Upon arrival in Tirana, the capital of Albania, the question arises: โHow to get to the hotel and quickly move around the city?โ. Renting a car at Tirana Airport on the website roscar.al will help with this. What is the advantage of such a rental? The advantages of online ordering are impressive and wide-ranging.
“The Trans Dinarica is the first and only cycle route to connect all eight countries of the Western Balkans. The route โ which links Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Serbia โ makes a priority of visiting national parks, UNESCO sites, often-overlooked villages, and diverse points of interest.ย In other words, the Trans Dinaricaย takes travelers deep into one of the most interesting and under-valued European regions, where adventure and culture are always connected.”
Most episodes of The Cycling Europe Podcast know where they are going from the outset. This episode is slightly different. We start in the English Lake District to take in the sounds of the recent Cycle Touring Festival in its new home of Coniston. We then head to India to hear from long-distance cyclist James Thomas. He lives in a coastal town in Goa on the shore of the Arabian Sea but often ventures into the mountains on foot and on his bike. He reflects upon his current experiences in India as well as past experiences cycling through Europe, especially Albania. We stay in Albania for an extract fromย Along The Med on a Bike Called Reggie, Andrew P. Sykesโ travelogue about cycling the EuroVelo 8 from Greece to Portugal in 2013. To explain if things have changed in the past decade, the podcast speaks to Dritan Kolgjini, a tour guide for Explore Travelโs Albanian cycling trips. Does the country really live up to its reputation of being the โnew Croatiaโ?
In the autumn of 2022, Susan and Ron Crump, a retired couple from Kentucky in the USA set off on their first cycle tour. Instead of dipping their toes in the shallow end of the cycle touring pool, they plunged into the deep end by embarking upon a 3,500km cycle from Amsterdam to Athens. Along with two more experienced cycle touring friends – Pam and Ralph – this is the story of their trip; the preparation, the execution and the aftermath. They may have been jumping for joy upon arrival in Athens but were they jumping for joy throughout the cycle? And has the trip been a springboard for future rides or will their next visit to Europe be on a cruise ship?ย
It will soon be 10 years that I set off to cycle along the Mediterranean coast from Cape Sounio in southern Greece to Cape St. Vincent in southern Portugal. My route was inspired by the EuroVelo 8, although it was much less developed back then than it is today. I saw some EuroVelo 8 signs in Catalonia but aside from that, I’m not quite sure I saw any elsewhere. And after Valencia, when I was beginning to run short of time – I needed to be back at work at the beginning of September – I headed inland, away from the coast in order to complete the journey without resorting to jumping on the train.
In a week when the news here in Europe has been dominated by… well, let’s not go there other than to note that Putin needs to ride his bike a bit more often and shed the macho persona he so loves, I have been transported off to France and then across the whole of Europe courtesy of two conversations that I have recorded for upcoming episodes of The Cycling Europe Podcast.
Every EuroVelo could do with one of these… Hopefully sometime soon they will. A glossy 90-page brochure giving an excellent overview of the EuroVelo 8 Mediterranean Route that I cycled back in 2013. The route is broken down into 15 sections starting in Cadiz and finishing in Cyprus […]
In my experience, people are generally nice. Even if you travel to a country where, because of your pre-conceptions, you imagine that the people might not be so friendly, you are invariably proved wrong. In 2013 as I cycled ‘Along The Med on a Bike Called Reggie‘, my […]
It was August 28th 2013 when I completed my cycle from southern Greece to southern Portugal. The full story here or the even fuller story here… And here are a few photographic memories. Full marks to anyone who can identify where they were taken; Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, […]
Click here to see the detailed statistics of today’s cycle. I’m about to start writing… And here I am. I’ve showered, eaten, washed the dishes (OK, there aren’t that many) and I’m sacrificing listening to Any Questions on Radio 4 in order to write up about not just […]
Click here to see the detailed statistics of today’s cycle. Data is still an issue so just one picture tonight but I will update with others later in the week once my 10gb monthly allowance is replenished, hopefully on Wednesday. Let’s start back at midnight last night. Earlier […]
Click here to see the detailed statistics of today’s cycle. Hotel all-you-can-eat breakfasts can be useful on a long cycling trip but I think this morning my IBIS fill up put me in a lethargic mood from the start. I wouldn’t say that I was on a go […]
Click here to see the detailed statistics of today’s cycle. So, where were we? Ah yes; in a very wintery Munster getting hailed upon… On the terrace of the bar where I wrote up the report for cycling day 46 yesterday afternoon I was at least protected from […]
Click here to see the detailed statistics of today’s cycle. When I woke this morning (well, ‘woke’ is used to refer to the time of the day that people generally wake rather than the actual physical activity of stopping sleeping which happened many hours earlier), the pitter patter […]
Click here to see the detailed statistics of today’s cycle. Today was hard work but ultimately a great day of not just cycling but simply travelling. The weather was very similar to cycling day 13 earlier this week and the arrival in Pamplona as wet as my arrival […]
Click here to see the detailed statistics of today’s cycle. [Saturday evening: Too tired to write the blurb tonight but come back tomorrow for the full story. The stats and pictures will hopefully suffice for the moment. Some of the photos do need explaining…] It’s now Sunday morning […]
I would happily class myself as an enthusiastic early adopter of technology, especially when it comes to cycling. Back in 2009 when I cycled along the Pennine Cycleway as a shakedown of my skills as a first time touring cyclistย I blogged as I travelledย having moved on from writing […]
While maps are on my mind (see previous post)… I have a newly discovered love forย Marco Polo maps. But before I get on to them, let’s back track a little. I can’t imagine there will ever be a day when I ditch paper maps altogether; when I cycled […]
When I cycled from Greece to Portugal in 2013, I spent most of my time pre-trip thinking about Greece, Albania and, to a certain extent, Croatia. I didn’t spend too much time consideringย the western European countries through which I would be cycling. In France, a country I know […]
Courtesy of Wordle, here are the top 100 words contained in Along The Med on a Bike Called Reggie… (see comments below) The top 100 words do not include very common English words. The word ‘cycling‘ appears 568 times in the book but the word ‘but‘ rears its […]
Here is the thirdย in a series of extracts from the soon-to-be-published book โAlong The Med on a Bike Called Reggieโ. If you havenโt done so already, you may want to read extract 1 (which was about cycling day 11 in Albania) by followingย this linkย and read extract 2 (which […]
I’m nearing the half-way point in writing “Along The Med on a Bike Called Reggie” (you can read two extracts here and here) and to whet everyone’s appetite I have just posted the photographs from my travels through Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia and Slovenia to the new […]
Here is the second in a series of extracts from the soon-to-be-published book ‘Along The Med on a Bike Called Reggie‘. If you haven’t done so already, you may want to read extract 1 (which was all about cycling day 11 in Albania) by following this link. Tuesday […]
Over the next few months as I write about my 2013 cycle from Greece to Portugal along the (rough) line of the Eurovelo 8, I will publishย an occasional extract from the bookย here on CyclingEurope.org. The book will be published on the 10th June 2014. Here is the first […]
In just 10 minutes – at midday – you’ll be able to read an exclusive extract from my forthcoming book ‘Along The Med on a Bike Called Reggie‘ here on CyclingEurope.org. The book will recount the tale of my cycle in summer 2013 from the Temple of Poseidon […]
The ECF have just published an interview with me where I discuss this summer’s cycle from Greece to Portugal along the rough line of the Eurovelo 8. The interview can be found on the ECF’s increasingly useful Eurovelo website in a slighted edited form. The full interview is […]
Having just spent several hours doing this, I’m also going to elevate what is otherwise hidden away in the Eurovelo 8 section of the site to its own blog post. Here are the links to the original blog posts made during the trip along the Eurovelo 8 (or […]
So, the penultimate day arrives. Or rather arrived as it is now at an end. I bid my cousin farewell with the intention of seeing him again later in the day at a campsite somewhere along the Algarve in Portugal but even by 9am this morning I was […]
Today was, at times, at many times, a frustrating day. The wind, the roads, the signage, the route, the tourist destinations. They all conspired together. Perhaps they wanted to show me another side to Provence before I departed for the (mainly) flatlands of Langudoc-Rousillon, a meaner, grittier, kick […]
After my enforced day off it feels just like the evening before you return to work after having been sick. I am now more or less sure that I wasn’t suffering from dehydration after all and that my problem was a bug that I had picked up somewhere. […]
A few months after I had published “Crossing Europe on a Bike Called Reggie” (available in all good book shops, a few not-so-good books shops and online), a chap contacted me to say how wonderful it was (honest) and I subsequently exchanged a few emails with him about […]
The plan over the next week or so is to cycle a minimum of 100km and find a campsite to stay in overnight. Today was day one of the plan, and it worked a treat! Leaving Dubrovnik and all the other tourists who had flocked there wasn’t difficult. […]
If proof were needed (and can I say that it isn’t) that this was just one long mad dash from A (the Temple of Poseidon in Greece) to B (Cape St. Vincent in Portugal) then today was that evidence. Which isn’t needed. [Get on with it, please…] I […]
I wasn’t in the greatest of moods this morning when I woke. I had slept relatively well (who wouldn’t after most of a bottle of Montenegrin Chardonnay?) but was still narked that I had been taken in by the wide boy who had turned the patch of land […]
I can highly recommend this type of holiday if you want to delve into the variety of accommodation on offer within Europe. Last night I was having a shower in a wet room and then donning a white bath robe in a boutique hotel in was of Europe’s […]
So… The next couple of countries are coming up fast; Montenegro & Croatia. Today is Monday 15th and the plan is: Tuesday 16th – Tirana to Ulcinj (Montenegro) This might be a long day in the saddle but I have just had a decent rest here in Tirana. […]
There isn’t a great deal to tell about today’s cycling (well shut up then!) but for the sake of completeness, here goes (at which point everyone has found something more interesting to do. Anyone still there? I could say anything! It’s all a lie! I’m really sitting at […]
While you’ve been watching the cycling or cricket or just tanning yourself in the UK sun, I’ve been hard at work on the terrace of the Hotel Vila Alba here in Tirana. This is my view over the rooftops…
So, here it is, the tale of an epic day in the saddle, all 172km of it. In fact I’ll start by reeling off the statistics. When I cycled to Italy in 2010 I gave the statistics at the end of each day on the blog. (One reader […]
Despite the very best efforts of the combined armed forces of Albania (the drivers & the roads), Reggie and I have arrived in the Albanian capital, Tirana. We are just about in one piece after the ordeal of the last few days and are going to be taking […]
…and they don’t serve food. It’s the bar under the hotel where I am staying for a ridiculous 15โฌ (I would happily have paid triple that; last night I paid double and had mice thrown in for free!). I sighed but they were very apologetic. I smiled, they […]
Like many probably most others I came to Albania with a number of preconceptions. In the main they have so far turned out to be false or certainly outdated. What I’ve discovered is a country that appears to be heading in the right direction from closed communist to […]
This is simply a stunning country…
Where does one start on a day like today? The beginning I suppose. Waking up in the hotel room in Saranda and pulling back the curtains was akin to taking part in a nuclear test in the 1950s but forgetting to have turned around. The sun was beaming […]
I’ve been sitting here for far too long… but I don’t care. The view is breathtaking (as was the cycle to get to get here…).
If I had any real worries about cycling into Albania (they weren’t for dramatic effect, surely?) they have certainly been dispelled by today’s events. Waking up at the campsite in Ioannina was a delight. Looking out over the lake and across to the mountains is the kind of […]
Sitting here in a cafรฉ sipping coffee on a rainy afternoon in the mountains is very reminiscent of summer 2010. Over the last couple of hours my mind has been cast back three years on many occasions due to the wet weather since I arrived in town… Today […]
It was indeed a shorter day in the end and nothing untoward happened. Following coffee in Mitikas it was a relatively short cycle to the much nicer Paleros where I had planned to meet Ed Cox. Ed is cycling from Bristol to Brisbane and he had contacted me […]
So, from the jaws of potential disaster comes another pleasant surprise. In this case it is the small coastal town of Nafpaktos. It’s quite bustling on this Monday morning as the residents wake up to another week at work, play or (let’s face it for most of the […]
It has yet to be rebound and may be better as two volumes but here it is, hot off the chopping board… The Rough Guide to the Eurovelo 8; Greece, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, France, Spain & Portugal (or at least the bits I’ll be cycling through). I have […]
Those of you who are paying attention (no? not you?) will remember that Monica Piercy is also cycling from Greece to Portugal but that she is about two months ahead of me. On a purely selfish basis, this is extremely useful indeed as she can feed me withย tantalisingย snippets […]
When I cycled the Eurovelo 5 to Italy, all my maps were Michelin 1:200,000 scale maps and there were ten of them in total – see the overview map of Europe here (I didn’t take the Belgian ones by the way as I cut off Belgium from my […]
A couple of publications have come myย way in the last few days. The first is a cycling touring guide for the French portion of the Eurovelo 8 route in the south of France. The guide’s author, cyclist & teacher (sounds familiar) Daniel Jamrozik emailed me about its existence […]
Albania remains the mysterious part of my trip along the Eurovelo 8 from Greece to Portugal and I am fascinated by the stories of those who have cycled through the country. I met a chap called Gav McDonald recently at the London Bike Show. On his company website […]
I’ll be cycling through Albania, Montenegro and Bosnia next summer along the route of the Eurovelo 8. I was sent in the direction of this video by an extremely helpful employee of the Montenegro tourist board. It really does make you think again…ย
In exactly 6 months’ time I will be in Athens, or somewhere near Athens. My bike will have been reassembled after its flight from London, my panniers packed with equipment, clothes & supplies & my mind no doubt full of excitement and anxiety as to what the subsequent […]
(There doesn’t appear to be a Rough Guide to Albania)
A couple of weeks’ ago I posted some comments from Tim about cycling through Albania. I asked him for more details on his own cycle through this lesser-known European country and he has kindly obliged: The main reason I wanted to get in contact was because I was […]
When I first tried to put a little meat on the bone that is the Eurovelo 8 (next year’s trip), I made the following comments on the Eurovelo 8 section of the website about travelling through Albania & Montenegro; “I could avoid Albania & Montenegro altogether! How? Well, […]
Cast your minds back to September 2010. I had just returned to the UK from my cycle to Italy and I tentatively checked my online mobile phone account with Orange. I’d planned ahead and made sure that I had a quota of data available for use each day […]
UPDATE 2018: It looks as though the Google Map referred to here has now been deleted… There are still some valid comments below however so I’ll leave this post online; just don’t expect to find the map it refers to… You may also want to visit this page […]
Digital mapping moves on apace. Only this week I was emailed by a guy from the German website Cycle Routes & Tours pointing out that some of the Eurovelo routes have been mapped on his site. I’ve added the links he gave to the relevant route sections in […]
Wednesday 8th August Rest in Munich “In the morning Andi wrote down some things I should check out in the city. I decided to head to Englisher Gardens, the largest city park. The river that runs through it, flows with such force that under one bridge people are […]
Finally, someone has written about cycling the eastern part of the Eurovelo 8 from Greece, through Albania, Montenegro and Croatia. Thanks Ali!
Owen’s email below is well-timed. It being the 1st September today, the summer is over if you consider the season to be the three monthsย from June to August. It’s also more or less over if you are a teacher as most of us go back to work […]
The following is from the back of the ECF Eurovelo Map; Cadiz-Athens-Cyprus 5,888km “The Mediterranean area is very popular for tourists, but until now not so much for bicycle tourism. However, various initiatives have improved facilities, especially in Spain & Italy. And similar initiatives are in the pipeline […]
You are looking at one of the best that I have found so far on my Italian odyssey; a large (40cl) beer for 2,50โฌ. Bloody amazing. They clearly saw me coming, drenched and identified me as a potential customer who needed cheering up with a cheap drink. I […]
