In May 2022 I came to North Macedonia with my sister-in-law, Johan’s sister. She had heard a lot about life here but hadn’t visited so was looking forward to seeing it for herself.

Covid-19 seemed to be in a lull and no testing was required. Johan had spent 3 weeks here in February after contracting Covid and not being able to get a negative Covid test to leave the country. He was pretty fed up especially as testing before travelling was stopped a couple of weeks afterwards and once he had had his 10 days quarantine he would have been have to return to The Netherlands.

May 2022, my sister-in-law was here for 5 days so we were intending on having a mix of relaxation and visiting the local highlights and we were also keen to get out on the bikes again.

We packed up with plenty of water and set off along the usual route through Podlog towards Zrnovici where we replenished ourselves with a skopska salad and a good amount of water. We are both relatively fit and cycling to Zrnovici was not an enormous challenge, we were aware that the temperature was on the increase and moving towards 30⁰C, but there was a reasonable breeze and we thought instead of taking the route back to Kocani lets go further into the mountain and take another route back.

We did, on hindsight, maybe take this decision too lightly! We cycled up into the mountains, the views were amazing.

We cycled further up towards Morodivis and Vidoviste located in the base of mountain Plackovica, these small villages have each around a population of approximately 450 people. It was a long hard climb up to the villages on the bike and it became quieter and quieter, the silence was astounding and we were both aware of how absolute the quietness was. When we were cycling to Zrnovci we were surrounded by a cacophony of birdsong, in some places whole trees appeared to be full of birds and it felt like the tree was going to explode the birdsong was so loud. Here in the mountain even the birdsong was less.. we could only hear our breathing.

Evidence of past and present life flowed over, it was difficult to know what had been abandoned and what was just waiting to be reclaimed and put to use.

We continued cyling to Terantsi the last small village before the welcome descent started. We stopped for a rest in a bus shelter, where we had the company of a few ladies who were collected by a minibus from their place of employment in Kocani. It is a very remote place and without own transport it would be nigh on impossible to commute to the town every day. Most large companies have their own buses for the purpose of commuting the employees into work. The ladies looked on a amusement at us as we sat puffing in the bus shelter, drinking water and catching our breath before we continued on.

The cycle ride down towards Obleshevo was a welcome relief! As we cycled down the rice fields came back into view and with it the ‘air- conditioning’ effect as you cycle past them. Because the rice fields are submerged in water it produces a cool air flow which you briefly catch as you cycle past.

We stopped to inspect the rice fields and saw an abundancy of dragonflies and butterflies, the stream leading to the rice fields was cold and fresh, we saw herons swooping into the rice fields and sitting patiently waiting for their prey, which we presumed were mice or maybe water rats scurrying around the fields.

We finally cycled into Obleshvo and back towards Podlog before arriving home, we had cycled around 30km, which in The Netherlands is a piece of cake but through the mountains in the soaring heat was another ball game!

From the floor we made it to the garden for a very relaxing afternoon!