Balkans 8. North Macedonia 2. - Campsites, forget it !

 

covers 26 - 29 April 2024

a typical North Macedonian landscape, lots of trees and snow in the distance

We’re now headed away north from Lake Ohrid for the mountains of the Mavrovo National Park, midway up the western side of the country close to the border with Albania. There is a campsite but even though the tourist office not ten miles away told us it was open, it actually doesn’t open until at least mid-May. This is where we stayed in the hotel car park when they told us the campsite was closed but that “we can sort something out”. A good spot for the night in a small car park nobody else was using, our own lockable bathroom and a hotel restaurant about 30 yards away for the equivalent of 15 Euros. How helpful is that.

our hotel car park camping spot

I haven’t yet mentioned how heavily wooded this country appears to be, with mountains rippling into the distance covered in a vast variety of greens from the different trees growing on them. The fresh green of newly emerging Beech leaves in sunshine with a blue sky backdrop was as you would imagine, a wonderful sight. There are tens of miles of tree covered landscapes wherever we go. It’s certainly cooler up here at altitude and with clearer air although in the tourist office I mentioned in the previous paragraph it was nice and warm because there was a very smart wood burner in there. It was burning imported wood pellets and even the information man wasn’t very impressed by that.

the view opened out once we were above the tree line

The following day, we drove up into the hills from the hotel car park, breaking through the treeline to great displays of Oxlips, which are yellow primulas, brasher and less delicate than Cowslips, dotting the hillsides on the short turf. We had extensive distant views and drove past patches of hard snow by the sides of the road, probably heaped up by snowploughs fairly recently. The vegetation had that sort of compressed unhappy look that it always has just after snowmelt. Later and after a hot cocoa each in a cafe at Galicnik, the highest village in North Macedonia, we had the best walk of the trip so far in the mountains here, getting up above the snow line and having our lunch sitting in the sunshine at about 6,500 feet. We did puff a bit on the way up but it was worth it with no-one else to see and stupendous views in the extremely clear air. Heather tried a snow-angel up here but the snow was very hard and it wasn’t the most impressive one she’s ever done.

this is an Oxlip

Galicnik in the foreground and an impressive mountain hairpin road in the distance 

Here's a few pictures taken on that fine mountain walk. 

getting above the snowline

lunch stop in a sheltered spot

our very steep way down.  the mark in the foreground is what passes for waymarking
and the thin grey line halfway up the right hand side is the road where our van is

Spring Gentian

Many of you will remember the wars in the Balkans in the 1990’s after the breakup of Yugoslavia and the whole history of this area is mind-numbing in complexity.   Anyone who thinks they understand the history and politics of the Balkans has either spent a lifetime (or two) studying it or is simply delusional.

This country, North Macedonia, was once known by the mouthful of FYROM (Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia) and as far as I can tell wanted to be just plain Macedonia. Well the Greeks weren’t having that as Macedonia is a northern area of Greece and a 27 year diplomatic tension/dispute was finally settled when North Macedonia was agreed as the country name. The area is certainly not completely settled yet. Kosovo declared unilateral independence from Serbia in 2008 but Serbia doesn’t recognise it as a sovereign state although many countries do. If we had been insured for and able to drive into Kosovo we’d have to enter from Serbia or not try to get into Serbia on leaving Kosovo if we had entered Kosovo though any other country.  If we had, the Serbians would claim that the entry into Kosovo was an illegal entry into their country and we would have a problem to deal with. So no Kosovo for us this trip.

a very typical Soviet era 'worker as hero' statue

We had to move on and wanted to see some of the south east of the country but cross country roads are not fast here. We were in the north west so we looped north and east past Skopje and used the Autoroute Mother Theresa southwards to get there. Most of the main roads are a delight to drive on being mostly empty while many of the smaller roads are often narrow and sinuous and also not in the best condition.

Before the delights of the Autoroute M. Teresa we drove via a town called Tetovo which has a very famous (in North Macedonian terms) and impressively decorated mosque. It’s called the Sarena Dzamija mosque or the Motley Mosque to English speakers. It is highly decorated inside and out with the outside covered in rectangular decorated panels, said to make it appear as if covered in playing cards (if you could find playing cards about 4 feet by2) while the inside is much more ornate. It was smaller than I expected, just as the Taj Mahal was smaller (but stunning). My verdict on the mosque ? Definitely well worth seeing but not worth travelling a long way to see.

the Tetovo Mosque

As we’ve been driving through lots of agricultural areas we’ve noticed in more than one of the Balkan countries we’ve visited that a lot of crops are grown in strips across a field. Imagine a field, perhaps 100 yards long with a 20 or 30 foot wide strip of wheat, then 30 feet of barley, then a strip of potatoes or a ploughed section. Sometimes there will be a strip of fruit trees too so it isn’t just a rotational crop management. Maybe they’re individually owned or it’s some sort of collective system.

About 100 miles or so down Mother Teresa’s motorway in warm to hot sunshine at about 25C/79f, we got to Demir Kapija which had one of the few campsites in the country and certainly the only one we could find in this area. This one was run by a climber who ran courses in the limestone areas nearby. We’d been travelling for some time on this particular day and having seen very few campers even on the sites we were staying on, were disappointed to find this one completely full, mostly tents so we think it was probably a climbing course being run on the very day we wanted to stay.

We were a bit stuck to be fair because wild camping, a rather fancy name for just parking up somewhere for the night, is illegal although we don’t know how rigorously that is enforced. Best not to find out really. This town, Demir Kapija however has a vineyard and attached smart hotel on the outskirts and Heather suggested we went along to ask if we could pay to park in their car park overnight. Yes, it seems that would be no problem, no charge but they were unable to supply electricity or any facilities. Park where we like and we didn’t have to eat in their restaurant either. By the way we do have full ‘facilities’ in our van. We did decide to have dinner in their restaurant after all, went up their tower lookout and then retired to our own mobile hotel room.

in the vineyard hotel tower lookout

and in the restaurant

Behind where we were parked was a vertical 10 feet or so earth bank which appeared to have been cut out when the car park was levelled. We were really delighted when we realised that Bee-Eaters were nesting in the bank right next to our van. The first ones we’ve seen on this trip. They’re such colourful birds that you would expect to see them in the tropics but here they are in Europe. They are stunning looking birds as you can see in the photographs.

European Bee-eater. two photos of it arriving at the nest hole, one at the nest hole and one leaving, showing the distinctive central tailfeather.  As if you need that to identify these amazing looking birds.