The plan this morning was to go for a swim in a nearby river followed by a little jaunt up to a waterfall for more swimming. Possibly the kind of swimming that would cryogenically freeze all of your organs but the days were sticky and hot so we’d probably relish these few minutes of cold. It had, however, been a very dry summer. There’d been wildfires when we arrived, that’s how hot and dry it was. Clearly none of this is conducive to a beautiful, flowing mountain river so swimming was out of the question on account of the fact swimming only tends to be possible with the presence of water. That ruled the waterfall out too. We’d ummed and ahhed about going to the waterfall for a while as most of the reviews talked about how utterly terrifying the road was. I wasn’t sure I was up for it, large portions of my nerves were still spread out along the road to the campsite, but I do love a waterfall. The lack of water in the stream sealed it though. I’m not going through all that just for a trickle I could rival with a morning wee.

Fuck it, then. We’d just head straight to Virpazar. It wasn’t an unpleasant drive but as soon as you take that turn off into the small town it does get a bit chaotic. We were flagged down by a bloke on the way in and because I am an anxious mess roughly 86% of the time I thought we’d tried to squeeze the car down a one way street or something because it was quite narrow. No. Montenegro gives zero fucks if a street is narrow, you can still fit six cars and a bus down there, mate. He wanted to sell us a boat tour on Lake Skadar but we already had one sorted so we politely declined his offer and he took no for an answer straight away, cheerfully waving us on.

We were quite early so before heading to the campsite we took a little detour to see a viewpoint and a war memorial, and when I say “little” I’m talking about the width of the fucking road. Oh my gosh. What the fuck. It wasn’t just narrow though, it was high up and there were very few safety barriers, and the safety barriers that did exist looked like they’d fall over if you glanced at them slightly wrong. We very gingerly crept along around blind corners, preparing to stop and reverse, making verbal notes of anywhere I might be able to pull back to if necessary. I don’t mind being the reverser, I’m confident reversing, but I’m actually quite scared of heights. I’ll make damn sure I’m the one cosying up to the cliff face whilst you inch your vehicle past mine, bum-clenchingly close to the edge.

We pulled over at a viewpoint for a little taster of the lake we’d be visiting tomorrow: Lake Skadar. One of Montenegro’s five national parks. Beautiful. It took the edge off the horror of the tiny road with the sheer drops for a short while but I did have my little heart set on visiting this war memorial in Godinje which meant a bit more of this death road. It wasn’t just any old war memorial, it was a spomenik, which is just the Serbo-Croat word for monument, but this kind of monument refers specifically to abstract structures built in former Yugoslavia under President Tito from the 50s to the 80s. In a nutshell, they’re anti-fascist monuments built to remember the struggle the country faced under the Nazis, but they’re absolutely stunning to look at. If you fancy a bit of a rabbit hole, GreyScape has a great article (they’re all about that sweet, sweet Brutalism) and of course there’s the Spomenik Database, which tells you everything you need to know, right down to how to find the buggers.

I first found out about them when I was researching Kosovo, realised that Montenegro was also part of former Yugoslavia, and started weaving them into our itinerary much to Tarrant’s dismay. I promised there’d be no 50 kilometre round-trips just to gawp at a lump of concrete despite the fact one of our favourite hobbies is trigpointing which is literally scouring the British countryside for obsolete concrete pillars. We’d only go and look at them if we were nearby anyway and this appeased her. Then she saw this one in Godinje and her interest was piqued. Good. Goooood. Let the obsession run through you!

Okay. We were at the wrong end of a narrow, winding road so the sooner we got back down this fucker to somewhere we can pitch the tent for the night the better. We managed to get to Camp Lad physically in one piece, but emotionally probably could have done with a large vodka, set up camp and walked back into Virpazar to register our presence at tourist information and find some manner of food. All the restaurants seemed to be selling the same things at the same price which made the decision making that little bit easier and we ended up at Restaurant Pelikan where a very patient waiter guided us through the pronunciation of “Nikšićko”, and also Njeguški stek which is what we ordered. This is a thin slice of pork with Njeguški pršut (a prosciutto from the village of Njeguši) and Njeguški sir (cheese from the same place) folded into it. Then it’s cooked and they put another slice of Njeguški pršut on top. That’s quite the metric fuck tonne of meat then. I feel like meat and cheese is the Balkan way of life.

When I was looking into Virpazar and earmarked Camp Lad as a potential place to stay I discovered that there was a winery a short walk from the campsite that offered wine tasting so no driving would be necessary. We usually have to book a tour if we want to do wine tasting because I can’t be chucking fermented grape juice down my neck then operating a vehicle. That would be entirely inappropriate. I’d emailed ahead and booked us in for wine tasting with some cheese and meats to shovel into our faceholes because apparently we hadn’t already consumed enough cheese and meat that day. Tarrant isn’t meant to have dairy but she’s been taking a tablet to protect her stomach from all the Naproxen she’s had to take since shattering her tibial plateau and a happy side effect of that is the fact she can actually eat quite a bit of it and not, y’know, shit herself.

We showed up to Eco Resort Cermeniza and were greeted by Nemanja who was absolutely lovely, the perfect host. I kind of wished we were staying here now, it looks incredible! I mean, it’d want to be for €170 a night, slightly more than the €20 a night we were paying at the campsite, but we don’t get a pool and a banging sunset view at the campsite. They were preparing for the harvest on Saturday and they’d dragged a large, copper machine out of storage which was apparently for distilling the rakija, a strong brandy made from fruit weighing in at about 50%. His grandad called it the “happy machine”. Rakija is made out of whatever you have so here they use grapes. In the mountains around Durmitor they use plums. Apparently his grandad can tell if a grape is good or bad just by looking at it. The good grapes go to make the wine, the bad grapes go to make the rakija.

So Nemanja is fourth generation, his great-grandad built the winery, but he also teaches history at the university in Podgorica so he’s got his work cut out, bless him. It’s only a small winery producing about 2000 bottles a year which is two-tenths of fuck all in wine producing terms but they only sell it to their guests. You can’t buy it online or in local shops. They produce a white, a red, a sweet red similar to a port, and of course the rakija and we tried one of each. They’re all lovely to be fair but Tarrant was particularly enamoured with the sweet red. It’ll be one of those things she falls in love with and can probably never have again. The red is the vranac grape and the white is krstač, both of which are Montenegrin grapes. I’m obviously not going to wax lyrical about noses and tasting notes because I have the palate of a springer spaniel but I know what I like and I do like this wine.

Nemanja was the highlight though, regaling us with stories of his dad and grandad. In fact this whole experience was so fucking enjoyable, an absolute highlight. We stayed on the terrace for one more glass of wine, chatting to the others who were all staying there, the jammy buggers. Don’t get me wrong, I do love camping but I also like nice things in my old age. Tarrant has dragged me out of my “yes it has rats in the wall but it’s cheap” stage but I still can’t quite bring myself to drop that much money just on accommodation. Didn’t stop us talking about though it as we ambled back the way we came to sleep on the floor again.

Jump to “Useful shit to know…”

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Virpazar, Bar Municipality, Montenegro

Stayed at: Camp Lad, Virpazar

Useful shit to know…

• The spomenik at Godinje is located up some steps at 42.222536, 19.112119. You can park near the bottom.
• The viewpoint is around 42.23514, 19.105626.

• Camp Lad is nice with lovely staff. It’s family run. It was €5 per person, €5 for the tent and €5 for the car, so €20 a night.
• Only 1 kilometre walk into the town.
• They have a tavern where they’ll cook dinner or breakfast for a good price. Dinner is different every evening. They also sell cold beer.
• There’s a place for washing up and there’s a kettle you can use too.
• The toilets and showers are fine. The shower only has a curtain though but it’s quite obvious that you’re in there so no-one should walk in. Water is lovely and hot.
• There are power sockets that you can use to charge your devices for free which is a really nice touch because that can be an issue when you’re camping.
• They were a bit weird with the registration, they said that no one really cares about it anyway but I insisted we wanted to do it. They said we should only need the address but everywhere we registered were more concerned with who the owner was. They did give us his name in the end.

• You can contact Eco Resort Cermeniza to book the wine tasting. It’s €10 just for the wines or €15 if you want the snacks too.
• They’re very responsive to email.

• If you find yourself on the E80 heading towards Virpazar you’ll likely end up in a very, very long tunnel. This is the Sozina Tunnel and it costs €2.50 for cars to use. Less for motorcycles, more for larger vehicles.
• You can pay in cash when you get to the toll booth, just make sure you use the correct lane as some of them seem to be if you have some manner of pass.