It was some sadness for me when we began to make our way out of the mountains of the north and back to the coast. I’d had such a good time, and the scenery was so fantastic, I was feeling that there was no way the trip could equal what we’d just been through.

Of course, however, Montenegro kept delivering. While the solitude was not to be repeated, the awesome scenery just keep coming.

The first day took us along a quiet, but beautiful backroad to Podgorica. The first 30km are slightly up, with some rolling hills, but then it’s a 30km downhill from 1400m elevation to around close to sea level. The road is in amazing condition, and it was fantastic to zoom along at 30-40km an hour with no effort, and just taking in the amazing mountain views.

Podgorica is the capital of Montegro and is pretty awful – it may take our prize for worst city we’ve been to so far. We’re not sure what made it worse, the poorly kept roads, the erratic drivers, the really shitty soviet style buildings or the pall of smoke hanging over the place. I’m sure that there is some nice places in the town, but we sure didn’t see any as we cycled across it!

From Podgorcia we cycled up the main highway to Cetinje, the old capital. The road itself is spectacular, but a bit too busy to be enjoyable. Unfortunately we could see an alternative quite route (marked on our maps as a eurovelo 8 route) below us, but couldn’t find a way down (note to selves – carefully study routes prior to leaving in future).

We arrived early in the afternoon, hot, sweaty and tireder than we had anticipated. We booked a really cool room in an old historic building. It was a bit like a roomy hostel, but we were the only ones there, so we had the run of the place (even the owner was away) – it was large and felt a little haunted, but was lovely, complete with a sunny garden and apple trees in full fruit.

Like all things in the Balkans, Cetinje is a little hard to get into at first, but once you do it’s great. The exterior is a little gruff, but there are surprisingly good art galleries, museums, cafes and bars and it’s an essential place to visit if you want to understand Montenegro.

My favourite place was the restored residence of the country’s favourite hero, poet, statesman and warrior Petar II Petrović Njegoš. It’s full of photo’s and paintings of men with wild, crazy moustaches and guns and other weapons covered in the most outrageous bling. Unfortunately no photos are allowed, so you’ll have to imagine or visit yourself sometime.

There’s also a monastery above which the Montenegrin’s would keep the severed heads of their enemies. These were mainly Turks, and apparently the practice was kept up well into the 20th century. You can walk on the spot and it’s not hard to imagine the place with these grisly monuments overlooking the town.

There’s also a cave up here, which is in some state of dissaray. In the cave there are crumbling steps which lead down into the abyss. I followed them down as long as I dared, and somewhat below the level of the town, with my mobile phone light, but didn’t reach the end (I found out afterwards the cave goes down for over a kilometre and a half!).

The next day we went up and over Mount Lovćen to Kotor. It was a perfect day again, with hardly anyone about. It was so quiet all I could hear was the sound of woodpeckers in the now brown and forlorn forests. Strangely, this silence was occasionally interrupted by the sounds of voices echoing up from far down on the valleys below. It must have been something to do with the shape of the mountains and the way the wind was blowing, but it was eerie to hear voices echoing around when there was obviously no one nearby. Cycling along these quiet narrow roads it was easy to imagine that these were the voices of long dead mountain people haunting the mountain.

At the top (1700m) there is a mausoleum devoted to Njegoš. While it was completely amazing with gob-smacking views over the country (the theme photo for this blog was taken from the mausoleum view point), the most memorable thing for us was the guy who runs the government-owned restaurant/gift shop near the entrance. He came complete with tracksuit pants, a trench coat and blue mirrored sunglasses with gold rims and seemed to magically appear beside us with strange tips and advice as we walked around. It was very difficult to keep a straight face – I think he may have been the brother of Borat (of the movie fame).

A very nice 1700 metre descent followed, with yet more unbelievable views – this time over the water and the Bay of Kotor.