Day 17: Tirana to Bulqize

Any long tour has one day where everything kind of falls apart and this was that day.

It was not without it's joys along the way, though. At about 9.30 in the morning, a few miles out of Tirana, I was cycling along a half built unsurfaced highway in a river valley with very loud dub/techno coming from a massive sound system erected in the dried up river bed by some dreadlocked Albanian hippies echoing off the canyon walls whilst a cavalcade of tatty but official looking cars came down the rock and gravel road towards me. Welcome to the Albanian countryside. The day was full of old ladies pushing wheelbarrows of turf down mountain passes and men on ponies with chainsaws strapped to their saddles.

Cycling-wise, it could have gone better. The road over the mountain gradually got worse and worse until it became loose rock on a steep gradient, unrideable with the tyres I had and I ended up basically carrying the bike up a mountain, too committed to turn back. This obviously put me way behind schedule and I bailed at the small town of Bulqize.