We departed Shkodër with heavy skies and rain threatening once more. We’d heard that the road to Tirana wasn’t the greatest and so had some trepidation about the journey ahead.
We left town with Marc, and worldly guy from Barcelona, who is travelling on a bamboo bike (complete with a rickety child trailer for his gear) to Istanbul. This was the first time we’d cycled with anyone else, and it was good to be able to chat to someone new while cycling, although it did take some time getting used to making decisions with an extra person in the mix.
We took some smaller roads, doing our best to try and avoid the busy SH1 highway, which provides the most direct route to Tirana. The smaller roads were less busy, but rough, and weaved through rural villages. You really get the impression that the people are still dong it pretty tough here, with many looking like they only just manage to eek out an existence. The people are really lovely though, and while we got many strange looks from the locals, these soon turned into smiles and waves once they got over the shock of seeing our strange contingent riding by. Marc was flying a Barcelona club (i.e. soccer) flag on his trailer, and almost everyone we passed would yell out in support of the team.
We made pretty good progress to begin with, but with the rough roads Marc soon started having trouble with his trailer, with one of the wheels coming off a couple of times. We managed to fix it enough to get it going again, but as we were heading out of Lezhë, towards the end of the day, the joist holding up the wheel snapped completely. Lucky for us a couple of mechanics spotted our trouble and waved us over to their small garage to see if they could help. We ended up being led down the road to a larger mechanics (with a welder), and then watched as the 5 odd workers huddled around together brainstorming about how to fix the problem (the trailer was made of aluminium, so not the easiest material to work with). They ended up welding a short rod of steel inside the broken aluminium tube, and an hour later the trailer was back up and running stronger than ever. Amazingly, the guy who ended up fixing it didn’t want to be paid, and we had to force him to accept some money for his help.
We had been intending on wild camping in a quiet area that evening, but by the time the repairs to Marc’s trailer were complete it was almost dark, and we had nothing but built up highway ahead. There wasn’t a lot of appealing camping options, and with the light fading fast, we decided to cut out losses and pulled into a service station to see if could camp out the back.
The very bored service station attendant (a young guy called Bryn) was one step ahead of us, asked if we were looking for ‘camping’, and then pointed us towards a shed on the side of the station, letting us know that we could camp there. Very grateful, we headed over to inspect our ‘room’ for the night. Satisfied that we could make this work, we gave it a quick sweep, locked up our bikes and headed into the tiny, and mostly empty bar to buy a beer. This kicked off a rather exhausting few hours of ‘conversation’ which involved lots of hand signals, miming, broken English and some Italian (thanks to Marc).
In between the conversation we cooked dinner in the shed, with the young service station attendant peering over our shoulders intently watching everything we did. It was slightly weird to have someone watching you all the time, but the kid looked so bored that we figured giving him something to look at was probably the least we could do. His job was to wait around to pump petrol for the one car who would turn up every half hour, and I don’t even want to try and guess how little he would have got paid to do it.
Finally, it was an acceptable time for us to say our goodnights, and we headed out to set up our beds in the shed.
We’d just about finished setting up when Ben, the bar owner, came out and told us we should come and sleep in his bar. So we picked everything up and moved it inside. He then showed us how to operate the TV, the sound system and the lights, gave us the key, and he and his last couple of customers/mates moved their party into the small service station room next door so that we could have the place to ourselves. It was very generous, and certainly warmer than the shed, but between the unfamiliar surroundings, the noise of the fridges turning on and off, and the lights from the petrol station, we didn’t get a huge amount of sleep.
We woke up at 5am, and were on the road again as soon as Ben arrived to re-open the bar at 6.30.
Being early, the highway was relatively quiet, and we made some good progress on the flat straight road. Things then started to get more interesting.
First, the highway turned into a massive new motorway, with a slow lane for bicycles, tractors and horse and carts. With cars whizzing by this was cycling bliss in the cool morning air.
Then, just as we had been lulled into a false sense of comfort, the world decided to go all Mad Max on us. We first started to see an increase in the number of dead dogs (and dog parts) and then the highway deteriorated rapidly, with our lovely slow lane disappearing, along with the road shoulder. We soon came across a plume of smoke shooting high into the air, which turned out to be a still burning car in the middle of the road, bringing traffic to a complete standstill.
We managed to skirt the accident via a muddy side track, but soon the highway was again incredibly busy. Between the lack of shoulder, the roadkill, the accident, and Marc swerving into the traffic every time he took a photo, we weren’t feeling very confident, so we unanimously decided to get onto some quieter roads as quickly as possible.
Taking the side roads opened up a new kind of challenge. We had heard that Albania’s roads weren’t great, but in parts our quiet “road” fell into total disrepair, and became muddy, potholed and rutted beyond recognition. Despite this, they were still being used by all sorts of vehicles (albeit travelling at slightly less than walking pace).
We ended up taking a zigzagging route into Tirana, trying to avoid both the worst of the highways and the worst of the poor roads. This route took us through Fushë-Krujë, a small town with chaotic traffic, unpaved roads and … believe it or not … a bronze statue of George W Bush. GWB visited Albania in 2007, becoming the only US president to ever visit the country, and stopped off in Fushë-Krujë on his way back to the airport to meet some of the locals. We were told he visited a cafe while he was there, and that the owner still won’t let anyone use the chair that he sat in.
Some (more) dirt roads around the Mother Theresa Airport (yes, she’s Albanian) and we were in Tirana at last. Once we hit the centre, some bike lanes started to appear. Initially we were thrilled, until we found out that bike lanes are still really in the concept states, and while the infrastructure is there the Government is still in the process of educating the car loving Albanians how they are supposed to use them (i.e. that they aren’t a parking strip and you shouldn’t just pull out across them without looking). Of course, as with all major cities, the bike lanes also tend to run out when you need them the most. The last stretch to the hostel was particularly hairy, and we had to take on several four lane round-a-bouts and impressively chaotic traffic. Marc even managed to have a bump with a car (thankfully coming off unscathed).
Between the broken trailer, the constant rain, the disturbed night, the rough roads, and the insane traffic, the ride to Tirana had been one of the more stressful legs of our trip so far, but also one of the more interesting experiences.
4ks an hour 