Balkans Holiday Revisited - Day 9

Day 9 Shkoder to Kotor

Heading out of Shkoder down country roads we soon approached the border with Montenegro. A couple of hundred yards before it I spotted a carpark with a hand carwash and a concrete bunker. The bikes were filthy & covered with cement as well as road dust so this was too good an opportunity to miss. Ian did the man thing and washed the bikes



I had the more important job of photographing the bunker!



(Most of the close ups of the bunker are on earlier our blog)

With clean bikes we headed for the border post where there was a small queue of cars. We'd heard bikes often got waved to the front but were surprised when the police pulled us forward to drive up the pavement and through the pedestrian side of the border post. It was a bit of a tight squeeze for the 1200 with its larger panniers!

There was the usual instant border change, gone were the open brown grasslands of Albania and into green Montengro. To start with there were even hedges very like British countryside. We soon took a slightly wrong turning so pulled over at a minimarket to have a drink & review the map. The owner was brilliant. He brought out chairs for us, pointed out the route and gave us fresh figs off the tree in his garden. We chatted for about twenty minutes despite having no common language.



We continued on our slightly wrong road which actually was a nice shortcut along a minor road around the hillside before dropping down to the busy coast road. Tarmac here is as good as at home, by the way. We passed the pretty "island" of Sveti Stefan which is often used in tourist posters, and through the seaside resort of Budva.



Further on we headed inland along the edge of the glorious Bay of Kotor to our B&B in the nearby village of Muo.

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