Ciro Trail – Bosnia Herzegowina

Some time ago I read about a cycle track from Dubrovnik to Mostar called the Ciro trail which now was the right time to find out what it’s about.

The Austro-Hungarian monarchy at the end of the 19th centory built a network of narrow gauge railway to link the southern Adriatic harbors on the coast like Kotor and Dubrovnik with the hinterland cities and central Europe. This network had been abandoned in the seventies. With the help of EU funds some parts had been converted into a cycle path in 2016 in order to support tourism. 

Coming from Herceg Novi in Montenegro I started my Ciro Trail in Dubrovnik old town. First I worked up 300hm to a plateau where I joined the actual cycle path just behind the BiH checkpoint. The track is all flat termac and cuts through rocks and leads over damms filling up troughs. The area is completely depopulated here though the station buildings give a little glimpse of the glory times of this era. On an info board at Hum station where the railwayline split up one to Dubrovnik and one to Kotor it said that they had up to 60 trains per day running through this junction. 

After around 60km on this superb path and my night stay at an artificial lake the path changed to heavy gravel where you thought they may have just removed the rails and nothing else. This rattling 20km section included also several unlit tunnels and led finally from the plateau down to the Neretva valley where I felt to come back into civilisation. 

The third 40km section of the trail to Mostar was all along the river and parallel to the new standard gauge electrified railway line which links the harbor in Ploce with Mostar. 

This trail was a true experience and is still an insiders tip for advanced cyclists. I would wish they can further invest in the incompleted sections so eventually it may be part of the Eurovelo network and bring tourism at a much larger scale to this area. 

Along the Albanean coast

From the border between Greece and Albania I was following the Ionean Coast up north. The road is a continuous up and down up to Dermi. The city I stayed before called Saranda took me already in surprise with all its hotels and apartment buildings. Dermi topped this even with a – to my belief – largest building site in Albania. They are converting a several km stretch of untouched sandy beach into what is maybe close to the Albanian version of La Grande Motte. The building boards mention 9 five star hotels, 350 bungalows connected with 2800 free parking spaces. No idea who should purchase all this retort bungalows let alone where the guest may come from to populate the various hotels. 

After Dermi the 1000m high Llogara Pass started which geografically separats the Ionean coast from the Adriatic coast. The sun was shining bright and it was a real joy to work up the six switchbacks with several kilometer of ramp in between to reach the upper plateau. 

The way down went along the Llogara national parc on a much smaller, more sylvan and curvy road than the way up. Fairly at the bottom of the path I saw that they are tunneling the Llogara Pass now with the obvious plan to bring clients from Tirana Airport to their beach resorts much quicker then if they would have to meander over the pass. 

A true cycle path lined up with palm trees lead me into the town of Vlora. Albeit the path would have been significantly more useful if they would have lowered the curbs at intersections. Seems this has simply been forgotton and nobody really cared when it was completed. 

A strong and warm wind from south started when I left Vlora and it was well pushing me for one and a half day on my route north to Shkodra on relatively flat and agricultural land. Once it stopped though heavy rain started and temperature dropped significantly. The last hours before reaching the town I was cycling in torrential rain where it was hard to differentiate the road from the loose shoulder and riding through the flooding rain I simply hoped that I may not fall into an invisible porthole. 

Shkodra is familiar to me and I liked the city with its castle, the lake and its small but nice old town already when I stopped here on the way to India in 2019. With the weather forecast beeing really bad for the next two days I decided to wait here before heading off for Montenegro. 

Along the Ionean Coast

In Patras the Pelopponese is linked with a 2.5 km long bridge to mainland Greece. Completed only in 2004 they seemed to have pretty much forgotten that people on bicycle may want to use it as well. In order to drive on it we had to carry bike and gear up a stair of around three floors to reach the small pedestrian section.

With my temporary cycling companion I seperated in Mytikas where he is helping now to refurbish an old wooden ship. We came along really well so it would have been nice to continue but we all have our plans and routes and who knows when we might be bumping into each other again.

The next challange was the undersea tunnel which links Aktio and Preveza. It’s a motorway tunnel so forbidden for bicycles. In blogs I read you just may come close and wave into the surveillance camera and then a shuttle from the operator may arrive. I waved for some minutes like the Queen but nobody picked me up. Then I changed strategy to wave for pickup cars passing by and within 15 minutes my bike was on a truck through the tunnel.

Cycling is going really well on fairly quiet roads. My route follows Eurovelo 8 which starts in Athens and ends in Cadiz. In between it spans a long bow along the northern Mediterranean coast and after Igoumenitsa I crossed border into Albania. 

Circle around Peloponnese

It was a venture I had in view for a longer time and in this insecure times it appeared to be the adequate solution to my desire to go on the bike again. I wanted to encircle the Peloponnese and stay as close to the shore as possible.

So I left home round mid of February to reach Mestre via the Tauern Cycle Path and the Alpe Adria Trail which I know quite well by now from other trips south east. I had enough time to get a glimpse of last days of  Carnevale in Venice before boarding the ferry to Greece.

It was an extremely comfortable thirty hour trip on a boat which was fairly empty. Patras had mild sunny weather and I stayed there for two days before hitting the road. Greece is perfect bikepacking ground as it offers plenty of the nicest camp spots and nobody really cares where you pinch up your tent. The first two days I shared campsite on the beach with a German cycling&climbing couple whom I already met on the ship. We did not make an appointment but just ended up fairly much on the same beaches.

In sunny weather I reached the tip of the first finger at Methoni with its stunning castle on the west side and Koroni with its marvelous orthodox monestary on the east side and went for swimming first time in the season somewhere in between.

I spent two days in Kalamata before heading down the second finger called Mani. All the hills where green with flowers everywhere so it gave me a feeling of Ireland in summer rather then Greece which I always visited in autumn when everything was dried out. My plan to stay close to the coast led me to an unpaved road which I estimated to last for about two hours. It turned out to be rather a steep foot trail where I pushed the bike for nearly four hours. The scenery was all worth it though. 

By the time I reached the southern tip of the finger the weather changed though and it felt more like navigating round Cap Horn rather than the Mediterranean with strong wind and rain and temperatures having dropped quite a bit. 

Via Gythio I started the third finger and went down to Neapoli and hoped to have better conditions on the eastern side. At least in the morning when I reached the stunning rock of Monemvasia with its historic city and castle the sun came out for some time. The way further north went over two passes of around 800m height and I was happy that they had snow ploughes here as otherwise the route would have been barely passable for me. 

To be honest the forth finger on the eastern side I only made to complete the venture. It did not really offer fascinating landscape nor particularly fine roads but with the cold wind blasting in now continously from north east it gave me moments of travel where you just focus on reaching your target then really enjoying what you are doing. 

Between Korinth and Patras I met another Belgium cyclist and we teamed up the way further north for some days direction to the Albanian coast.