Cycling Albania’s Iron Curtain

In this video, I e-bike along Albania’s former Iron Curtain. During the reign of communist dictator Enver Hoxha, Albania was the most isolated country in Europe. You couldn’t freely leave or enter Albania.

Hoxha’s communist regime built hundreds of thousands of bunkers across Albania, fortifying the borders with Greece and Yugoslavia. I traced the route of this Iron Curtain from Pogradec, on the Lake Ohrid’s shores, south to the Greek border, visiting Korce and Lake Shelegur on the way.

Stay tuned for Part 2 next week, where I cycle from Permet to Himare, on the Albanian Riviera.

Headwater Active Holidays: https://www.headwater.com/holidays/cycling/albania/C07AB.htm

Thanks to Holiday Extras for providing Airport Parking at Luton Airport: https://www.holidayextras.com/

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Welcome to Albania. All right, guys. So, I’m here on the shores of Lake Orid, and I’m here because over the next few days, I’ll be ebiking south from Lake Orid through the Greek and Albanian borderlands. Now, we’ve got a 6-day cycling route planned. So, this six-day route will take us through the Presper Mountains and then down south to the Greek Albanian border. It’s a journey through a borderland shaped by empires, war, and contemporary politics. And it’s all going to end 6 days later on the Albanian Riviera. Now, this really is a borderland in the Balkans because Lake Orin is not only the oldest lake in Europe, but it’s actually shared between two countries. I’m on the Albanian side of the lake and just a few kilometers that way on the other side of Lake Horid, that’s North Macedonia. Now, a few kilometers south from here as well, uh the Greek border actually begins and it cuts through the Presper Mountains and that’s the route we’ll be taking today. Now, we spend the night in a place called Pograc, which is on the southern tip of Lake Orid. Now, Lake Ored is millions of years old geologically speaking, but it has a fascinating human history, too. along the north Macedonian side and you have a lot of Byzantine monasteries. Um so there’s lots of famous places like St. N you go up to or town which is where the cerillic language was developed. Um, so it really holds a uh, yeah, really fascinating place in the history of the Balkans. And but like many places in the Balkans, it’s seen its share of empires and conflicts. During the communist dictatorship of Ember Hawker, who ruled Albania with an iron fist for decades during the 20th century, this would have been not just a frontier um, with what would have then been Yugoslavia. Back in the day, there would have been barb wire fences probably running all the way across the border with North Macedonia. Now, as you see, I was cycling. We’ll be seeing more of these along the way because we’re following the borders and the borderlands and the Balkans. But Ember Hawker was a paranoid dictator. He believed that the entire rest of Europe was ready to invade Albania. So, he spent much of the country’s GDP building these things here. And so these are the famous or the infamous Albanian bunkers. So as far as I’m aware, they were built essentially so you could have one person inside with some sort of machine gun poking out of this slit here. And this is facing North Macedonia or what would have been Yugoslavia. Now, we’ve cycled about maybe 3 km from the hotel we were staying in, and we’ve already seen about five, six or seven of these bunkers just on the side of the road. Uh, some of them have been covered in graffiti and paint. And then ones like this are just kind of kind of sitting here just like a a fain relic to emberox’s misguided misguided rule. I got my my mate Kevin Sharp here who is a famous cyclist, an infamously bad cyclist. recording. I am indeed recording. Kev will be joining me on this uh on the journey south to the Greek border and then across to uh across the Sar. Are you excited for a little pedal? Cross the Greek border. We might be, won’t we? Yeah, we go right alongside it. Oh, Kev is excited to see the borders, aren’t you, Kev? I’m not see borders are just, you know, lines drawn in the sand with a stick. Anyway, we’re going to crack on. Day one is about 50 km. Um, it should be fairly flat. And tonight we’re going to spend the night in a place called Korcha. It’s apparently a center of Albanian nationalism. Um, but we’ll see how long it takes us to get there. I’m not sure what the Albanian roads are going to be like. Pothole, dangerous drivers. Who knows? But anyway, day one begins. So, let’s hit the road. All right. So, just outside of Lake Orid. So, that’s where we came up from. And we just come up all these kind of winding streets. What a vista. What a lovely vista. What a vista. Check this out. So, this is Albania in the foreground and then the kind of mountains on the other side of the lake. That is North Macedonia. And then we’re going to be following these mountains, the Presper Mountains, south towards the Greek border. So, let’s keep going. So, yeah, it was pretty flat down at the bottom, obviously, when we were around the lake, but now we’re coming up all these winding uh switchbacks as we head kind of into the mountainous area. And it’s the mountains that we’re going to be heading into that basically form the border between Greece and Albania. And obviously some pretty high mountains there in the bul in the Balkans. Um which is why that’s kind of like the natural borderland between uh well between all of the these countries between Greece and Macedonia or North Macedonia and Albania. Of course, we just stopped on the side of the road, a little place called Podgori. I think Greece is somewhere that way because some guy just pulled over in the car and told us in uh broken English, Greek, and Albanian that he loves us and that he works in Athens and that his house is just over here. Um but no, seriously, he was just checking if we were all right cuz we just stopped. So, it seems like Albania is not what they say in the media. It is a friendly place so far. Reduced meal sandwiches. We stocked up at Luton airport at the uh reduced meal deal sandwiches. If you see that one pound for free half, what do you even call these? Three slices of egg and crest sandwiches which have now been in Kev’s pania bag for the last 2 hours. Also, triangular cut is the elite cut. It’s like 30°. All things considered, not bad. This should keep us going to uh where are we going to court Corsa which is uh what not 30k away probably. So back on the road we’re in the shadow of the Presper Mountains now if you can hear me over the wind. Um so the the Greek border is over there. Did you get reaction? Are you still going? Hey buddy, we’re 50k down and we’re on the edge of Quartz, which is where we’re spending the first night after uh our ride from Orid. And just on the edge of town, we found more of these communist era bunkers. There’s one here and there’s one there. And it’s basically just in a play park. These were built later uh during the communist era to protect it from uh I don’t know I guess the Yugoslavians or the Greeks. I don’t know what’s in there. Is there a back entrance? [Music] These bunkers were built all over Albania. If you look, if you look up here, there’s one just along here as well, like in the kids play park. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. So, there could have been like an underground tunnel perhaps coming across here to the one over there. [Music] One of these. I mean, who knows? I mean, they built like a 100,000 of these, I think. basically bankrupted the entire Albanian economy at the time and no one attacked them in the end anyway. So, it’s all a complete and utter waste of time. How’d you feel? Pretty much the end of day one. It’s hot. It’s hot. It’s not much cover from the shade. Red hot sun beating down and quite a tight cabin. Kept suffering. It’s hot. But we thought these ebikes were going to be easy. They’re pretty easy, but when you got a headwind and it’s like 40° heat, it’s tough. Hey, we’re going to head into quartzer and get ourselves a cold Fanta plant icy lemon and then I think a beer. Nice little sculpture garden in court. Another one there, mate. Yeah. So, that’s three bunkers we’ve seen just on the way into this little town. Another one just over the road here. I guess I guess this would have been uh the gateway to Albania. Probably stop those pesky Yuguslavs getting in or the Greeks. Another quick stop. Just here is a what looks like a Greek Orthodox church or an Orthodox church. And I guess cuz we’re so I guess cuz we’re so close to the border. Um the most of um most of Albania is normally Muslim although during the communist era um most of the religion was suppressed. Um but it’s rare to see a Orthodox church in Albania. But because we are right next to the border there’s a bit of influence from the Byzantine style artworks from the Greek Orthodoxy. Yeah. Place where cultures emerge. Okay guys, so we’ve made it to Villa Borg Jezi in uh Kche where we spent the first night of the trip. I suddenly thought I should probably explain a little bit more about what exactly we are doing and uh and why this came about. So in my uh day job so to speak, I work as a freelance travel journalist. I write for newspapers and uh and I also run my own blog and stuff like that. Um, and I was sent here to write for the I News, one of the English newspapers. And I was sent here by a company called Headwater Holidays. Now, they’re a branch of um, Exodus Travels, who are one of the big tour companies. Um, and they’ve started doing these kind of self-guided ebike tours of countries like Albania. So, they basically wanted me to come over and experience the headwater ebiking uh, cycling tour across Albania, which is one of their new kind of tours that they’re pushing because tourism in Albania is becoming much more significant. It’s increased. I was here about 10 years ago for the first time in 2015 and was probably one of the only tourists here, but now that has completely changed. This video um it worked out perfectly because as you guys know, this channel is all about borders and borderlands. And the cycling tour actually takes you all the way from Lake Orid, where we started the video, um, following pretty much the Greek Albanian border like we did today. And tomorrow on day two, we’ve got a 76 km route, uh, which will take us right down to the sort of southern boundary between Greece and Albania. And at times, we’ll be sort of cycling right along the border itself. And this tour is quite good if you’re kind of like me and you’re into your kind of active sports, but you don’t want to push it too much. Um, so the 50k today was kind of an easy start into it, but it was goddamn hot out there and dusty on the roads. And tomorrow we got a lot further and a lot higher altitude. We’ll be climbing up um to some pretty big summits, I think. Um, so we got six days of full cycling. Um, and I’ll bring you all of those days sort of across two maybe three videos. Now, Headwater give you this kind of cycling app, this navigation device. Um, you’re kitted out with your ebike and your pania. Um, and then basically you follow the app from one hotel to the next. So, it’s kind of the lazy man’s cycling tour, which I like. And amazingly, when you get to your your nice little boutique hotel, um, your luggage is there waiting for you as well. You charge your ebikes overnight, set off again in the morning, and your luggage gets whisked across to the next hotel. So, yeah, the lazy man’s way to cycle Albania. So this is the center of Kchure or Corsa. There’s this big Greek Orthodox uh cathedral here. Apparently this was built in uh 2002 because the original one was destroyed during Ember Hawk’s communist regime when they basically obliterated any form of religion in Albania. For a long time this uh this city is the eighth largest in Albania had a majority Greekeaking Orthodox population. But despite that, it also had Ottoman roots. So there’s a whole mix of kind of Orthodox architecture and sort of Ottoman architecture which you can kind of see in the cathedral which does almost look like a mosque. Despite having this sort of majority uh Greekeaking Christian population for a long time, it then became a center of Albanian nationalism. This happened in the 1880s. Now in 1887 the first Albanian speaking school was founded here in Kchure. During the 1880s there was sort of a surge in Albanian nationalism because Ottomans who were trying to cling on to their empire were basically trying to stop countries in the Balkans from breaking away. Now the Ottomans had banned the Albanian language and so this became a sort of cultural hub for Albanian nationalists. Now the turbulent history of this place kind of continues. It was caught up in all the Balkan conflicts and then in 1916 was actually occupied by the French. Now on the way into town we saw a French military cemetery and it was occupied for a couple of years during the first world war and not just occupied but it became a sort of independent um region almost. became the Republic of Korche which included the city and the surrounding area which was kind of occupied by the French but also politically entirely separate from the rest of Albania and the rest of the Balkan countries at the time. Albania got its independence after that and Albanian nationalism sort of grew from here and Albanian communism has its roots in this city. There’s an Albanian school around here. It was the first place where the Albanian language was taught. Apparently Ember Hawker who became the dictator also taught lessons there and then that led to the founding of the communist party here which then spread out and then after the second world war after occupation by the Germans and the Italians Albanian communism took hold and then for the next couple of decades Ember Hawker ruled with an iron fist and built all of the bunkers that we’ve been seeing on the route down to this city. So, considering I knew absolutely nothing about Korcher before this bike ride began, turns out it’s got a pretty important place in Albanian history. I’m just wandering around Koche, we found this old building which has Communist Party written on the front. I’m not sure if there’s no like signs or anything. So, I don’t know if this is where the Communist Party were based perhaps in the early days. Who knows? We’re looking for there’s the Museum of Education um which is preserving the first Albanian language school in the country which is from 1887. See if we can find it. Aha. So this is it. This is the Museum of Education. Looks very closed. This building behind me, this was built in the 1840s and then in 1887 it became the first Albanian language school in well it wasn’t the country then. was under the Ottoman yolk. Where the olives come from? Kalamatios. All right, we just stopped in the old town in Kche. Um kind of like a bizarre kind of area like the Ottoman style streets that you’ll find in a lot of the cities across the Balkans. And we’ve got ourselves a welldeserved kchure at the end of a long day cycling and some traditional Albanian Bulan style burk. It’s spinach and feta. And the price for this 600 le for two slices of pie and two beers. That’s about 5 quid. You can’t go wrong. So cheers. Good morning. Day two is about to begin. We’ve got 76 km of pretty rough up and downhill terrain through the mountains to take us from Kche across to a place called Shelgore Lake and from there we’ll be pretty close to the sort of southern perimeter of the Albanian Greek border which we should see on the day after. So I think today is going to be another hot one. Might be a bit cooler cuz we’re up in the mountains but it’s still going to be very sunny. So, this could be possibly the longest and toughest day of this uh of this whole trip. So, let’s go. So, the beauty of ebiking around Albania is that you can pull over at little known archaeological sites like this uh this tumuli that we’ve just found just outside of Kchure. So, these are essentially tumuli burial mounds, basically tombs. And these are the largest of their kind in Albania. And from what I was reading, this is basically a piece of uh Albanian prehistory. So these are thought to date back to possibly the 13th century BC and were possibly in use until the 6th century BC. Of course, no one really knows. Yeah, it’s this nice little visitor center here and it’s all completely free entry which is cool. This is the tumulus of Kmenica. There are over 40 of these across Albania. Oh no, there over 200 of these across Albania. Now, from what I was reading about the history of uh the Albanian language when we were in Kcha um is one of the oldest languages in the world. It’s uh not really it’s related to Indo-Uropean languages which means it’s loosely related to all the sort of um Asian European and Indian languages that we have today but it diverged so much from its roots um many thousands of years ago. So I imagine the people that were buried here in the tumuli these were possibly the the ancient Yrian tribes that once populated Albania before the the ancient Greeks even came along. So yeah, this is the start of of European history really or start of Bulan history at least. Anyway, yeah, we just come up the first climbs of the day and even with the ebike, if you haven’t been training, it is pretty damn tough. But we were passing actual cyclists who had gear and uh no electric motors on their bike and they were struggling. We’re now at 1,150 m altitude and we’re heading south. So the Greek border will be over that way and we got to head downhill for about 5 km and then after that we’re going straight back up again. How you feeling after the first climb, Kev? Feeling good. That was a nice little workout. Even though it’s electric, it’s it’s nice. What do you think of Albania? Albania is beautiful. First time here. The people here are very nice. Nothing but good good things to say. Nice. [Music] Wow. So, we just stopped off in the little town of uh Urska, I think it’s called. Um, we came in here for lunch and we just found on the edge of this edge of the town this incredible very brutalist and communist looking war memorial. And looking at all the dates and the red stars, I think these would all have been partisan fighters, Albanian Partisan fighters, uh, during the Second World War. Everyone looks like they died between 1942 and 1944, most in 1944. And that would have been that would have been when the Nazis occupied Albania. From what I understand, during the Second World War, Albania, like most of the Balkans, had an incredibly rough time. First up, they were occupied by the Italians who came through here on their sort of failed attempts to also invade Greece. And then the Nazis came in and kind of took over from the Italians. And after the fall of Mussolini and the surrender of Italy, they took over much of the Balkans, including Albania. Of course, the Albanians fought back. Um, there were many different groups fighting the Nazis, including the Albanian communists. And it was, of course, the sort of vacuum of power at the end of World War II that then allowed Envoxa to sort of seize power after the Second World War and then hold it for obviously decades afterwards. But yeah, some of the graves are quite old, but a lot of them still have flowers on them, fresh flowers. And these ones here look like they’ve been renewed or updated into marble, so it’s clearly a a conflict that the locals still remember. Yeah, very brutalist. So, we’re about 40 km down now. We got a whole load of hills to go. It’s been an eventful day on the bike. I couldn’t capture much of the scenery cuz it was tipping it down with rain. We got attacked by an Albanian sheep dog, an ancient breed that has traced its roots back to the Yrians. It was absolutely fierce. It followed us on the bike running at about 20 km an hour somehow snapping at our hills. And so hopefully we don’t encounter any more territorial sheep dogs um before we get to our hotel tonight. Waiting for me. So let’s uh let’s hit the road. Right. Action. So, we’re just making our way down all these switchbacks and we found yet another Christian church which can actually stop and show you this time. Now, I find this interesting because most of Albania that you’ll visit is majority uh Muslim at least nominally. Um but here in this area because we’re so close to the Greek border um there’s just there’s loads of churches. A lot of these villages are all sort of uh Christian villages I presume and they probably used to have very historic ties to Greece, Greek speaking populations, that kind of thing. Um but they’re still kind of Yeah. modern churches here that have been rebuilt as well after the communist regime probably destroyed most of them. So the these are the roads we’ve been coming up. So you can see where these these cars are coming now. We just came along that from that mountain top coming down and now we’ve got to go up here. So thank god we’ve got the ebikes. You ready for the last stage? I was born ready. stage win I think for myself. Yeah, you reckon? King of the mountains already, aren’t I? Sprint finish at the end. Yeah, we’ve got about 20 to kilometers to go, I think, until we reach our lakeside retreat where we’ll uh enjoy a well earned beer. Yes, sir. Seriously, guys, this place is absolutely spectacular. I think we’re about 1,200 meters up somewhere in the mountains on the border between Greece and Albania. And there’s almost no one around. One or two cars coming past the odd truck perhaps. We saw a few cyclists earlier in the day, but there’s there’s like no one here. I don’t know if this is a national park or if this is just just a just an Albanian valley. It’s just spectacular. It’s really really spectacular. I’ve been to a lot of places in the world and this this place is is is beautiful. Last 5K to go and time for a cold beer. Huh? 3.9K to go. 3.9K to go. 3.8K to go. 76 kilometers down. 6 hours of cycling and we made it the other side of the mountains to Lake Shuga Shel. Anyway, this is where we’re staying tonight. This lovely little log cabin right by the lake. So, that’s the end of day two of ebiking Albania. Tomorrow we’ll be doing it all over again. But we’re heading downhill south to the Greek Albanian border. It’s a welldeserved court after a long days cycling. And check out this lakefront. And if you hadn’t had enough cycling, you can then use the free pedalo to get across the lake. Cheers, G. Cheers. Cheers. [Music] Okay, so day three has begun. We got 57 km of ebiking to take us from the lakeside to a town called Permit, which is kind of just a little bit north of the border. There’s a lot more downhill today and we’re heading south for the first part of the journey directly towards the Greek Albanian border. Now, during the Cold War, the border between Greece and Albania was one of the most militarized, most heavily fortified borders in the world. So, it’s going to be interesting to see what it’s like today. First stop of the day is this little town called Leco, which is about 10 km from the Greek border. And uh we just pulled over because you can see just on the hills here you’ve got one, two, three, four, five, six or seven massive bunkers. Not the tiny ones that we’ve been seeing so far. Proper military installations presumably because these uh fortifications are facing out towards Greece. So you can see in the distance on the hills there, there’s 1 2 3 4 5 6 and then more like military installations over here. So during the uh the communist rule of Embberoxa, he basically fortified the entire the entire country, he built like his own mini iron curtain around the entirety of Albania. They used to call this the uh the North Korea of Europe because uh Hawker wouldn’t even wouldn’t even deal with the communist Yugoslavians next door, let alone the the Greeks or any of the Western countries, not even uh Stalinist Russia. And yeah, the legacy of his uh his Iron Curtain still here on the border, still everywhere in Albania really. Kev’s panty just fell off, but this uh this lovely Albanian gentleman with the donkey over there picked it up for him. All right. Onwards to the border. Mate, this scenery is insane. It doesn’t really do just this one. Albanian lad bringing up some what he’s got picking up the the donkey with some meat. Nice friends. Greece is 5 km that way and the border is marked by a river which we should find pretty soon. So all of this region of Albania that we’re in now and Greece on the other side of the border all used to be part of the Ottoman Empire. Now the border itself that we’re going to see wasn’t really established of course until 1913 after the Balkan Wars when the Ottoman Empire was collapsing and after Greece and then Albania had their independence. But as we’ve seen from the sort of Greek speakaking communities living in this kind of southern borderland and the all the Christian churches um this was obviously a sort of contested area. Um, and at times the Greeks did try to take this park back, including during the first and second world wars. And uh, we should reach the border soon where we’re going to find a bridge um, which has some interesting Second World War history. Beautiful. All right. So, we’ve made it down to the border. The border runs along the river, which is just along here. And there’s this curious piece of history just through these bushes. So the other side of this river is Greece. So this is the river Sarin Taparos. And for what looks like a long part of its length on the map anyway on Google Maps, it forms the border between Greece and Albania. So right now we’re stood on the edge of this old bridge which has been carved in half by the looks of it. It’s been literally destroyed. Um, so it no longer connects these two countries together. During the Second World War, this bridge here, this this little bridge was the scene of fierce fighting between Italian forces and between Greek forces. Now, the Italians had already occupied Albania, and Mussolini, the dictator, wanted to also invade Greece and take over lots of Greek territory. The Italians were surprised because the Greeks put up one hell of a fight and eventually kicked out the Italians and much of the fighting would have happened in places like this basically along the borders and the Greeks pushed the Italians back across this bridge and then from here it actually went on to occupy large parts of uh what was should have been Albanian territory including Kchure where we came from the other day and Jiracasta where we’re heading uh hopefully tomorrow because the Italians failed in their attempt to invade Greece. Uh Hitler said he would send in troops and ended up occupying much of Albania and then much of Greece as well. I don’t know when this bridge was actually destroyed if it was destroyed during the war, but during the Cold War era that followed um the Second World War, Ember Hawker turned Albania into basically a a prison for his own people. Um so they would have destroyed any way in or out of Albania into Greece. During the Cold War era, there would have been no way to cross over from here um to escape Albania basically um to escape the communist rule. Partisan. So yeah, incredible border cuz it just literally drops away down to the river below. And then on the other side, can’t really see it on the camera, but there’s a little hut which is possibly some sort of Greek security checkpoint. I’m not sure. But I mean along this way you could probably just hop over the river if you wanted to swim across. That’s a swim curve. So I’m going to carry on along this road which follows the river and the border. And then there should be some of the uh the more modern crossing points where you can now cross fairly freely between Greece and Albania. Of course though, this still marks the divide between what is in effect two parts of Europe because Greece is in the European Union and Albania is not yet in the European Union. So, I’m not sure how much freedom of movement there is between the two countries, but um I presume it’s fairly liberal. We’ve seen a lot of Greek cars here for us as Brits to get in. It’s very easy um before Albanians to get into Greece. Not 100% sure how easy that is. Uh but we’ll head down that way, check out the uh modern border crossing into Greece, and then carry on north. So here we go. So this is the modern crossing into Greece. So you head over this bridge and then the European Union is over there. But to get across it, you have to go through passport controls in Albadia and then Greece. So, what we’re going to do is just continue on our route and head up north towards a place called Perat, which will take us through the Vagosa Valley, um, the Wild River, Europe’s last wild river and a national park. So, let’s get going. Let’s go. [Music] We’re just following the Vossa River. This is one of the last free flowing wild rivers left in Europe. That means that its course runs unaltered from its source in the Greek mountains which are now to our south north to the Adriatic Sea where it ends on the Albanian coast. Now, in 2023, this whole river area, the river valleys in Albania were declared the first wild river national park in Europe. Stop there. Work out how to get to the river. Is that all? Okay, we’re 49 km down today. Following the Riverdale. We just come to this viewpoint. It’s one of eight along the river. Let’s see what it looks like. Epic gorge and river scenes. And it’s like and there’s like no one else around. You got to get yourself to this part of Albania if you want some really wild scenery still. The Wild River, the last in Europe. So, we found a little hidden spot about 6 km off the main route. We followed the canyon. This isn’t the uh the river we were following, but a tributary of it. And it leads to this place where you’ve got this incredible Ottoman arched bridge. And just across from it as well, on the opposite side, you’ve got all these hot springs, thermal hot springs where everyone’s just chilling out. It’s a Saturday. Everyone’s here for the weekend. Yeah. Nice spot to relax before we continue on for the final section to per 100 le corn on the cob. Beautiful way. Cheers. Cheers. And this is the thermal pool. We’re going to take a dip in in a sec. Opposite the uh Ottoman Bridge. Thermal swim complete. We got 14 km left to get to Perma, but we’re ending day three. We’ve made it to Perma. It was more like 70 km with the uh additional stop over in the canyon there we showed you. And but we’re just here on the outskirts of town because this is a war memorial. So in 1944, Permit became the site of uh the signing of an important treaty, the treaty of permet. So the signing of the Treaty of Permit in 1944 during the Second World War uh essentially laid the groundwork for the uh the post-war Albanian government basically. So this is a far more important place than I realized. I never even knew this place existed until I saw it on the cycling cycling itinerary. So this is a memorial as well to the partisans who were killed. Um looks between January, March, all through the year really in 1944. this little town here on both banks of the river. This is where we will be spending the night. So, our uh our next hotel, I think, is on the other side of this this little bridge down there. So, we’re going to cross over the river Vossa, the Wild River, and then uh settle in for the night. That’s pretty much the day cycling done for us. So, once again, go and find another beer and uh yeah, chill out. So, we got another 40 km to cycle tomorrow.