Resen to Trnovo – July 13th
Distance: 30.7 km – Elevation +590 m -570 m
Weather: Sunny. Temperature: High 26 degrees
It was a chilly morning, just 10 degrees, as I left Resen at 5.45 am and all was closed. On my way out of town, I passed a most impressive building which would have looked very much at home in France. It is the Saraj, built at the request of Ahmed Niyazi Bey who desired to have a French-style estate. Its neoclassical style is unique within North Macedonia. A short while after I came to an industrial estate where I found a garage open and was able to replenish my water and buy a few items for a later lunch.
Resen and its surrounding area is apple growing country, I passed by a large processing and storage facility on my way into Resen yesterday. So it was no surprise to find myself walking through apple orchards to reach the village of Sopotsko where I hoped the village cafe which is housed in the old communist cultural centre would be open, but it was just 7.30 am and too early for it to be open. I walked through the village without seeing anyone at all. Orchards and woodlands followed and the path became less well defined, and much overgrown so progress was slow.
The path eventually joined a completely deserted paved road. It was the old road to Bitola. From there it was a long steady climb to the Djavato pass. This is the only way through the mountains so the Via Egnatia would have passed through here. I visited the Orthodox Church of St.Mary at the top and rested and enjoyed lunch within the grounds of the church. At a height of 1200 metres, this was the summit of today’s walk. The descent from the pass continued on the old Bitola road where the surface changed to cobblestones which are not the easiest of surfaces to walk on. I reached Kazani in the early afternoon and encountered three French cyclists taking a lunch break in a bus shelter, one was in a hammock that had been strung between the supports of the shelter and they were enjoying a lunch of bread and cheese and invited me to join them. They were on a cycling holiday and had left Bitola earlier in the day. They also found the cobblestones hard going and asked how much further they extended.
The route in the Via Egnatia guidebook follows a path north from Kazani and then loops back in a southerly direction to arrive in Capari. I was heading for Trnovo where I knew I would be able to find a bed for the night and taking the loop would have added an extra 10 kilometres. I had already walked 18 kilometres with a long climb and a descent on tiring cobblestones and calculated that with the loop the distance left to reach Trnovo was 23 kilometre, and I knew immediately I would not be able to do that. It meant I would miss the ruins of Kale Parembole, a Castrum Romanium, a soldiers camp but I decided to continue on along the old Bitola road and make directly for Trnovo. The cobblestones finally ended just beyond Kazani and it was easy flat walking for about 7 kilometres before the route to Trnovo I had mapped left the road, and followed a dirt road through crop fields as it climbed towards Trnovo. It was just a 3 kilometre climb but coming at the end of two days of long distance and long climbs I found it exhausting and needed to stop several times for rest. Reaching the outskirts of the village I sat for a while to recover and a village dog came towards me wagging its tail and the dog stayed with me throughout the remainder of my journey through the village, even sitting and waiting for my return whilst I looked into the village church of the Holy Virgin Mary. The dog was still with me when I entered the grounds of the Hotel Shator a very nice hotel. I felt a great sense of relief to find they had a room available and my tiredness seemed to evaporate after a refreshing shower. Arriving in Trnovo was the culmination of two long 12 hour days during which I had walked 60 kilometres with an ascent of over 1500 metres and I felt a sense of achievement as I sat on the terrace in the hotel gardens sipping my glass of refreshing beer. The hotel restaurant was excellent, and I was able to relax and enjoy dinner knowing that I had a very short walk tomorrow to reach Bitola.
