Bikepacking the Balkans

The trip started because my employer, Parity Technologies, was holding a company offsite in Pravets, about 75 km northeast of Sofia, Bulgaria. Last year’s offsite was in Barcelona and I decided to ride my bike there over five days and then back over three days (well, to Avignon, from where I took the train). I found that I rather enjoyed this approach over flying, not least of all because of my severe introversion and the fact that I think I’m generally mentally able to withstand four days trapped in a hotel with 200 people (in this case colleagues) if the experience is bookended with several days of solitude and physical exhaustion.

Even before the location of this year’s offsite was announced, it was essentially predetermined that I would ride there again. And when it was, well I always wanted to visit the Balkans anyway. I planned the trip a few months in advance, and with the temporal separation there is a real “seemed like a good idea at the time” quality to this.

There aren’t a lot of train options in the Balkans (at least that I could find), so the trip was somewhat based around starting and finishing in Italy. I decided to take the train to Trieste to start the trip and ride 1,400 km in 10 days to get to Pravets. Then I would make for the ferry port in Durrës, Albania, take the ferry to Italy, and ride to Rome, from where I could catch a train home.

After a busy spring and summer with a few FKTs and mountain bike races, I spent the last few weeks before the trip relaxing and a little burned out. As the trip got closer, I started to realize just how big it was, that I was basically diving into it off the couch, and that, without much of a rail network, there wouldn’t be many opportunities to bail.

Nonetheless, on 3 October, I made my way to Trieste, arriving very late due to an Italian railworkers’ strike. I got into the Lidl supermarket just before closing and got the last two olive-rolls from the bakery and a yogurt for dinner before heading straight to bed.

My plan for the first day was to ride 155 km to the town of Senj in Croatia. This was fine; what was really on my mind was the second day. I also planned a 155 km day to Zadar, but the forecast was saying heavy rain and 80 km/hr sustained winds (from the direction I would be riding). I was trying to think of a plan: hire a taxi for part of the trip, take the day off and reschedule hotel plans, etc. But the weather was really nice and at some point in Slovenia I got the idea just to ride as much as possible to make for a shorter second day.

I made it to Senj around 1:30 PM and started looking at options for a new destination. There was a ferry about 50 km south that went to a small peninsula with a town called Novalja. It had lots of options on Booking.com and as a bonus was a shortcut to Zadar compared to my original route on the mainland. But the ferry left in less than two hours, so I did a long time trial to make it there on time. I even made it in time to stop at the little store at the dock for a snack, and the inventory of this store consisted of peanuts, Red Bull, beer, water, and something claiming to be “mini croissants”, which I ultimately settled for and was frankly an insult to pastries but I still finished the bag.

I made it into Novalja as the sun was setting and got a flat tire as I rolled up to the apartment for the night. 218 km on the first day! Novalja seemed like a tourist hell-hole that had completely shut down for the offseason, but my hosts directed me to a pizza restaurant, that was probably the only open restaurant in town, where I had one of the best pizzas of my life. All in all, victory.

On the second day, I got off to a lucky start. The wind was strong but there wasn’t any rain (yet). But after the big first day, I only had to ride 75 km. The rain did eventually come, and I almost got blown off the road a few times crossing exposed areas (and a few times a lot of the ocean was being blown onto me). It took four hours to ride this short distance with almost no climbing, but I made it. Zadar looks like a nice town but it was raining all afternoon so I was stuck inside doing laundry and cleaning my bike in the shower.

On day three I rode to Split. I partially planned the trip around a stopover in Split because I went there for a conference in 2019 and really did not like it. But, I thought, most people love it and I had very little time in the town, so maybe I was wrong.

Nope, I still do not like Split. The road along the coast was beautiful, and I can understand why people like to go out on their boats on holiday in the Adriatic. But the road was narrow with no shoulder and a lot of traffic, and it starts to feel urban about 20 km outside the city. The small old town does have a similar feeling as Old Town Nice, but outside of that the city seems very industrial and stressful. At least Nice has other nice neighborhoods and some quick escapes into the mountains.

On the fourth day I left the coast and started making my way inland. A road that I was on for a while had particularly low traffic, and then I saw a sign that seemed to indicate that it was closed ahead. I checked on Google Maps, and it said “possible” road closure. I decided to ride on and check it out. About 10 km later the road was indeed closed, but the construction crew kindly let me through. A little while later and I was across the border to Bosnia. There was a really amazing river valley and then I made it to the city of Mostar, one of the key cities in the Bosnian war in the 90s.

The following day would not be so kind. I left Mostar and headed north toward Sarajevo, a city that I’ve always been interested in and was looking forward to seeing. For the first few kilometers of the ride there was a lot of traffic on a pretty narrow road. I figured that it was around 8 AM and once I got out of the city that things would calm down. They did not.

Croatian and Bosnian drivers don’t seem to leave much room for bikes, and shoulders are essentially nonexistent. There also is no highway between Mostar and Sarajevo and this road had a lot of construction trucks, shipping trucks, buses, etc. For 120 km I rode with my tires about 3 cm from the edge of the road and think that if I stuck my elbow out to the side then one of these trucks would clip it.

There are also a lot of stray dogs and cats in this region, and some of the dogs can be really aggressive. When a dog in America chases you, it’s kind of like “showing my owners how I protec” energy, but in the Balkans it’s more “you look like dinner”.

At one point on this road a bear-sized dog jumped out at me from behind a guard rail. Instinctively I swerved left to avoid him. Then, as I sat in the middle of the lane, realized, if there’s a truck lined up behind me, I’m done. Luckily there was not, and I took back my place on the edge of the road.

After 120 km I was in Sarajevo, where actually there is relatively nice infrastructure with bike lanes and paths. Riding through the city was probably the easiest part of the day. It had started raining though and I was mentally over the day, so I didn’t stop to explore the city. I continued on to my destination for the day, Pale, 20 km east of Sarajevo, happy to be alive.

From Pale, I resolved that I would not take an “it will get better” approach. If it felt really dangerous like the day before, then I’d find a taxi driver to get me along the next leg of the trip. But I got a pleasant surprise. As I rode east, the road was quiet and I went up a small road over a pass and climbed over the fog with a beautiful view over the inversion.

I descended into the city of Gorazhde, back in the fog, although it soon burned off. I followed the river Drina to Visegrad, and wanted to stop about every 100 meters for another photo. I was actually forced to stop for ten minutes when the police closed a section of road to clear land mines. It’s really sad that an area so beautiful is spoiled like this.

I stopped in Visegrad for a snack by the old bridge and then rode over the border to Serbia.

The next few days are probably nothing special to write about independently. The culture between cars and bikes changed completely in Serbia. People left lots of space, farmers and construction workers waved, and several people drove up alongside me to ask where I was from. I guess they don’t see a lot of cyclists there. The terrain was really flat and I had a tailwind for a few days, providing a nice rest.

Southern Serbia seems to be mostly farmland, and one thing I noticed over time was the number of really old tractors. Some of them must have been a hundred years old, still being used. In fact, I hardly saw them stationary; they were usually working in the fields or hauling hay around town. Eventually I was regretting not stopping to take more photos of them. Maybe one day I will go back to the Balkans with a gravel bike and nice camera just to photograph old farm equipment.

On day nine I rolled into Sofia with the streets shut down for the city marathon. I found a cafe where I had my first real coffee in over a week. Most bakeries in Croatia and Bosnia just have instant coffee vending machines, the kind you see in courtrooms in American TV series. After one or two tries I gave up on it. Finally, on day ten I just had a short 75 km to ride to the hotel for work. Back to the day job for a few days.

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After four days with colleagues it was time to head back. On the first day (count reset), I rode back through Sofia the way I had come four days earlier, but then continued south to Kyunstendil. Relatively uneventful, big roads but not too much traffic.

The action started on day two. I started by climbing a gentle pass in the fog to the border with Macedonia. After the passport check, it started raining harder. I found a sheltered spot to put on a jacket, shoe covers, and gloves.

As I descended, the rain intensified. I came around a bend to see a big dog crossing the road from right to left. The dog hadn’t noticed me, so I didn’t want to brake. Shimano brakes are somewhat loud when they’re wet and the best case scenario is that the dog doesn’t even notice you until you’ve gone by. So I lined up for the right side of the road, where the dog was walking away from. But then a truck came the other way and spooked the dog. It turns out that dogs are more agile than human tennis players in a contre-pied situation, and this dog pulled a 180 to book it back off the road. The timing was impeccable – right into my front wheel.

Luckily, so to speak, it was raining and the road was oily. I just went for a nice slide and hardly got a scratch on my body. I stood up and stepped to the edge to get off the road when a big truck came down blasting its horn at me to get the fuck out of the way. The worst casualty is probably my beloved I-don’t-know-how-many-years-old Castelli rain jacket, which got a few holes in it and is therefore no longer waterproof.

I really hope the dog is OK. He got up and ran away, I didn’t see him again. Running away from big trucks is generally speaking a good move, but this time the poor guy got clobbered by me on a bike.

Most of the rest of the day was very slightly downhill. The rain got worse and I rode through some areas with a lot of traffic and semi-flooded streets waiting to fall into surprise potholes. Eventually I did make it to Skopje, where the apartment host turned on the water heater as we walked in and said it would be 20 minutes until there’d be hot water for a shower. Just had to be one more thing on this day.

Tomorrow is a new day, though, and much like the contrast of the ride into and out of Sarajevo, the ride out of Skopje was a highlight. I rode through Mavrovo National Park to Debar, where there was New England level foliage (and a New England drizzle).

The fourth day would be my last in the Balkans as I started the day by riding over the border with Albania and then over an awesome pass and then descended into Tiranë. The last 40 km were through heavy traffic and not the most enjoyable. I checked into a hotel in Durrës for the afternoon so I could shower and get a bit of rest before catching the ferry to Italy.

When I planned the trip, I was really excited about the last five days in the south of Italy. I had never been in that area before and I was banking on warm weather and good food. As I waited for the ferry, though, I was really thinking about just catching a train home. The weather in Italy was looking mediocre and I had been away from home for over two weeks. The ferry was supposed to arrive at 8:00 AM and there was an 8:45 AM train from Bari – wIth the crash, weather, and general homesickness I was thinking about taking it.

The ferry operator strongly advises you to show up four hours in advance. When I checked in, the ferry port was basically empty. I sat at a table for about 90 minutes and ate my dinner – two baguettes and an apple – before they opened the line for boarding. The ferry was pretty spartan on-board, and when they finally opened the restaurant for dinner, I realized that buying those supermarket baguettes was a good decision. That said, there’s something cool about waking up in a new place.

The ferry arrived late, at 9:00 AM, so there goes the train. Might as well ride. I was paying for my tailwind days in Serbia as I rode 140 km through a headwind, mostly uphill, and got rained on in the last 20 minutes before arriving. On the other hand, upon arrival I got one of the best cookies of my life. That’s Italy though: Things run late, plans change, but then you get a great cookie and can you really be that upset about it?

The weather for the following two days did not look good and I was thinking again about popping into a train station and teleporting home. But they were also the days that I was most excited about when I first planned the trip. One day at a time, I said.

From Potenza I headed west and down to the coast at Salerno in order to go around the Amalfi coast. The rain seemed delayed and the weather was pretty good as I made my way to the coast. But around 40 km before reaching the coastal road, my route took me through one town after another with lots of traffic. The riding was quite stressful as it’s mostly going up the center of the road, squeezing between cars, and then sprinting over punchy climbs to keep your position in traffic.

Once I made it to the coastal road, the rain started. The road surface is treacherous in the wet and the road there is constantly turning and undulating. It was hard to appreciate the view while constantly trying to avoid crashing, either from a slippery corner or an oncoming car. There are also a lot of delivery trucks and tour buses on this road, and the pattern I noticed was that a bus would have to go really slow in the narrow streets and end up with a pack of 20-30 cars stuck behind it. When I could get by the bus, life was good as I usually got a nice 20 minute stretch of open road to myself. It also meant choosing between trying to keep that position (sprinting up climbs, not stopping for photos) vs. getting overtaken and being stuck in the same traffic queue that I just made it out of. The coast is beautiful though and I can see why people go, but it’s probably better for stopping to enjoy the view than trying to ride it by bike.

The next day I rode to Naples with a quick stop in Pompei. Unfortunately (and not surprisingly), you cannot see much unless you enter the park. I didn’t have a safe place for my bike and luggage (and everyone told me: don’t leave your bike, even for a minute) so I had to settle for peeking over the fence at the edge. I did have a nice coffee and pastry stop there though. Again, Italy tends to make up for any shortcomings with good food and charm. I thought about riding up Vesuvius but the weather looked bad in the afternoon and I needed a rest day. Not that I entirely got it though, although I only rode about 50 km I think the majority of it was over large cobblestones. Naturally I ended with a Napoli pizza for lunch. In the afternoon I found a shop selling homemade pasta, perfect to bring back to the apartment to cook for dinner.

I again thought about bailing, being in a major city there were plenty of options with the train. But now there were only two days left and the weather finally looked great. So the next day I headed north to go to Montecassino. It took about 25 km to really get out of Naples city traffic but then I had a smooth ride to Cassino. I headed up to the monastery, but like Pompei, they have really figured out how to strategically plant trees such that you cannot see anything without officially entering the complex. Anyway, I have seen the front door of Montecassino. From there it was 50 km into a headwind to Frosinone, a small town and the final stop on the approach to Rome.

The final day, I was worried about traffic and how many kilometers before Rome it would really start. The day started with rain (because that seemed like part of the deal for the second half of the trip) but eventually cleared up as I rode through Monte Compatri and then descended to Rome. I guess Romans don’t go out on Saturdays, because I was riding in on almost deserted 3-lane roads. Traffic wise I had a clear shot until I suddenly rolled up to the Colosseum. I made a quick tour around some sites in Rome before heading to my hotel and finding lunch. The next morning, I was on a train home.

At the end of the trip, I had a feeling of accomplishment or satisfaction usually reserved for things like good race results or setting FKTs. Usually, just “finishing” a ride is a given for me. But this trip brought a lot of challenges, whether physical due to the number of hours on the bike each day or the mental strain of riding in the gutter all day in Bosnia to avoid being taken out by a truck, of outsprinting (or crashing into) stray dogs who want to eat me, or of riding through dense city traffic. On my way out, it only rained on two days; on the way back it rained every day except two days. I also like being at home and three weeks is a long time to be away. Everything was adding up; the way home felt like a grind.

I think I was motivated by a healthy amount of FOMO. In Italy, I had never been south of Genoa before, and wanting to see Amalfi, Naples, Montecassino, and Rome kept me thinking ahead one day at a time. I’ve contemplated longer, more remote trips and I think that this trip gave me a good experience to build on while always having the safety net of being able to pop into the next train station and bail.