I will walk back some of yesterday's negativity, since today was excellent walking.
After another enormous Albanian breakfast; ham, cheese, boiled egg, cucumber, tomatoes, olives and bread and butter; i braved the scary walk along the motorway and was very soon on the actual via egnatia!
It was a steady climb up to 700 metres, on a lot of renovated Roman road. The views were great. Kept getting peeks at snow capped mountains hidden behind clouds. The weather was mostly sunny and all was well with the world. Despite another long climb, i thoroughly enjoyed myself. Even when i came to the wash outs. A number of landslips had completely destroyed the road and all that was left was a very narrow , sloping path of loose gravel with sheer drops down twenty metres or more. Very similar to what greg and i had encountered on the monastery walk in egypt. In a way a little more scary since the surface was so loose and sloped. My walking poles were very handy. After that there were no further difficulties although eventually the roman road surface gave way to dirt and gravel. It was still pretty cool to be finally walking along a roman road. In reality though, the road would havd been here long before the romans came along. Despite its antiquity there was again, a remarkable lack of evidence of ancient building of any sort apart from the road itself.
This was made up for by the interesting set of tunnels i explored and the strange looking concrete structures that were nearby. The tunnels were almost entirely devoid of graffiti but there was what looked like some official notice on the back wall.
Walked passed more of the interesting hay bales which might not be. Up close they look like a pile of some sort of branches. One had a tree growing out of the middle.
Also passed a lovely little mosque and soon i was at Dardhe. It is a pleasant little mountain village with a school a shop and a bar/restaurant.
The people here continue to show great kindness. And the children, huge curiosity in foreign walkers. School had just finished when i arrived and i was soon surrounded by most of the kids. We had a fine time chatting away. One boy knew enough english to keep things moving along, and then a young man came over and urged me to use his phone as a wifi hotspot so i could use google translate.
Finally they nearly all drifted off home, checking that i would say hello when they got to school in the morning. I managed to order some late lunch with the help of two girls who had stayed behind. The restaurant is run by their cousin , i think. Another enormous meal for which she only wanted 400 leke, 3 euros. I gave her 600. While i waited for it the two girls, anjelica and... (?) tried to give me an albanian lesson. They had a little albanian english dictionary. And then Leonard appeared. Fluent in english. He is studying it at university. I was now able to confirm that, yes, i would definitely be able to sleep in the school.
After my huge lunch i got taken over by two more kids and shown my room. They were intrigued by all the accoutrements of a long distance walker. And that was the day. A good one.
I lay down on my little bed in a classroom and napped. I woke to the sound of tim arriving. It has been a bonus to have bumped into a fellow walker along the path. And a very personable, interesting one. He has certainly challenged my stereotyped notions of a catholic priest.
We shared an evening meal of bbq chicken and watched s little football on the television.
Earlier, i had decided to have a go at a sponge bath in the school toilets. As i actually had no sponge i found one of the rags the students had been using to clean the floors, gave it a bit of a rinse off and got to it. It was a chilly experience but i felt a whole lot cleaner for the experience.
I slept well despite some gentle, priestly snoring and woke at sunrise.
Photos:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/afASx7QanuU74Lrx8
Walk details here:
https://www.mapmyhike.com/workout/3521530567
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