I ended the last email in the Republic of North Macedonia without telling you I crossed the border from Albania. I am sorry many of you found the photos sideways, but one recurring comment was that they were corrected by moving to another computer.

The republic was part of the old Jugoslavia. The Albanians say it is populated mostly by Albanians. The Greeks claim, at least that the name is Greek, and the residents were in the midst of an election campaign in which a big issue was accepting the name for the country which most would like to call simply "Makadonia".

You can see Ottoman influence even in this Orthodox monastery.

After 3 days luxuriating in a hotel in Mavrano National Park I cycled to the ancient town of Ohrid on the lake of the same name. The road was supposed to be narrow & busy with commercial traffic, but I found it quiet.

Pleasant country, significant hills and a couple of hydroelectric projects, but my attention was the garbage alternatingly in random scraps & systematic dumps beside the road.

Ohrid has enough history and pre-history to be a tourist attraction but in early May it was pleasantly quiet along the lake shore beside the 2 metre high rushes that grow there. Every boat, hotel, & restaurant that can manage it is named after Alexander The Great.

I thought the wild flowers were quite as lovely as the castle walls themselves.

I had a small apartment 10 minutes walk from the centre, where I could make my own breakfast.

Snow-capped ridges formed the back drop as I rode on south along the side of the lake and back into Albania.

The border crossings are relaxed and usually have a line of 4 to a dozen cars waiting to get through. It is expected that pedestrians take precedence and as a cyclist I am expected to do the same, causing confusion and hand-waving if I try to join the line.

The computer maps took me up a dirt road that bypassed Tushemist, past a canal with swans which were beautiful until one decided to defend its little track against bicycles!

The maps really failed me leading out of the next village on a goat path via the garbage dump. At the top of a washed-out hill I met an old paved road which would have brought straight up from the village.

I soon lost any remnants of pavement, but rode several km up a very fertile valley with rich soil being tilled by hand (mostly female hands). The workers were clearly well dressed and cheerful, and all headed back together to the village (unmarked on my maps) in the heat of the day.

Even back on a road, my coffee stop brought in a school teacher who translated to ensure that I was properly cared for. Apart from the smoke, which pervades all public buildings, I couldn't have been better.

A horse had some bales fall off its wagon climbing up over a bridge, and even though all 4 hooves were slipping on the stone approach, it knew just how to accommodate its master to reload the lost hay.

More lovely country took me into Korce: a quiet but friendly city where my bnb host directed me to a restaurant for the best supper in a month. I also bought new brake blocks since I was worried the old ones might not last the mountains.

Next day I stopped at Erseke since there was possibly no more accommodation before Permet. On the way I was reminded that boys can be boys, when a couple of them interrupted their basket ball game to throw stones at me, but they stopped when I yelled at them, & I saw nothing similar before or after. I grazed that night on bread, cheese, & fruit from a grocery shop.

I took this photo to remind me how the housing has changed over a few decades.

Having received a wonderful breakfast next morning, I took the shorter route to Permet rather than the road (67k rather than 93). A mistake but a rewarding one! After 5 or 10 km of rolling country on packed gravel my road, I forded a river and climbed the remains of washed-out road up a hill. I reached the top of the hill a few hours later having climbed 1200metres above the river.

The school-boy technique was required when 3 large dogs left their flock of goats to run at me barking so I threw a rock at the lead dog and they left me.

An hour later I met an actual human sitting in the middle of the track in a significant dark red splotch with about 2 drips per second of blood coming from his nose.

A loaded pack horse was not far away. He spoke no English of corse so I panicked and called Jan on wattsapp. Jan was at a nursing reunion & not replying, so I checked his pulse and gave him a pack of tissues which he pressed into his nose. The effects were to slow the bleeding and produce profuse thankyou's by clapping his hand to his chest. With Google-translate I asked if I could help and he assured me "no" with more thank yous. Odd! Shortly after this I met a flock of goats followed by a shepherd & managed to mime what had happened.

I arrived in Permet at sunset and liked the town: a market town, beside an enormous rock in the river, which has expanded to accept a bus station and various hotels. Permet's history seems to be mostly from the last 500 years where it was a centre for Albanian resistance to Ottoman rule & a centre for the Orthodox Church.

Next morning was a glorious contrast to the day before - breakfast on the roof under vines.

Then flat, smooth road between flowers by farms along the valley, but a SE wind picked up in the afternoon just as I turned in that direction.

My goal was the World Heritage town of Gjirokaster - a big castle with many classic Ottoman houses. It was raining by this time, the cobbles were wet & steep enough enough to make it hard to push the loaded bike.

My room was on the ground floor of a historic house with a small window set high enough that I couldn't see out, only hear the drip of steady rain. I was cold. Next morning I was given breakfast on a balcony which would have had a glorious view, only I was squeezed into a corner under the eaves to avoid the still-steady rain.

Rain or not, I decided to leave. Breaks in the weather did start, & I hopped down the highway from cafe to cafe during the breaks. I was touched when a waiter invited me to bring my bike into the his restaurant.

The final Albanian down-pour was in Sarande but this was in front of a nice meal with a hydrofoil ticket to Corfu in my pocket.

Yes rain was tippling down in the port in Corfu, and my Albanian SIM card refused to give me data to see where I had booked a room, but a cafe on the waterfront let me use their WiFi and 2km later, when I approached it, my host was outside, standing under an umbrella. I later regretted not spending a little more time in Albania, but how could I have had a kinder welcome to Greece?

Dave Hutchinson

587 228-3049

I apologize that some English swans had their picture in the Albania newsletter. The swans are much the same, but the background is different.