Crème de la crème

1st – 7th May 2026

The final ascent out of Dubrovnik was again awful – coaches, cars and lorries honked their horns and came hurtling past us with mere inches to spare. They didn’t care and at times it felt like they wanted to teach us a lesson. I was done with it and close to breaking. Fortunately, things were about to get a lot better (and then temporarily worse again for a bit).

As we approached the Montenegrin border, a long line of cars stretched out in front of us. We patiently waited due to our inbuilt British tendencies before someone got out of their car and told us to skip to the front of the queue. We duly did so, not realising quite how long the queue was or how slowly it was moving… anyway, that’s enough about queuing for now. Once past border control, we whizzed downhill with barely a car to contend with as they were all stuck at the border. Once cars did begin to pass us we were sure they must be German given how much space they were giving us but no, after looking at the number plates these were indeed local drivers. Things were looking up.

We cycled to our campsite for the evening, the sea and mountains accompanying us. It was a good start to our time in Montenegro and we were instantly feeling more positive about the coming days. The next day we planned to tackle the Serpentine climb, with a total of 25 switchbacks. Unfortunately, it was not to be.

As we approached the base of the climb we noticed a police cordon. The road was closed for the whole bank holiday weekend due to motocross racing! Tough though it was, we accepted this reality and made an alternative plan to head down through Montenegro along the coast. This started with a stretch through a very long tunnel. We approached with caution, walking our bikes along the narrow pavement. After a while we noticed that there wasn’t any traffic on our side of the road so we decided to get on our bikes and cycle through the rest of the mile long tunnel. 

This was a mistake.

A police car coming the other way flashed its headlights at us as a warning of what was to come and suddenly loads of motocross cars were speeding towards us, zooming from one side of the road to the next. We hastily beat a retreat back to the pavement, which got narrower and more sloped as we continued.

There was a deafening roar both from the cars and the huge ventilation fans in the tunnel. With my shins bashing into the metal pins on my pedals and no end in sight, l wasn’t sure how much more of it l could take. When it did eventually end we immediately had to push our bikes up a massive hill, somewhat dazed by the whole experience.

Unfortunately I feel like the forced diversion meant that we didn’t see the best of Montenegro, again having to take the busier coastal roads, but things were to get a lot better, albeit milkier, than either of us could imagine/handle.

We were into Albania. After some initially traffic-filled roads on the first day, the second day took us onto some lovely mountain roads, with barely a car in sight. The road conditions weren’t exactly great, but we were loving the peace and quiet, not to mention the stunning scenery.

We pushed our bikes up a steep gravelly path to where we hoped we would find our campsite. Before we could get there a family kindly offered us a coffee and big glass of fresh milk from their cows. This was a lot to stomach seeing as we’re not big milk drinkers at the best of times but we wanted to be polite and our host who had had a fair few beers kept telling us “respect” and thumping his heart so we did our best. He video called his English-speaking relatives who told us that our host had lived in Birmingham for seven years but couldn’t speak English himself. They also said that I must be posh because I’m from Chelsea – I think they had lived in Dagenham. Anyway, turns out that the respect guy knew the guy that ran our campsite (his cousin?), so he gave him a call to come meet us.

Kamping Adriatik would turn out to be quite the experience.

Adriatik, along with his wife and parents, lived in their small holding with their chickens, sheep and two cows. It was a very simple setup, with a basic shower over a squat toilet. Adriatik explained that part of the reason he set up the campsite was to bring the world to his wife, as she hadn’t travelled herself. At least that’s what we think he said as he explained this in French, as he used to live there working in the vineyards. My French from school days even with some more recent refresher classes isn’t great and we managed to tell them that my name was Benjamin and Holly’s was Ben. But these slight miscommunications didn’t detract from their amazing hospitality and the huge amount of food they made for us.

Plentiful yoghurt was provided and warm milk too the next morning, despite us trying to politely decline. We headed off feeling quite bilious and not a little unwell, but happy for the experience and Holly with roses attached to her panniers from their garden.

The rest of Albania would continue to impress us, both in terms of scenery and friendliness. This would continue into North Macedonia, where an Australian-Macedonian man and his mother beckoned us over for some cokes, leek pastries and a chat. North Macedonia has been one of my favourite places so far, with the main downside being the huge amount of fly tipping seemingly everywhere – fridges, couches, building material dumped along the side of every river and path. My photos therefore give a very one-sided view of things.

We had our first interactions with stray dogs and the weather had also turned, both themes that would continue into Greece. I made the mistake of giving the dogs some salami thinking that it would placate them, but obviously they came back for more. I gestured vaguely in the direction of Holly who had the remaining leek pastries, hoping they would leave me alone. I’m ashamed to say that this wasn’t to be the last of my selfish reactions to dealing with dogs. But for now we were content – these past days really had been the milkiest that we could possibly have hoped for.