We left our landlord sanding down more louvred doors and headed inland (east) to Trebinje, a city located in Republika Srpska, now an entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The road wound a torturous route over the high mountains, and lakes mirrored the wonderful landscape. We had a coke in the square at Trebinje, where we were stopped by militia and told us to put our helmet back on, and moved on to Nikšić where we filled up with petrol.
Nikšić is, alongside Podgorica, one of the biggest industrial centres of Montenegro. A Steel mill (Nikšićka Željezara), bauxite mine, Trebjesa brewery (Nikšićka Pivara), and many more are concentrated in this city. We had intended to stop here for a coffee, but scarcely had we entered the town when we were surrounded by people, gormless and gawping. We got out of town rapidly with Titograd our next port of call. Podgorica is the capital and largest city of Montenegro. Between 1946 and 1992—in the period that Montenegro formed, as the Socialist Republic of Montenegro, part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY)—the city was known as Titograd (Montenegrin Cyrillic: Титоград [tîtoɡraːd]) in honour of Josip Broz Tito.
I nearly ran over a lizard (there are loads of them about) and the road was often blocked by roaming cows. Women here have certainly got their work cut out for them. We see them, miles from anywhere, carrying huge loads on their backs or heads, or leading huge bulls many times their own weight. Today we passed a woman wielding a heavy axe to chop up huge logs. We hit Titograd with it’s nasty Moscow-like tower blocks and immediately the local mongs took note. Gaping and gesticulating they question and jeer as if we had just landed riding Pegasus the winged horse. In future we will try to avoid these wretched people.
We stopped for a coke in a quiet place just out of town and looked up at the distant mountains as the morning sun beat down. Inland we began to se a more natural Jugoslavia, away from the commercial dross of the coastal road, with it’s autocamp and hotel advertisements every few yards. We left Titograd behind us and entered a beautiful rift valley that snaked between the mountains. White fragments of rock showed between the heavily afforested slopes and the walls dropped away steeply to our right to the turquoise waters of the river below. Every now and then we plunged into a tunnel through the bare rock and our sense of sight was cut off as if a plug had been pulled out. We giggled nervously and hoped that we didn’t collide with anything solid before emerging again into the daylight.
We continued for an age over bridges, through tunnels and round precarious bends until we thought that we must have missed our turn off. We pulled off the road for a tête-à-tête and when we pulled away again I had occasion to drop my bike for the second time on this trip. As I roared away my back wheel slewed across some loose gravel and I ploughed across the road into the cliff opposite. Some nearby teenagers ran over to offer their advice in an excited gibberish and flourish of arms. I could have killed the little fuckers but instead I picked up the machine and restarted it.
We stopped for petrol and found that our target, Kolašin, was only 3km away. Kolašin is a town in northern Montenegro, a fortress-settlement which was raised by the Turks in the middle of the 17th century in the namesake village in Nikšić district. Kolašin is located on the foot of Bjelasica and Sinjajevina mountains, which offer great conditions for skiing. Because of Kolašin's altitude (954 m), the town is considered an air spa.
We gained the town and took the road to Mateševo, which rapidly deteriorate into a track which made us fondly recall the rough and ready drive to Pete Willis’s “farm” in England. We were about to back track when a bus whistled passed us down this barely improved pig track. We asked some farm workers and they confirmed that this was indeed the road to Mateševo.
After subjecting our bikes to a gruelling moto-cross test, which they passed with flying colours, we arrived at Mateševo, a 2-bit dive comprising 2 cafés, a Post Office, a General Store and a bus load of Neanderthals. Two fizzy drinks and a rendezvous with a no-hoper French 250cc trail bike rider later we headed back towards Kolašin, having decided that we’d never cover the 60 miles of dirt track to Peć Youth Hostel before midnight, let alone dusk.
We continued along this farcical game trail with it’s text book road signs! – Road Narrows, Bends, Weight Limit Bridges, etc. and drove around Kolašin seeking food and lodging. The young pests were on us like flies, jabbering and pointing every time we paused. We bought some bread, meat, onions and wine and booked into our only choice, a B-class hotel called the Hotel Bjelasica, which was comfort undreamed of. This fantastic new building loomed out of the dross of the seedy town, offering spacious rooms with sealed, disinfected toilets, white towels, lifts/elevators, free soap, hot water and a glut of luxury. We washed down an orgy of meat sandwiches with red wine and loafed in unaccustomed sterilised paradise. We basked in a luke warm shower and hit the sack.
Bike reading 15,566
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