south-western Macedonia. We're not sure exactly what St Naum did
beyond get martyred sometime in the tenth century, but he left behind
a rather beautiful little church, where we have been the latest
lighters of candles and sayers of prayers in a tradition going back a
thousand years. Apparently the icons here are known for their healing
of the mentally ill - I'm afraid to report that as yet neither of us
has been healed to the extent that we've decided to abandon this bike
trip.
The monastic community here has all but disappeared, sadly, and the
whole area has been converted into a holiday camp for weekending
Macedonians. These are a rather strange breed, we have decided, but
the upside is that our spandex looks relatively tame next to the
Macedonian male's swimwear of choice.
In order to get here we had two climbs, one just across the border to
get to the first of our lakes, and the second climb taking us up over
12km to 1600m in altitude. At the top the mountain fell away almost
vertically into the blue lake below; the only other people up there
with us were the local hang-gliders.
We've now done over 500 miles in 5 days since Istanbul, and tomorrow
we will head across yet another border to Tirana, the Albanian
capital.
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1 comment:
Crikey, you chaps don't hang around, do you? Are you being chased by a pack of killer bees? Or just planning Balkan a remake of "If it's Tuesday, this must be Belgium"?
Ed
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