Total distance travelled: 65km; Total descent: 1261m; Total ascent: 790m; Max elevation: 1756m; Current location: N43 22 4; E20 01 9, elev 1144m; Mental note: when planning a bike trip with a backup vehicle, make sure your plans for the car are at least as good as those for the cycling. Our plan today was to cycle along the ridge of Golija for another 20km or so, the Niva following the same route, until we got to Jankov kamen, the highest point of Golija, whence we would go our seperate ways. We woke to a very foggy wet morning, but not too much the worse for wear after the night’s rain.

After far too much messing around as usual, we set off, bikes initially trailing the Lada until we realised we could ride these rough tracks much quicker than the car and overtook it, riding through some pretty remote, high altitude country.

We reached the Jankov kamen rendezvous fairly quickly, looking forward to striking across country, up the track you can see in the background into the woods:

This would be a route that as far as we knew had not been travelled by bike and we were keen to try it.Meanwhile, the Niva would take a right at this crossroads and meet us at an intersection a long long way round. Well, we waited for Marko and Dusan behind us in the Lada, and waited… To cut a long story short, by the time they had finished getting lost, stuck in mud and snow and generally delayed, we had been at the rendezvous a couple of hours and it was too late to risk an untried trail through the mountains. We decided to cut our losses and descend south-west along the known, but still very nice trail off Golija down to a main road and on to Sjenica (a desperately bleak town). We then headed north some 15km to a great camp spot under a full moon and starry sky (though no mobile network, even though much less remote than the previous nights! Hence the lateness of this post). From here we hope to head north tomorrow to rejoin the planned route west across country towards Zlatibor. Sort of a disappointing day today, but we made a good distance despite everything and still have plenty of potential for adventure in the coming days. P.s. Now morning and we have hit the road. It dropped to minus 4 last night, evidenced by the frozen water bottles, but a fantastic sunny morning. We are heading up now to rejoin our cross country route up to Zlatibor.

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Posted on May 2nd, 2007 by markowe
Filed under: Serbia Bike Trek!