27th June 2012 to 28th June 2012


Wednesday, 27th June 2012 

We packed the bikes and left Everest and his entourage and headed north. Our mission today was to reach the town of Berat by continuing along the secondary old road. Everthing was fine until we got to Kelcyre and took the wrong turn and ended up on the main highway. We decided to turn back and rode the 18 kilometres or so back to Kelcyre and found the old Berat road.  It started off as quite a bad ashpalt road which got worse the further we rode until it all ended with a three way split into three different dirt roads.

Road splits 3 ways !!

We hooked left and so began 70 kilometres of probably the worst rubble we have ever ridden. It took us neartly 7 hours to reach Berat and most of the way in first and second gear. We were covered in white dust but we nade it through without dropping the bikes despite several occasions when we thought we had lost the front end - we deserved a beer. 

Albanian views

The first hotel we stopped at had no rooms so we took a look along the main part of town, We spotted some flags up a side road and my sat nav picked out bthe Hotel Mangalem - rooms available so we had ouir beer, booked in for two days and had a very welcome shower.

Hotel Mangalem

We ate on the veranda and fell into bed at the outrageously early hour of 9.30 still aching from the days ride.




Thursday 28th June 2012


As our hotel was on the road leading up to the citadel we decided to take a hike up there but not before getting some colour copies of my V5 registration document printed from a PDF file on my computer. They may work at the border - I hope so because that's all I have !


It was very hot as we set off up the slippery cobbled slope to the citadel - crikey it was a long hot walk upto the top but we were rewarded with excellent view across Berat and we also managed to find a shady spot in a cafe and have some iced tea.

Part of the walk up the hill

Entrance to Kala - hilltop citadel

Small streets within the citadel

Views of Mt. Tomorri in the distance

The walk back down wasn't much easier on the cobbles and we began to realise that we were foolhardy enough to attempt this midday sun walk without the benefit of sun cream or hats - we will pay for this mistake later I am sure.