Montenegro

this is a mad montenegran railway
This is the view from the top of a mad montenegran road
These are mad montenegran animals (well they are wild now they have been picked up!!)

Later today we will be going to albania ,if they'll have us....dont know whether we.ll continue down coast or go inland. Montenegro has been great...not only the durmitor nat park.,but everywhere we've been. Its all mtns,right down into the sea ,and amaying mad roads that are good quality too. The sea must be about 20 c right now,and we are so out of season you can have a perfect ayure beach all to yourselves....so it would be a good destination for an autumn bike /walk/swim and theres got to be some climbing theres so much limestone.

There should be a photo of some wild animals we managed to track down and even capture before they scampered off. They must be quite rare as have,nt seen any since.
Talking off wildlife last nights idyllic ancient olive grove bivi turned into mayhem....and it all started so well, with the moon lighting up the silvery leaves,and the cicardas chirping away.Even the donkey braying was.nt too bad. But then.....All of a suden 4 or 5 dogs shot past where we lay and in to the grove!! barking and panting... they had got a scent of something and were after it. It should have been quite exciting but in the middle of the night when everything was calm then to be woken up with about an hours dog barking was not much fun.. we think that they may have been after some pigs that Nic saw earlier (when I was fast asleep!) After that we didn't realy relax, waiting for the dogs to come back? and bark at us!

After albania we should prob go to greece..so anybody fancy meeting us there ...well ,you could borrow our bikes. Possibilities are corfu, the pindus mtns...we have.nt done any research as usual.....

Serbian People

These are some of the people that were so generous to us in Serbia, yes I have finally managed to get the pictures to download, (less of the laughing!!) Read the bit we put up earlier about the people we met..... then look at these pictures.. if you want, or have a cup of coffee or tea or a beer.. its up to you, you dont even have to read this.. we are not forcing you (Nic has told me to stop now)

Serbian olympic hopefull. and iron man Marco
Fruit picker from the mountains
Maric and Tatiana Alexsanoar.. best mountain bike contact in Serbia, (think he may be quite good on a bike himself!!)

Durmitor National Park Special

After spending 4 days here in the park we thought that we should tell you all about this gem of a mountain area!!
The mountains are all limestone and shine pink in the mornings and in the evening, they are so accessible and give a challenge for all.
This is Slovadam who gave us the strange alcohol and the apples
Expect to meet Austrian Fungi experts who will cook fantastic meals (as long as you make him coffee) The forests are beautiful and natural, the floors been covered in the most amaizing variety of fungi.
See mountains that mimic the helmet of a mountain biker, get info on eastern european vehicles from crock Germans.
Get to the most superb mountain views availible in the world, Where could this be?
Expect to have the local hounds following you up the mountains accross rocks ridges all day if need be!!
This has been a real eye opener, we knew nothing about the place before but think that it is somewhere that we need to come back to!!

Computers and pictures!!!!!

Bloody things.. they never seem to work when you want them to..
Sod it then.. no more pics today.. Hope all of you doing have (or if you are reading this after) had a great time and the weather was good at the three peaks cyclocross...
We are going into the mountains tomorrow the Durmitore national park looks fantastic from our campsite, we have also met a Canadian cyclist who is going to camp on the same site tonight so maby a couple of beers.. why not

Vehicles in the Balkans

What a delight to arrive in Serbia.. The familiar sound of the 3 cylinder 35.. Yes this is the home of IMT who for the past 30 years or so have been building the MF35, Everyone has one too, gone are the horses and carts now the chugging of the 35. interestingly enough they have also in their time reproduced not only the MF65 but I also saw a MF 4840 with the IMT badge on it!!! this of course has the V8 diesel engine producing around 300 hp.
As for cars the Zastava is the main manufacturer here, they produce old fiats... 120 series but also the collectors favorite the Yugo.. they also build the Iveco vehicles under the zastava name, that is the old range up to the 7.5 tonne size vans and chassis.
Now in Montenegro we find that all the old VW diesels have migrated here for their retirement.
That's enough vehicles for now... now the trip.

We got across the boarder no problem and to our great amazement met another cyclist!! he was from Austrian and was cycling the Danube, not knowing much about it we asked him what it was like!! anyway we decided to give it a go. so off we went when.... puncture No 2... fixed and on our way.. see the picture.. Next we met another cyclist.. Bruce from Canada, he was also cycling the Danube on a 3 week trip. we swapped money and info then on our way.
The one thing we have found out about Serbia is that people are so helpful! Cycling through the towns we have been offered breakfast coffee lunch, bed / just about everything.
One of these days we were passing through a quite big town (home of the Zastava) when a guy stopped us and offered us a drink and the use of his internet, he owned a bike shop and was interested in our trip..talking bikes etc he said he had an idea.. it was international no car day and if we would join him and his club for a short ride to celebrate he would buy ud lunch.. how could we refuse, it also turned out that he was training the Serbian national MTB champ for the Olympics in London.. Sorry
The computer will not seem to load any more pics.. we had some lovely pics of the people we have met here but you will just have to believe us that they were lovely!!

Its not always that easy to keep the blog up to date cos contrary to pop belief every little town does not have internet, and also hooray cos macdonalds has not taken over eastern europe at all so jon.s free wi/fi options seem a bit limited. Then also we are often not only off road but also off map heading up some dirt track hoping we will meet someone who can cope with the sight of us.
Luckily when jon suggested today that maybe he should strip to his underpants when cycling uphill , cos he sweats so much , i said ., I think not .. So hopefully there will be no more developments in this area. I have probs with cyrillic keyboards ,,,can.t find brackets and all sorts. .

Ill see if jon wants to have another try at the photos. . We don,t have hardly any of serbia, cos it was the people that overwhelmed us more than the landscape.We left fully loaded with plums, tomatoes, a bottle of serbian herbal alcohol,,,,

Holidays r us

We are going to head west from here towards the Dalmatian coast and the Durmitor national park, Sarajevo is the nearest airport, then down the coast to Greece.
There will be some other obscure airports (Tirane is one) (try whizz air) you could do a in one and out another (Athens?)
txt us if you are thinking of it over the next few weeks.

Romania to Serbia

Romania's very own scalectrix track... Full Size!!!
Nic'snew freinds

Romania has never stoped amazing us! we looked at the map and noticed a 2000m pass from which it looked like the highest mountain would be able to be reached. The pass would be 1600m climbing over 35km, how could we resist. And what a marvel of a hill it just went on and on at the top turning into what looked like a scalectix track. at the top a tunnel to the other side and cabanas, stalls and a refuge, we even got given a free sausage by a trader for cycling all the way from UK, and well worth it for the beer at the top. The next day we had a go at the highest peak(cant remember the name but it was above 2500m) but lethargy took over and we realised that it was really a 2 day trip. so just did a bit of a walk and another peak.
we have been facinated by the romanian roads,we rode up a pass on the best road possibly in europe! up a gourge for about 30km near the top of the pass the road turned into a dirt track, whats that all about, it didn't even get anywhere!! the other side of the pass would be difficult for even a Dacia to get down? there seeemed no sense to it all, most of the roads in romania are poor at best, but to build a new road that goes nowhere and nobody uses seeems strange! Ah those Romanians!!!
We have for once taken a Hotel for the night. We stayed in the Hotel Hercules. this hotel would have been a star attraction in the late 50's early 60's. You could imagine James Bond pulling up in his Aston and the porter taking his bags to his room. Time however has taken its toll on the building and by the looks of it the staff too. I am not sure it deserves its 2 star rating. interesting however!

This bit is just about fire service stuff,and only works with the photos that hopefully jon can put on. Incidently,after a brief phone call jon told me that his brother mathew was _ dimmer than a dim thing with dim written all over it on a dim night _....i don't what you had'nt done.mathew, but it seems a bit harsh to me !Last night on a menu what jon had decieded was ice cream in different flavours....well,we ended up with three pieces of gateaux!Great!
Anyway,back to the old fire service,. Well,thought i,d lost interest in the ukraine,as we never saw any fire stations ...as invisible or non existant as rubbish collection service.But then,suddenly,t'other day in Romania,as unexpectedlyas everything is there,in nowhere's special town,outside small dusty football pitch ,2 fire engines,1 ancient old thing that can carry 9000 litres ,so prob v useful, and a brand spanking new volvo,that was fully equiped with all the latest holmatro gear.!! They let me open up all the lockers ,and i nearly got quite excited. Some of it was still in boxes it was so new,!and they had more stuff than we have at barrow . How.
we cant do question marks on these funny keyboards ...a bit too dim maybe.
So,what with that in the morning and the scalectric road climb in the afternoon..what an exciting day