We had planned for today to be another short day and for it to end at the Albanian coast just south of the port and resort town of Duress. Via the internet we had located a beach front hotel and campground and thought that if it was "OK" we might spend a day or two there. Well as it turned out we never did get to it. The problem was exiting from the coastal multi-lane highway. Every time our GPS showed us an intersection at which we should turn/exit we were confronted by a highway edge with no way off. After this happened a few times we gave up on our beach side camp and headed to the next destination on Nina's list the town of Berat, a UNESCO world heritage site.

The route to Berat eventually left the EU funded multi lane coastal highway and ventured onto more basic roads. We bumped along these for a while before these turned into a long section of road-under-construction.

Camping for the night. Again from our OSM map and internet we had discovered the possible existence of a campground about 15km before Berat and as we approached the spot we were on the look out for any signs that this campground actually existed and sure enough a series of blue and white signs displaying a stylized tent led us to a very narrow driveway. A little further investigation and we discovered that there was indeed a campground with all of the amenities, electricity, showers and toilet, dump and wifi - what more could we want.

I don't know that the place has a name but the manageress Donna spoke some English and was very helpful. There is some major improvements being undertaken on the grounds and so one would expect this place to continue to exist. It is open all year as Donna lives on the premises.

After lunch we got some direction from Donna regarding mini-bus services into and taxi services back from Berat and we set off to explore the town. The towns claim to fame is the hill top castle that dominates the area, the steep side valley in which the town is located and the traditional houses built on up the sides of the valley in such a manner that they appear to stand on top of each other.

We spent a few hours climbing the steep cobbled streets to the castle and generally looking around the town with Nina taking photos.

One of the interesting features of the castle/fortress is that many local people still live there. Walking around inside the walls we saw many houses with cars parked (squeezed) nearby and people going about their normal business. It seemed to me that with the steep hill to get to it and the difficulties of maintenance that living inside a medieval castle might not be all that great an idea.

Getting back to camp proved to be more of a difficulty than we had anticipated. When we were ready to return we could not find a taxi anywhere and minibuses seemed in short supply also. We eventually got a lift from an Albanian man who works half the year as a tour guide in Greece.

Another observation about Albania. We have been surprised by the number of groups of policemen on the side of the highways pulling over local drivers. We have not seen this practice since countries like Turkmenistan. The speed limits of the roads seem to very low with speeds of 40kph sometimes required on multi-lane highways and 20kph on two lane highways. We concluded that this was to provide the numerous police patrols with an excuse to stop drivers. Possibly a revenue raising exercise.

Bunkers

Notice in the second photo a picture of a concrete bunker partially covered by vegetation. Apparently back in the 1950's these were built all over the country as a form of protection for the population in the event of invasion. The designer/builder was (apparently) so confident in the strength of his design that he volunteered to be inside one of the bunkers while it was bombarded with (so the story goes) tank canon fire.