Day 224 – 230: Permet (Albania) to Skopje (North Macedonia) - Bike Bimble

May 14, 2025 to May 21, 2025

Day 224 – 230: Permet (Albania) to Skopje (North Macedonia)

Zig-zagging around the Balkans continues. We’ve seen more Western Europeans (i.e. Germans) touring (in cars and on bikes!) in Albania than expected. Some in North Macedonia but seemed to be fewer. Not sure why – the scenery and people are just as nice. There are lots of Albanian flags flying in the western part of North Macedonia (from power poles, and in front gardens), and we can’t speak either language at all so it’s slightly difficult to work out where you are. Until you see a Nth Macedonian flag on a flagpole. These are significant strictures, maybe 30m high with huge flags.

Just out of Permet there was a hot spring (Langarica) that we had to look at (only a few km up a side road). The water in the spring had enough sulphur, but it wasn’t all that hot. Plenty of tourists thought it was ok. But the canyon behind it was the real treat – we went for a short walk up the river to see towering walls on both sides. Nice!

We almost touched the Greek border again, then found a tiny, poorly maintained, regional road over the range heading north. Great views of several valleys. There was almost no-one about (apart from a few adventurous four-wheel drivers in a procession from the UK). Wonder how they felt about sharing their adventure with bicycles.

It seemed pretty remote here (for Europe), but it’s hard to tell if it had been more populated in the past and most had just moved to a bigger town. There were several empty houses that made that look feasible.

Between a small town of Leskivik and around Erseke we saw a couple of tour groups going the other way (the mostly downhill way, although with a couple of nice climbs out of the valleys) – on bikes! They looked like they were having fun. And it’s lovely scenery – not the most dramatic, but lovely riding. And more tourists than locals.

The weather started to get overcast as we approached Korce (while chatting on the road with a couple of French cycle-tourists). The weather report suggested it might rain the next day, so we found a room for two nights. And then another night. It did rain (on and off) for a couple of days. But this allowed us to do a couple of things. One was to (finally!) replace the drive trains on the bikes. The chains, chain rings and sprockets on Cath’s bike were pretty much finished – not a bad run at 12 000km, but the chain had just started to skip over the chain ring in the last day or so. The sprocket is easily reversable, so this gets a chance to continue for another 10 000km or more. Stephen’s drive train hadn’t lasted nearly as long – this was the third chain and both sides of the chain ring and sprockets looked like ninja stars – some of the points were thin enough that the teeth got knocked off when being removed (and they were sharp!).

The other thing we could do was watch the Eurovision final on Saturday night – in real time rather than at 4am. The Albanian broadcast was meaningless to us, so we watched the Aussie broadcast on the internet – with the reddit comments stream on the phone. Albania was in the final, but we were a bit surprised that there wasn’t much evidence of people watching in bars, etc. Maybe we didn’t look hard enough, or maybe it’s not a big thing in this town in the far SE of Albania…

Good call to spend another day in Korce – the next day was clear and blue sky. Much better to be riding in cold, with clear blue sky than cold with grey and drizzle. The next stretch took us to the Lake Prespa, and across the border into North Macedonia. Then a roughly 800m climb through lovely national park over to Lake Ohrid. Spectacular views, and spectacular wind, at the top. Pretty nice camping at the Lake as well. In a few months it will probably be warm enough that swimming is pleasant…

There weren’t too many options for roads around the lake, so we had to mix it with some pretty ordinary drivers for a short while. Both Ohrid and the town to the north, Struga, are clearly ancient. Lots of history around here. And lots of amazing scenery. We were able to follow a valley most of the way to Skopje and maybe not the most direct route, it was a pretty nice ride. Only spent the night in Skopje – too many heroic statues. It doesn’t feel like we’ve spent much time in Nth Macedonia, but it’s a pretty small country, so without going round in circles we’ll head north to Serbia next.

One small problem – despite the proximity to Greece, the yoghurt has gone all runny. Greek was better.

No sure if she pushed the other one in....

Today's ride: 453 km (281 miles)
Total: 11,289 km (7,010 miles)

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