No room here to go into detail about the phenomenon that is Rob and Trish MacCurrach. Save to say that it was Rob, during the couple’s time in the country, who got me into the idea of mountain-biking in Serbia. Before that it just hadn’t occurred to me! I thought I knew the country fairly well, but I had some strange idea there weren’t any trails (actually, there aren’t - not marked anyway), and I hadn’t realised just how enjoyable “freebiking” (a Serbian term! To be discussed at some point!) could be.
Rob and Trish had been exploring mountainous areas of Serbia, and the result was several biking trips with him and a few guys to the Valjevo region, where the mountains of Povlen and Medvednik make for MTB heaven. Well, a few pics and things from those trips will be coming up, but right now we are discussing a more major trip for spring this year. The proposal is to take 5 days out and traverse a larger stretch of Serbia, sticking only to off-road routes as much as possible. We don’t know if it’s been done before, but we are really looking forward to it!
Above is a number of possible routes, plotted roughly on a Google Earth map. All three try to take in as much mountain as possible, but Route Three seems to be in the lead at the moment, as it would cover Kopaonik (biiig mountain in Serbia), Golija and Djavolja Varos, which my wife has been advertising to me for ages. It’s less than 200km as the crow flies, but I bet it’s a lot more than that “on the ground” - there’s sure to be 5 days riding in that if we take it easy, especially with all those mountains in the way.
Well, we can’t wait! Watch these pages to stay up to date with our plans - May will come quickly! Let us know, too, if you have any experience with these routes (to va�i za fribajkere iz Srbije, naravno!), or maybe you would even like to join us!
Time to start getting fit… I’m going to need that new bike too!
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Posted on January 26th, 2007 by markowe
Filed under: MTB Serbia (All)
[...] I begin to look at some possible routes we might take on our April-May “Serbia Bike Trek“, I have asked around about the first potential obstacle in our way - the mountain of [...]