Day 41 – Dubrovnik to Bay of Kotor

I woke up feeling terrible. I had only had about three hours sleep, the others in my room were fast asleep. I realized I had told Philip I was leaving at 6.30am, but it was getting close to 8.00. I had breakfast and packed up my things; everything seemed to take forever. When I finally got going, I was too late to say goodbye to Philip who had already left.

I headed up the hill and out of the old town, the back wheel on my bike was looking a little flatter than usual, so I decided to pump it up, for some reason the valve unscrewed on my pump so deflated the entire tire. Cutting a long story short, I had to completely dismantle the bike, change the inner tube and in the heat and the way I was feeling, it was a real struggle and took about 45 minutes. Once I got going, I was ok. I headed out of Croatia and into Montenegro. As I came into the country, there were forest fires that created this gentle haze in the distance, probably not great for the lungs but easy on the eye. Although now I couldn’t use my phone as I had done throughout the other countries, Montenegro uses the euro which was handy.

I headed down to the beach to get out of the midday sun and relaxed with an ice tea and some lunch. The aim was to get near Kotor for the evening. I cycle toward the bay; I was tempted to catch the ferry that would have taken about 50km off my journey but opted once I was there to cycle around the entire bay. It was incredible, this place is just magical, yet it seems to be a miss with tourists, the roads are quiet, and you don’t have large hotels taking up the view.

As night drew in I found a place to camp on the hill, there was a layered hill, out of sight from everyone with a view out on the lake and towards Kotor. It had been a struggle today, I was exhausted but to go to bed with this view was not too bad.