We started the day with the hotel breakfast of boiled egg, bread, jam and tea, in small proportions, and headed out on the Skopje road. The road twisted and turned in every direction as we climbed into the hills. The scenery was as magnificent as yesterday with the road clinging precariously to the wall of a colossal valley. I was a bit worried that we had missed the turn off for Skopje and were heading hell for leather for Beograd (Belgrade is the capital city of Serbia) but we came to it in due course. Sure enough, as soon as we stopped to consult the map, little bastards appeared from every nook and cranny to peer at and fiddle with our bikes.
We climbed to 1,339 metres and entered a different world. An expansive Alpine-like valley with ski resorts and hotels; the style of houses was even different, with a more European look. The sun shone but it was fucking cold at this height. We stopped at a café and supped a delightful brew of flavoured tea. Along the way we had had to stop once due to goats on the road and we had a few uneasy moments hurtling blind through long curving unlit tunnels. We still had a long way to go so we set off after a short break and before long we emerged into yet another world.
A massive wide open plain stretched away on either side of the road, upon which a runaway circus was spilling it’s load as it careered towards Skopje. We weaved in and out of horse and carts, pedestrians, tractors pulling cows, women carrying sheep and old boys with felt “half-football” hats on their heads. To add a modern flavour speeding coaches, juggernauts carrying timber and car crashes served to scare us and delay our progress. The lack of petrol stations also played on our minds. After 95 miles we stopped at a garage to find a broken petrol pump with about 100 people clucking about it like old hens and a queue of traffic steadily growing for petrol. As we were not yet on reserve we decided to piss off and trust our luck.
Suddenly we rode into the river valley landscape again, as if the last stretch of road had been a nightmare from which we had suddenly awoken. We made the outskirts of Skopje, the capital and largest city of North Macedonia, without going on reserve, after 120 miles since our last fuel stop, and filled up using our last petrol coupon. By now we were tired and bum sore after an almost non-stop journey of about 200 miles and after a bit of pissing around we found the Youth Hostel.
We were again given the “fairground freak” treatment every time we stopped. We checked into the hostel and raided the local supermarket for our usual fare of cold meat, jam, bread and red wine. We met a Japanese fellow in our dormitory that had been touring Europe on a Kawasaki 250cc Custom motorbike since June and had covered 11,000 mile. He started in London where he bought the bike. After a hearty supper we were too exhausted to do anything but fall into a deep, undisturbed sleep.
Bike reading 15,761 miles.
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