Mhairi and I love a BBC programme called “Race Across the World”, in which five couples compete with each other to follow a fixed route on a very limited budget. It makes for great television but it looks like 50 days’ of torture and would be our idea of hell. We like our comforts!!
Travelling from Tirana to Dubrovnik, however, got us about as close to RATW as we’d like to get. There is no train or boat route and hiring a one way car in Albania is both very difficult and, frankly, suicidal given local driving behaviours. Private car ownership was outlawed until 1991 and they still seem to be getting the hang of sharing the road with other people.
So our only means of transport was a 10½ hour bus journey via the capital of Montenegro. At least Mhairi has her superpower of falling asleep at the departure point and waking up on arrival – effectively a form of time travel – but I’d downloaded some books and TV programmes and stocked up with snacks to help with the boredom and discomfort.
As it turned out, we absolutely loved the journey and didn’t need to sleep or read. We stopped every couple of hours and the regular border checkpoints gave us a break from the bus as we stood in line to get our passports stamped. On the single border check that we didn’t have to get off the bus, all the passengers handed the driver our passports, reminding us of our friend Rod’s prediction of where our travelling must inevitably lead us – holding a copy of a recent newspaper in a drug cartel’s ransom video. Thanks Rod. 😊
The journey isn’t so far as the crow flies but the distance almost doubles by road as it follows the many bays and inlets of a truly spectacular coastline. I’m talking proper, big-scale, jaw-dropping Spectacular here. Think Swiss Alps, Angkor Wat, the southbound A77 descending majestically into the Dutch House roundabout Spectacular. And besides which, I think to myself, what else have we got to do with our time than just appreciate our good fortune and the beauty of all this?
It's a wanderful life, so it is 
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