Day 5 Intrepid: A walk in the Rugova Valley

It dawns a beautiful day.

After breakfast, we take a minibus transfer to the village of Drelaj which is deep in the Rugova Valley and close to the Montenegrin border. The canyon is considered one of the longest and deepest in Europe. 

The road is incredibly narrow with tunnels where trucks backed up to get through.

The Rugova Mountains rise to over 2400 m and were declared a national park in 2013. 

We embark on 3 to 4-hour hike with a local guide Haki and his stray dog Bebe.

The Rugova Valley is often compared to Switzerland and we are surrounded by tall grass pastures dotted with wildflowers, the sound of cow bells drifting through the valley and simple wooden shacks and stone houses with smoke drifting up to the granite cliffs above.

It was very rough going at times. We did plenty of climbing and descending. Some of the walking was quite off-piste through meadows of flowers; some along forest tracks. All very lovely. I had to be assisted over a stile and a few steep downhill bits. The new sling helped.

We stopped at one point to visit the memorial of former President Ibrahim Rugova where he grew up. There was a film crew there so we will be on Kosovan TV!

Walking stats from MF: 8.51 km, duration 5 hours, total ascent 542 m.

Lunch at a local home in the valley is amazing. All home cooked, locally produced: soup, spinach burek, delicious rice with beef, salad, cheese and yoghurt made on the premises. And some plum rakija.

Despite being pretty tired, it was too early to go to bed so we headed off for a drink at the Zade Lounge Bar. The beauty of these little excursions is the mini journeys which take you into the back-street neighbourhoods. 

And boy, are these back ‘streets’:  unpaved, potholed, muddy, nowhere to walk so you are constantly dodging the cars, bikes, whatever as well as trying to not fall in a hole (I can do without that).

Bar was cute (a real hole-in-the-wall easily missed if you didn’t know), drink nice, smoking bloody awful. We walked back a different way - just to be different …

Total Walk: 14.3 kms.