A digger arrived at the crack of dawn and started scooping up gravel from the riverbed, apparently a common practice here and in Montenegro, and one that’s destroying the river ecosystem.

I got paddling and soon re-entered Montenegro, without any formalities on the border. The river gradually slowed to an ooze, but my journey to the sea was still much faster than on the way up and before long I was back at the sparkling sea where I turned right on to the inventively named long beach – a 13km stretch of sand that Montenegrins seem to be very proud of. It’s the last long sandy beach I’ll see in a while, which I’m not too sad about, because from this point onwards the coast is jagged and rocky.

Approaching the first town I came to, Ulcinj, I heard singing and could see a crowd gathered on the promenade, so I paddled in to the bay to investigate. A stage with a big screen was set up on the street and lots of jolly people were milling around drinking beer and eating cevapi (sausage) baps from a stall.

Some guys saw me looking confused as I tried to work out what this was all about and pulled me over, ‘Here, have some beer my friend, have some cevapi, it’s all free, welcome to Montenegro brother’. Stumbling upon this party, I couldn’t believe my luck! The whole thing was celebrating a football player from Ulcinj, Ivan Gudelj, who was there with a bunch of his mates from the Yugoslavian team.

I repeatedly queued up at the sausage stall and ate until my stomach was bursting. The event ended with fireworks and a scramble for the last sausages, but I hung around with a bunch of old Montenegrin men singing drunkenly and a German couple whose van had broken down on their way to Greece, and then I camped on the beach.