Luckily the new day started with warm sunshine and my clothes quickly dried hung up on a branch. My sleeping bag and jacket are goose down, which is great until it gets wet. A mistake like that could be serious when it gets chillier.

I walked up to the Rozafa castle, which was incredible, the best castle I’ve ever visited. After usually being at sea level it was very refreshing to gain some height and take in the panoramic views of the river I’d paddled up, the mountains, the city, the lake – what an amazing place.

A German lady took a photo for me and we got talking about life for women in Albania. Apparently marriage is usually arranged and most girls marry by sixteen so ‘they don’t learn to think their own way’. Something I’ve noticed is that men and women never seem to socialise together, at the cafes for instance, you only see men.

In place of my broken sandal I’ve been wearing a flip-flop I found in a bin on my left foot. As a foreigner, everyone seems to eye me and up and down on the street, and it made me laugh how many people noticed the odd shoes. Why does asymmetry creep us out so much? I’m not sure but I think it’s good to push back against it.

Back on the water I paddled the last few kilometres upstream in to the Shkodra lake. Southern Europe’s biggest lake, it has a shore length of 129 miles. Surrounded by mountains, a haven for birds, and scattered with a handful of islands, it’s a paddlers paradise.

I decided to paddle along the rocky southern side, where the mountains rose steeply from the shore, rather than the reed beds of the marshy northern side where landing on shore could be difficult.

The sun set and a vast moon crept over the mountains, the air quickly becoming chilly, sucking the warmth out of me. With nowhere to land along the rocky shore, I headed in to a small fishing harbour and pitched my tent on the damp grass next to an old boat.

For the first time this trip I had to wear every bit of clothing I’ve got. I’ve no idea what the temperature actually was but I imagine it’s colder here than at the coast, and in the morning a fisherman said it was 2°C. My sleeping bag goes to 0°C. I think I’ll get too cold off the water before I get too cold on the water, but time will tell.