The Green Interior – Day 4

Day 4 of 7

Zelengora Again, Then Morine, Then Mostar

David gets his mountain. The dogs get David’s boot. The French get their trout.

Yesterday David spent the afternoon in Sarajevo making sure Francisco was taken care of. He missed Zelengora. So this morning there is no debate about the route – we go back. Not as a compromise. As the obvious right thing to do. A mountain like Zelengora doesn’t get understood through someone else’s story. You have to ride it yourself.

David rides it himself. He is delighted. The word he uses, and the right one. The plateau, the lake, the open sky above Orlovačko jezero. He gets it. And then, on one of the rocky climbs, the mountain collects its toll from him too.

We come down from Zelengora and follow the Neretva upstream — still barely more than a stream this far into the mountains — into Ulog for lunch. The restaurant is Kod Rade. No visible menu, no reason to need one. Pastrmka pulled from the river, homemade fries cut by hand into shapes that are slightly different from each other, which is how you know they are real. The French contingent, who have been approaching Bosnian food with increasing enthusiasm since Day 1, order a second round of Nikšićko before anyone mentions moving on. Fine. The plateau can wait.

Here the Neretva is a stream you can step across. Sixty kilometres downstream it becomes an enormous lake behind a Chinese-built dam. Worth sitting with that for a moment while the beer is cold.

After lunch we push into Morine. I call it Bosnia’s Mongolia and it earns the name every time — soft endless hills rolling in every direction, no hard edges, no reference points, the kind of landscape where you stop navigating by landmarks and just ride until the ground tells you something new. The group disperses naturally across the plateau. David has a specialist navigation device that shows every trail, every stone path, every shepherd track. He finds a line across open pasture and disappears into it. We regroup later. Nobody is worried. Being temporarily lost in Morine is not a problem. It is, in fact, the point.

About the Kangal dogs!

Kangal shepherd dogs are large, fast, and entirely serious about their work. On the Morine plateau we came through a flock without warning — the dogs were on us immediately. David took a bite to the boot. The boot held. He stayed on the bike, which was the more impressive achievement. Aggressive livestock dogs are a consistent feature of Balkan trail riding. The instinct to accelerate away is wrong — sudden movement makes it worse and you will not outrun them. Slow down, hold your line, let them make their point, move through steadily.

They are doing a job. Respect it and keep moving.

From Nevesinje we drop onto tarmac and follow the road toward Mostar — long confident curves descending through Herzegovina as the light goes amber. This is where Michel’s mousse inserts start to complain. Mousse tyres — foam inserts that replace inner tubes — are the right choice for technical trail. On sustained tarmac at speed they run hot and the ride quality degrades noticeably. We stop, fit an inner tube, continue. These things happen on long tours. The solution is in the bag.

Mostar appears below us in the last of the evening light. After four days of mountain huts, shared rooms, cold water and wood stoves, the city feels genuinely surreal. The Stari Most, the stone streets, the restaurants along the Neretva. We park the bikes and stand there for a moment looking at it like people who have not seen a city in a long time. Which is more or less true.

Dinner is what Mostar does best — local white wine, meat from the grill, rakija to close. Then someone suggests baklava in the old town. We walk over. Michel has his camera. There is a bridge and there is good light and there is a photo session. Nobody objects.

Day 5 we leave Mostar heading north. The forecast is rain and wind. We go anyway — this is what rain gear is for. Not everyone will agree with this philosophy by the time we reach Cincar. But they will understand it.