The mountain road from Kolasin to Andrijevica passes through the small village of Mateševo and then follows the river Drčka, a tributary of the Tara, up the valley to Trešnjevik Pass. I stopped when the road started to hairpin and the road became more a bobsleigh run with walls of snow where the ploughs had cut there way…
Month: March 2015
Lake Skadar Sunrise
Sunrise this morning, the last day of March was altogether a different affair to the pagan dystopia of that dragon dawn just a few days ago. The sun was for a moment a perfect star as it broke the cloud and lit the lake and mountains as if to say, today will be a good day;…
Lake Šasko’s Snakes
The earliest records of the old city of Šas, known much earlier as Svač, go back to the 6th century and it was famed for having a church for every day of the year. The city was ransacked in the 13th Century by the Mongols and then again by the Ottomans in the 16th century; it was not really…
Lake Skadar’s Dragons
The week has been grey and rain-filled with sullen views and damp seeping the bones. This morning was brighter and the view from the square window confirmed that although a deep grey, the light was trying hard to win, so I hurled out and up the hill in a strong, but not cold, easterly to see…
Tivat Saltpans
Tivat Saltpans (Tivatska Solilas) is an area of intertidal habitats and former saltpans within the Bay of Kotor protected in 2008 as a 150 ha. natural heritage site. In the language of protected areas, ‘potentially damaging operations’ are not permitted. In a country where hunting and fishing is so prevalent, this is great news for the…
Farming around Lake Skadar
In the Spring when water levels are high, the northern shores of Lake Skadar are huge areas of flooded field and woodland and difficult to explore. To the north is the southern edge of the Podgorica plain and, together with the airport, a patchwork of towns, villages and farmland. The eastern shore is Albanian territory. I have spent most…
Rumija Rocks
The sweet chestnut woodland along the road from Livari is just below the small, hidden village of Gornja Briska. I walked up through the old, dark trees to avoid the village in the early morning. Only a yaffle then a flash of green woodpecker and ever noisy nuthatches proved there was any life in the cold…
Velika Plaza and Ada Bojana
At the south-eastern corner of Montenegro, the boundary with Albania is the river Bojana. The river delta is at the eastern end of the 13km long Velika Plaza (Great Beach) that runs all the way from the old town of Ulcinj. The large river splits neatly in two a few kilometres from the sea and the…
Buljarica Spring
A week later and the weather is balmy; cool first thing in the sharp breeze but soon warming into a cloudless and hot day. The back road that skirts the eastern end of the reed bed passes through small pastures and fallow fields divided by thorn shelter belts, untended olive groves and finally a few houses…
Buljarica Bora
Buljarica is a large wetland, predominantly reed bed, on the coast just east of Petrovac. On the late afternoon of March 7th there was bright sunlight coupled with a fierce, ice cold wind that came in gusts and ripped the water off the surface of the sea. This was the Bora or Bura at work;…
Rumija’s Chestnut Woodlands
Soon after the narrow road from Virpazar to Ostros passes the turn for the small village of Livari, the scraggy oak-hornbeam gives way to a woodland of huge, sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa) trees that straddles the road. These are ancient, venerable trees with thick, deeply riven trunks and decaying crowns. On walking around, some seem to be…
Žabljak Crnojevića
Today was the first warm and sunny weekend of the year with no icy wind to fend off and the day trippers from Podgorica were packing Virpazar and the mountain roads. The old fortress, or to be exact fortified town, of Žabljak Crnojevića is not on the tourist trail; the road leading to it is off the new Golubovci by-pass,…