Day 29 - Pogradec to Bitola

Leaving early, I accompanied a walking Pole along the lakeside for a few hundred yards before setting off at my own pace towards the Macedonian border. I had not known about the recent conflict between this country and the Albanians, so was surprised to see the array of bullet-flecked concrete bunkers and pillar boxes lining the road.


Passing through the border without incident I climbed through the pretty town of Ljubanista before coming to the base of the road which leads over the mountain separating Lake Ohrid from its junior, Prespa. Google maps’ terrain setting had told me the road reached 1600 metres and with the lake lying at around 690, I knew I had a good climb ahead of me. As such, I had deliberately limited the distance for the day, opting to give myself a long stretch to Thessaloniki to make up for it.

After an hour of climbing, I began to regret this weighting. The road made its way through a national park and seemed to be designed for a leisurely cruise in a family estate, stretching out laterally on the mountainside with turns back few and far between and no serious gradient. On the bike, the going was not fast but not so hard as to slow my speed enough to justify the reduced distance. I was annoyed as I had prepared myself for a challenge that did not come.

It soon transpired that my planning had been wise, though by accident rather than design. At around 1400 metres above sea level, I was reintroduced to my old friend, snow on the road. At the first instance, I was quite amused to have to dismount and walk my bike through the four inch mat which covered around 40 yards of the road. Around the next corner things were far less funny. Whole banks of snow had fallen from the mountainside, covered the road and even engulfed the roadside barriers. I had to strafe the snow banks for hundreds of yards, digging my heels through the icy crust before lifting and swinging my bike a few feet and taking a new foothold. The slope of one bank was so steep I had to dismantle my luggage and carry it across in two consignments, first taking a pannier and my bag before returning for the second pannier and bicycle. On the second trip, pannier in one hand and bike on the opposing shoulder, I noticed dog-like footprints across my path which disappeared into the woods above. I hoped this was just a fox or an adventurous stray because I was never going to win Wolf vs MD weighed down and away from home.

Finally I made it to the top of the climb and briefly enjoyed the view over the still lake. The descent was no less frustrating as my speed was regularly checked by further banks lying indignant in the sunshine. By the time I reached the bottom of the slope, I had covered just 27 miles in 4 hours.

Leaving the snow behind, I rounded the northwest corner of Lake Prespa and made my way through a few quiet villages, stopping in one for lunch. I knew from the maps that I had a little climbing left and the mountain fringe to the east of the lake confirmed this. Unfortunately, the principle road to Bitola was off limits so I had to follow the old road. In a novel approach to mountain road surfacing, the Macedonian civil engineers of old had thought it best to cobble the first few miles of the slope. This did not make for the most enjoyable stretch of the trip as I had to work hard to go forward while being careful to avoid the wider cracks or sharp edges, all the time being jostled this way and that by the inconsistent surface.

This brief irritation was more than compensated for by the long, smooth stretch down the valley to Bitola and I arrived in the green, cosmopolitan town early enough to see a little of life in the town before sorting out a bed with Ewa, a kind NGO worker, via a string of phone calls to various and helpful people.

Distance covered 55 miles