banter, but for correcting wrong turns, warning of oncoming vehicles in the narrow mountainous roads and pointing out interesting features. Plus you can light up your preferred Spotify tracks when bored. Raytcho decided on a shakedown ride in the afternoon up a local mountain with the last 4km being a loose, rocky climb to test both bikes and riders. Having overcome the challenge, we headed back to Raytcho Ranch via an old disused 1km Roman tunnel only wide enough for bikes and cows. Many old Roman roads were to follow, some disguised amongst overgrown trees and scrub.
MONTENEGRO COAST The next two days were riding through Montenegro’ s coastal regions, Raytcho’ s regular riding areas, even venturing to the border of Albania in the steep mountains and north to the coastal mountains to Kotor. Here we saw tiny cruise ships way below in the Kotor harbour only to find it was actually large liners once we descended from way above the gondolas. The twisty switchbacks on the narrow decaying roads seemed to go on forever. Back at the Ranch, we fitted out our large saddlebags with tools, clothing and extras for 13 days riding, which turned into a case of“ what is important and what is not” and seeing we would
be camping, we didn’ t need too much. Spare tubes were an essential item. A final check of Greg’ s bike revealed that the right hand chain adjusting bolt had broken off, just leaving the lock nut and remaining shaft. We couldn’ t remove it, and the risk of damaging it was too great as we were heading off to Bosnia the next day. Fortunately Greg has an Armstrong Torque Wrench so swung on the axle nut in the secure knowledge it wouldn’ t shift. It never did.
BOSNIA The‘ Bosnia Quest’ was one of the main reasons for the trip, with the expectation of four days of challenging adventures. To get there we took a 2.5 day ride through the mountains instead of three hours on the highway. So, north towards the border we went, over rocky passes, along winding backcountry roads, gravel roads and some narrow single track that hadn’ t been used for what looked like several years. Through villages, tiny farm settlements and empty wilderness terrain. No fences, no restrictions and definitely no health and safety. The navigation was spearheaded by Chris C and Raytcho, who plotted the routes each night and left it to Chris S to upload the GPS tracks to the Garmin devices he’ d generously loaned us for the trip. Despite the high-tech help, we
26 KIWI RIDER