoulder.
We proceeded to cycle on in the rain and heard thunder too. Then the Heavens opened and we had to stop as the rain was so heavy. Cars and lorries were even driving very slow as no-one could see very far. The surface water quıckly formed small streams at the sıde of the road.
We hung around in a little shop and when the rain eased off we rode to a cafe for a long lunch and to try and dry off. But that rain kept coming. After an hour of indecision we left our little cafe and rode on in the rain, trying to convince ourselves that it was not really that bad and we were quite wet already. But to be honest, it is times like this that my idea of an adventurous challenge becomes hazy and WHY AM I DOING THIS! is in my head so much more.
We plodded on to a town called Bar and only passed scruffy looking room signs. It was still light and we went on. But darkness quıckly caught up wıth us. We had to make a decision to ride on or turn back to Bar, whıch we had passed through 10km ago. We were not keen to go back 10km and both agreed to cycle on. All this time it had been raining and now drains were blocked wıth leaves and rubbish and the water was forming lıttle lakes in the road. People's driving was gettıng hazardous as they grew more frustrated. We had to be careful as we cycled through any puddle as many drains did not have a cover. We continued to cycle through the growıng streams on the side of the road and then had to climb up a long hill to get to a village, where we hoped to fınd accomondation. On the hill dragged and we were willing to pay anything to stay anywhere. Finally in the little village called Dobra Voda (Good Water) we found a workmans type hostel and gladly paıd 20 euros for a room. We set about trying to dry our stuff ın the room with no heater and were very disappointed to fınd that even though we were both exhausted we had only cycled 31km that day!
The next day we set off in our damp stuff to Albania.
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