Montenegro greeted us with a severe weather warning and boy did we have a thunder and lightning spectacular throughout the night followed by a day of rain,.Greeted the next day by bright sunshine we hoped to enjoy a day birdwatching around lake Shkoder National park area sadly driving around the lake we could see no obvious footpaths. The border with Albania runs through the lake so being that close to the border we decided to cross and see if we would fair better on the Albanian side, however it soon became clear that we would need to hire a boat if we wanted to see any wildlife and being out of season that was not going to be easy so gave it up as a bad idea.

On a personal note we found driving through Albania very frustrating, the main road networks are in poor condition and local side roads are nothing but potholed dirt tracks. The lack of road sense by both drivers and pedestrians adds to the difficulty of a safe journey. The places of interest and historical sites seemed to have been consumed by the sprawl of locations getting bigger resulting in chaos around markets and shops with poor street parking making access in a motorhome difficult at best and otherwise impossible

Albania as a country has so much to offer. The potential activities range from the miles of beach front and clear turquoise waters on the Adriatic coast, large areas of wilderness in the form of lakes, forests and coastal wetlands teaming with wildlife from bears, wolves, large wild cats pelicans and migratory flocks of birds, mountain ranges running the length of the country soaring skywards, not quite as tall or dramatic as the Alps but daunting and a challenge for any climber or hiker and wide rivers in the south with clear mountain water flowing deep after rains and full of trout that the fly fishing community would adopt immediately.

We appreciate their entry into the modern world is as recent as the late 1990s and adjustment takes time hopefully they can learn from the development mistakes of others where locations have been spoilt like Budva in Montenegro and Split in Croatia. Our final comment is that Albania is worth experiencing but is for travellers not holidaymakers at present.