Training Trek for the Real Trek!

My daughter, Rebecca, joined me to travel through the Balkans for three months—Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. We are currently in Albania. The main thing that we are most excited about is coming up next week when we embark on a 12-day trek around the Albania Alps on the Peaks of the Balkans Trail.

Here are just a few of the elevation maps for that trail:

We do need to be in shape for this hike!

So, since we hit Montenegro on May 6, we have been putting in quite a few training days to build up our stamina and sure-footedness. This training culminated last week as we did a three-day test trek in the Zagoria Valley near Permet in Southern Albania.

The nice thing about these walks is that we don’t have to carry camping gear—we stay in guesthouses in small villages along the way. The hosts feed us dinner and breakfast and provide food for a picnic lunch. This really lightens our load. For our “test trek” we loaded up our bags as we will pack them for the Peaks of the Balkans trail. We have not been able to weigh them, but we are guessing they weigh about 24 pounds (12 kilos). Pretty light for a multi-day trek.

For this “test trek”, we stayed overnights in the villages of Sheper and Limar.

To give you an idea of what this trek was like, I created a three-part video series. You can view the three videos below.

Day 1: Permet to Sheper

https://youtu.be/FinfoA0GOsk

Day 2: Sheper to Limar

https://youtu.be/DH8TwpsVVB0

Day 3: Limar to Peshtan and Return to Permit

https://youtu.be/u2je7TA6zns

Our Peaks of the Balkans trek commences on June 24 and finishes on July 6. Our friend, Nev Chamberlain from the UK will join us. I will be documenting the Peaks trek in a similar way and I plan to share those videos sometime in the future. Stay tuned!

Maps of Peaks of the Balkans Trail. We will be beginning the trek in Valbone, Albania. We will cross into Kosovo and Montenegro and then back into Albania, ending the journey in Theth. 145 kilometers

2 thoughts on “Training Trek for the Real Trek!”

Paula
July 16, 2022 at 7:47 pm

Hi Cathy! Just watched your Albania series. I met you at the JCC in New Orleans one Saturday morning (in ladies locker room-Lol!) Hubby and I have been looking at Northern Greece, maybe Albania trip in October. I’ll keep following your wonderful adventures…
Paula

1. admin
  July 17, 2022 at 2:37 am
  
  Yes! I remember you, Paula. Glad you enjoyed the post. I am working on a series of posts documenting our experience on the “Real Trek.” I hope to get some of them up in the next couple weeks. If you are signed up on my mailing list, you will get an email notice when they are published.
  (BTW: I recommend visiting the monasteries of Meteora when you are in Greece!)
  https://cathleensodyssey.com/meteora-part-1/

Training Trek for the Real Trek!