The Ham Nomads

4 May 2015. <MK> Skopje; Kumanovo; Grovci —

Today was a bit of a weird day. We left our campsite, and drove up Mount Vodno to the cable car station, intending to take the Cable Railway up to the Millennial Cross. Today is Monday and guess what — the Railway doesn't run on Mondays! Anyway, it was an interesting drive up he hill! On the way up, we passed the Mother Theresa Clinical Campus (Комплекс клиники Мајка Тереза), a very busy hospital precinct.

We then went out to see the famed Skopje aqueduct. It appears in all the tourist brochures, but is there any access? — No! We did see it from a distance, but our impression of Roman aqueducts will still be the one in Segovia (which must be one of the best anyway!).

While on the subject of frustrations, we must mention that we have had wonderful support in our blogging from McDonald's throughout our trip — except in Macedonia. The Garmin has been pointing us to Macca's in Macedonia, but when we get there the place is derelict. We've just discovered that, due to a contractual dispute between McDonald's and the Macedonian franchisee, all Macca's outlets here were shut down a couple of years ago.

We drove out to a suburban part of town, trying (and failing) to find a major archaeological site. What we did find, however, was a couple of supermarkets — Reptil Market (Рептил Маркет, which Warren first thought might be a specialist pet store!), and Zhito (Жито) — a tip for the future: if you're looking for a good supermarket, look where the customers actually live!

So we drove out of town, noticing on the way a group of toy and hardware shops by the roadside — their idea of display is to stack everything you can on the pavement and hope the passers-by will see something they like in the mish-mash of wares.

Another annoyance we had on our way our of Skopje was the window-washing brigade. A lot of would-be beggars have taken to washing windscreens of cars stopped at traffic lights. The problem is that some won't take no for an answer. Warren had made a point of cleaning the windscreen thoroughly (for clear photography) before we set out, so when a traffic-stop windscreen washer insisted on sloshing his soapy, but not particularly clean, water across our windscreen, Warren somewhat lost his cool. And this happened three times on our way out. Needless to say, none of them got anything from us, except a thorough dressing-down form Warren. We had to stop once we got out of town to clean the windscreen, to undo the efforts of those so-called windscreen washers!

We are always intrigued by the modes of transport available, from horse and cart, bicycle pulling (or pushing) a trailer, or little old rattletrap of a car.

On our way out towards Bulgaria we went through Kumanovo. The Garmin did pretty well in the back streets, except for the time it took us the wrong way in a one-way street — but then, the signage gave no warning of the one-way status of the street — it was only when the oncoming drivers gave us what we thought at first was a one-finger salute that we realised the error of our ways. we then passed through a little township, Grovci (Грвци), where we got a good view of Macedonian country living — kids on bikes, sheep wandering the streets, or in the charge of a shepherd (must say those sheep looked in pretty bad condition).

We finally followed the Garmin and parked out on the road in a layby we had noticed the first time we passed through here. The scenery was magnificent, and we had the sound of the cowbells as the cowherd moved his animals past us at the end of the day.

Our friendly Garmin lives on the windscreen!

A bridge to nowhere!

Distance driven — today, 86 miles ( 138 km ); to date, 19,363 miles ( 31,162 km )