The Czech family kept an eye on my boat as I went for a walk in the morning along a dirt track to Jala, a seaside town full of nothing but beach bars and restaurants boarded up for winter.

They kindly gave me a bowl of delicious pasta for lunch and filled my bottles with czech water, and then I was off. Thanks guys 🙂

Two things stick out from the paddle – beautiful beaches and ugly resort towns. Albania is changing fast. Concrete silos litter the landscape, dumper trucks racing about to complete futuristic looking towns. Futuristic as in what towns look like in those low budget movies where the planet earth is being destroyed around the year 2100. Not as in what architecture should or has to look like.

I made camp in a stunning little bay and slept like a baby, as I have for the last week, despite the presence of a strange light flashing on to the cliff, the source of which I never found.

The next day I decided to walk up to the top of the mountain ridge, which I thought would only take a couple of hours. A dried up river bed came out on the beach, and I followed it up the valley, scrambling up a deep gorge, wooded and cool, the rocks smoothed in to shutes and holes, which were a fun challenge to climb.

I then hiked up the side of the hill across striations of sharp rocks and prickly vegetation, the beautiful barren landscape revealing itself in the morning sunshine.

Nearing the top, a shepherd was walking down the hill, pausing often to survey the landscape, walking like he could keep walking forever, not breaking a sweat. Emilio, a guy at the rainbow gathering, had spoken about this – conserving energy until you need it, and then delivering it with focused intensity, like a kung-foo master breaking a brick with one chop. Emilio walked like this, and I’d noticed it, there was a certain way he carried himself. He may of been conserving energy, but he radiated it too, and this shepherd was just the same.

He saw me, but looked right through me, and kept walking down the hill. Behind him lumbered three beastly dogs, more like bears than wolves. Two had white coats, one brown. They hadn’t sensed me yet, but as I shifted my foot, a rock clinked like a couple of plates, and they charged towards me, barking ferociously. I walked away briskly, convinced these dogs were going to tear me apart right here. It could happen, no one would care here in Albania. I felt a rush of anger – he should control those bloody dogs. But no, actually this is the land of the shepherd, I’ve no right to be here. All the same, I’d come this far, I wanted to reach the summit. The dogs lumbered off and I tentatively started back up to the ridge, wary of the sound of bells, because that meant dogs were near. The other side of the peninsula layout below me, where I’d be paddling tomorrow or sometime soon.

The mountains were full of hidden valleys and gorges, and nestled in one of them was a group of stone houses, smoke rising from their chimneys, a man on a pony making his way up the hill.

Oh to live up here! I imagined the little children growing up knowing nothing but this valley, but knowing every rock and tree, every cave and crag like the back of their hand. Waking up under a thick blanket in a warm, smoky hut and heading off up the hill with their loyal dogs to care for the flock.

I headed back in to the gorge, the obstacle course that was fun on the way up had lost its appeal now, and it seemed to never end. The sun was dipping by the time I got back, and I felt exhausted and dehydrated, a much longer day than I’d planned.