Simon - Salter's travels

Albanian Alps

I was never very aware of Albania having Alps. But it does. Really good ones. Steep, remote and spectacular.

NW from Shkodër we wandered up a terrific valley and finally settled for a couple of days at a lovely little spot nestled in the curls of the road. Six cars a day. None at night. Felt like we had the place to ourselves.

As the sun set there was not a light visible anywhere. Not even the glimmer of a farmhouse light in the valley. Clear skies and a new moon made for stellar panoramas. We spent quite a few hours huddled under blankets watching for meteorites.

Albania – Lake Skadar

South from Montenegro into Albania and we came across a wonderful campsite by the side of the immense Lake Skadar. The lake is one of Southern Europe’s major bird reserves. We did see many birds but they all looked a bit like seagulls to me.

Shortly after we arrived another truck turned up with another travelling couple. The remarkable Fred & Alice with their two lovely children Estaban & Ruben. Their story is here http://www.lespetitsvoyageurs.fr/

Fred built this truck with its magnificent raising roof by himself.

Montenegro coast road

South from Croatia we continued to follow the beautiful coast road. We drove through a tiny bit of Bosnia to get into Montenegro. A couple of days later we found a perfect little beach spot with a bar just 30 minutes walk away.

A little bit of beach all to ourselves for a couple of days

Sun-downers on the beach – a great tradition

Distant Budva is popular with tourists but everything is closed at this time of year

Dubrovnik

Beautiful and ancient Croatian city. Still a popular tourist destination despite being heavily shelled in the ‘homeland war’ of 1991. More recently used as a set for Game of Thrones and Star Wars. Baloo is way to big for the streets and car parks of Dubrovnik so we parked several kilometers away and bobbed in on the bike.

Croatia Coast Road

Terrific driving. Blue sea, great views, winding road and at this time of year, not very crowded.

We tried to climb a hill. 700m up we got here and gave up. Still ended up walking off in the dark.

They would not let us in the castle with the dog.

Venice

This was supposed to be a bit of a cultural day. What we actually found, Venice at high tide, was damp, decaying and smelt of sewage.

The day after we visited the water was 0.5m higher. This caused lots of problems.

The ferry from Punta Sabbioni was a great way to arrive

Steel shutters at the bottom of each door to try and keep the water out

Piazza San Marco. Diane is modelling her new wellies with the leopard print tops.

South through the Alps

Setting off for a slightly longer trip.

Getting round corners like this can sometimes take a few shunts and the occasional deep breath

Rhine Camping

For our first venture out we found a few places to stay on the Rhine and the areas around it.

We don’t fit in very well at this sort of campsite

Building Baloo

Vehicles like Baloo do not come off the shelf. They are quite uncommon. In fact our concept of a dream vehicle seemed to be something unique until we met up with Unicat.

The plan, here, is to post a series of articles describing how we set about working with Unicat to come up with the sort of vehicle we wanted. Unicat are, in my opinion, the absolute world leaders in this sort of thing. You can find them here: https://www.unicat.net/

The vehicle is a genuine mobile home. Not a camper van. The difference is to do with compromise. When camping you accept using sleeping bags and paddling across the grass to use a shower. That is all great fun. For a while. Eventually you want to get back to your proper bed and your own shower. We wanted a mobile home that we could live in for years on end so we needed a vehicle that did not compromise how we lived.

Baloo is what we ended up with.

Industrial camping

Industrial Camping is the term used by Unicat owners to describe camping at the Unicat factory. We did several weeks of Industrial Camping as part of the process of moving into our new home. Packing was a big part of this. Packing everything into lockers, drawers and cupboards. Clothes, tools, equipment, food, supplies. Everything apparently needed packing at least four times, unpacking, rearranging and packing again. Eventually things started to fit into place but it was all remarkably time-consuming and difficult. The essential question of what to take, when examined in detail, is almost impossibly hard to answer. We spent an awful lot of time packing things, thinking carefully about it, changing our mind and then unpacking them again. Ultimately some order emerged. We were pleased with some of the packing and when boredom set in we stuffed everything else into boxes marked ‘misc’.