Our 10 days are up, and we’ve said farewell to Toby and the rental car he brought with him. We had an easy couple of days wandering around Ohrid, then followed that with 5 glorious nights in Mavrovo National Park, and finished it all off in Bitola and a hike in Pelister National Park.
Ohrid was (relatively) warm and sunny, and we spent a day taking it easy – wandering around the old town, enjoying the views across the lake, and watching Toby try and recover from his drive through Albania. Note to anyone wanting to visit Macedonia – don’t fly into Tirana!! Although, Matt and I did take secret delight in having Toby be able to understand just what we were on about with the ‘bad’ Albanian roads.
We then took to the car and headed for Mavrovo, enjoying the feeling of taking on hills at speed for a change. Our time in Mavrovo was by far the highlight of the 10 days. We stayed in a restored cottage in Jance, a tiny little town nestled up on a hillside. The town was so small that it didn’t even have a corner store, but it did have a restaurant, and much to our surprise the food was really good. The house was cosy, and came complete with an open fire, that we cooked a lot of our food on.
On Christmas Eve the boys went for a long hike, aiming to conquer both Macedonia and Albania’s highest mountain (the peak sits right on the border). While they didn’t quite make the top, they had a bundle of fun trying. They came back with a little bit of light left in the day (much to my shock) and walked through the door shivering like mad but grinning like little kids.
Christmas itself was a low key affair. We started the day with champagne and mandarin juice and then spent the rest of the day relaxing, eating and playing cards.
The only hitch was when Matt and Toby decided they to take a ‘small’ walk to work up an appetite before lunch. It worked too well – a few wrong turns later and the ‘small’ walk had turned into more than 2 hours, and I thought we were at risk of re-enacting a scene from the 1972 Andes plane crash. Hilariously, they somehow also managed to eek each other on enough to take a dip in the rockpool they stumbled across.
On Boxing Day we went for a drive to see if there was any snow at the nearby ski village. There wasn’t enough to do much more than through a snowball or two, but we did have a hot chocolate in a particularly interesting café at the top of the ski lift.
Unfortunately we eventually had to say goodbye to Mavrovo and its beautiful little house, and we headed to Bitola. We celebrated Toby’s birthday attempting to reach the peak of Mount Pelister. We didn’t quite make the top (cycling shoes really aren’t great for rock hopping through snow), but we did get some great views out across to Greece.
We’re now spending our last night in Bitola, before making a break for Thessaloniki and the relatively warmer weather on the Greek coast. Tomorrow is supposed to very cold – the forecast is predicting -6 degrees at 10am when we aim to set off. We’re trying to brainstorm just how many layers we can wear and still cycle. At least the sun is supposed to stay out for a day or two.
4ks an hour 