https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/articles/hiking-in-macedonia/
Neighbours like Slovenia attract the hiking hordes. It’s surely only a matter of time till that changes, though: Macedonia’s credentials as a lakes-and-mountains hotspot are exemplary" Credit: ISTOCK
The underrated European country that's sure to improve your health
Berries and wild herbs aren’t the only tastes of note here, as I
learned on the drive from Skopje airport towards Pelister. Pausing for
lunch at Stobi Winery, the fruits of fine soils and 260 annual days of
sunshine emerged: Cab Sav, Merlot, Riesling and excellent oaked
Chardonnays, plus older regional varietals. There was Rkaciteli, an
ancient white from Georgia; Vraneč (‘black stallion’), a traditional
dark tipple; and strong red Kratošija, so long-established that – so
claimed local guru Gorki Balojani – “Alexander the Great drank it.”
Ah, The Alex Question. At school you were probably taught that the serial conqueror was Greek – yet in the 4th century BC there was no Greece per se. No, Alexander was Macedonian; the question is where exactly ‘Macedonia’ was. Today’s Greeks insist it was on their patch, demanding that their neighbour drops the moniker and sparking a long-running spat with the former Yugoslav republic – a situation that hit the headlines again this month with the signing of a cross-border deal that could see this nation renamed the Republic of North Macedonia and lift Greek objections to its membership of both EU and Nato.
Ah, The Alex Question. At school you were probably taught that the serial conqueror was Greek – yet in the 4th century BC there was no Greece per se. No, Alexander was Macedonian; the question is where exactly ‘Macedonia’ was. Today’s Greeks insist it was on their patch, demanding that their neighbour drops the moniker and sparking a long-running spat with the former Yugoslav republic – a situation that hit the headlines again this month with the signing of a cross-border deal that could see this nation renamed the Republic of North Macedonia and lift Greek objections to its membership of both EU and Nato.
Lear didn’t relish his journey west across Pelister (“its monotonous
features were gloomy with dark and lowering clouds,” he griped), but he
missed a trick by not tackling the trails on foot. My climb up the
peak’s flanks was garnished not just with wildflowers and herbs but also
candy-sweet wild strawberries, butterflies like confetti, and ‘Pelister
Eyes’, a pair of alpine tarns alongside which we munched a mountain of
packed lunch. That afternoon was, if anything, more rewarding: tracing a
World-War-One French army track, we crossed a wild, bleakly beautiful
pass to descend towards glinting Prespa Lake. Startled by our approach, a
roe deer pronked out from a patch of white asphodels, and through a
dense oakwood we picked our way over muddy potholes grubbed up by wild
boar. Bear, lynx and wolves prowl these parts, too, though you’d be
lucky indeed to spot them.
That night we refuelled in the winsome village of Brajcino with a rustic but delectable dinner comprising variations on soon-to-become-familiar themes: flat ‘pie’ baked with flaky filo pastry, red peppers stuffed and roasted into piquant ajvar relish, feta-like sirenje cheese (a three-meals-a-day mainstay in Macedonia) and the local moonshine, rakija – always rakija.
Next day we chugged across Prespa Lake to its largest isle, dozens of white pelicans lifting off as we approached. Golem Grad (‘Big City’) is a curious name for an island, especially one as compact and somnolent as this; once, though, it was a hub of empire – summer retreat of one of Macedonia’s other national heroes, Tsar Samoil, crowned king here in AD 997. Today it’s an atmospheric place to wander among the remains of Byzantine churches and Samoil’s palace, watching for trundling tortoises, water snakes and a cacophony of cormorants roosting in guano-whitened boughs.
That night we refuelled in the winsome village of Brajcino with a rustic but delectable dinner comprising variations on soon-to-become-familiar themes: flat ‘pie’ baked with flaky filo pastry, red peppers stuffed and roasted into piquant ajvar relish, feta-like sirenje cheese (a three-meals-a-day mainstay in Macedonia) and the local moonshine, rakija – always rakija.
Next day we chugged across Prespa Lake to its largest isle, dozens of white pelicans lifting off as we approached. Golem Grad (‘Big City’) is a curious name for an island, especially one as compact and somnolent as this; once, though, it was a hub of empire – summer retreat of one of Macedonia’s other national heroes, Tsar Samoil, crowned king here in AD 997. Today it’s an atmospheric place to wander among the remains of Byzantine churches and Samoil’s palace, watching for trundling tortoises, water snakes and a cacophony of cormorants roosting in guano-whitened boughs.
Heading west from Prespa, the road winds up and across Galičica
mountain to reach the viewpoint above Lake Ohrid where Lear rhapsodised:
“It is scarcely possible to dream of finer scenes than these… Bright,
broad and long lay the great sheet of water.” Hear hear, Ed.
The historic core of Ohrid, on the lake’s north-eastern shore, is ringed by typically forgettable communist-era blocks. Yet like Heraclea Lyncestis, it was both an important stop on the Via Egnatia and developed by Philip of Macedon in the 4th century BC. The walls of Tsar Samoil’s hilltop fortress still loom over the old town, which also boasts a Roman amphitheatre and the site of reputedly Europe’s first ‘university’, a monastic school founded in AD 893 by St Kliment, co-creator of the Cyrillic alphabet. Amid fresco-daubed Byzantine churches and stone-built merchants’ houses, cobbled alleys are lined with appealing restaurants dishing up tasty Ohrid fish: “The trout of the Lake of Akhridha are surpassingly fine,” burped Lear.
Gorki and Jonce had saved the toughest hiking challenge till last: an attempt on Mount Korab, at 2,764m the highest peak in both Macedonia and Albania, its summit shared between both. The drive to the trailhead in Mavrovo National Park is an adventure in itself, negotiating a succession of increasingly dramatic and claustrophobic gorges and climaxing with the rough track that snakes along the Radika valley to the border post at Strezimir. Our packs weighed down with chicken, salad, bread and – naturally – sirenje cheese, we ascended through magical silver birch forest ringing with the song of a gushing burn. Soon we emerged onto steep meadows where a volley of barks and growls alerted us to a nearby posse of baying hounds, recalling Lear’s fretful observation that “large herds of goats browsingly wandered among the stunted herbage under the guarding care of ferocious dogs”.
A word from Jonce to the dogs’ master soon gained us a pass up to wilder
upper reaches where the lilac hues of saffron and violets echoed
purple-veined marble slabs on the path. Above a broad saddle where
horses grazed as their Albanian owners gathered camomile, we crested a
ridge to be rewarded with the panoramic prize: vistas of a fanged ridge
spanning the entire western horizon, bookended by the craggy, leaning
slab of Korab. Here our way was blocked by steep snow tongues, their
crust of avalanche detritus warning us of the foolhardiness of a
traverse so early in June. No matter: the panorama was sensational
enough to sate my taste for high drama.
The historic core of Ohrid, on the lake’s north-eastern shore, is ringed by typically forgettable communist-era blocks. Yet like Heraclea Lyncestis, it was both an important stop on the Via Egnatia and developed by Philip of Macedon in the 4th century BC. The walls of Tsar Samoil’s hilltop fortress still loom over the old town, which also boasts a Roman amphitheatre and the site of reputedly Europe’s first ‘university’, a monastic school founded in AD 893 by St Kliment, co-creator of the Cyrillic alphabet. Amid fresco-daubed Byzantine churches and stone-built merchants’ houses, cobbled alleys are lined with appealing restaurants dishing up tasty Ohrid fish: “The trout of the Lake of Akhridha are surpassingly fine,” burped Lear.
Gorki and Jonce had saved the toughest hiking challenge till last: an attempt on Mount Korab, at 2,764m the highest peak in both Macedonia and Albania, its summit shared between both. The drive to the trailhead in Mavrovo National Park is an adventure in itself, negotiating a succession of increasingly dramatic and claustrophobic gorges and climaxing with the rough track that snakes along the Radika valley to the border post at Strezimir. Our packs weighed down with chicken, salad, bread and – naturally – sirenje cheese, we ascended through magical silver birch forest ringing with the song of a gushing burn. Soon we emerged onto steep meadows where a volley of barks and growls alerted us to a nearby posse of baying hounds, recalling Lear’s fretful observation that “large herds of goats browsingly wandered among the stunted herbage under the guarding care of ferocious dogs”.
A word from Jonce to the dogs’ master soon gained us a pass up to wilder
upper reaches where the lilac hues of saffron and violets echoed
purple-veined marble slabs on the path. Above a broad saddle where
horses grazed as their Albanian owners gathered camomile, we crested a
ridge to be rewarded with the panoramic prize: vistas of a fanged ridge
spanning the entire western horizon, bookended by the craggy, leaning
slab of Korab. Here our way was blocked by steep snow tongues, their
crust of avalanche detritus warning us of the foolhardiness of a
traverse so early in June. No matter: the panorama was sensational
enough to sate my taste for high drama. 
