Gravel / Gravé / Gnarmac / Groad / ATB

Page 1000? 1000 pages of gravel. Well done everyone.

Page 126 for me

useramey posts that much, huh?

No gravel in the Balkans. Strongly recommend.

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Looks great! Where it is? I was there (or in the Balkan region) last year, for sure highly recommended!

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It was on the way from Plužine to Durmitor National park. The climb took an entire day.
We did a loop: Dubrovnik - Mostar - Plužine - Durmitor National park - Kotor - Dubrovnik.

We went on paved roads mostly because some gravel there is just brick sized rocks with 20% inclines. Amazing places indeed and it was super cheap.

A week of touring costed me roughly €550 including plane tickets (there were 4 of us and we would share apartments).

I need black SIDs.

Will trade...

#flashbacks to the storm in TCR4

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wow, need a location for that 2nd pic!

Pic is exact at 44.266962, 15.729117, and the whole area around that spot is awesome, next to Mali Alan pass (Winnetou & Old Shatterhand film spots).

Can you elaborate on the illegal border crossing? Planning similar trip next week, have a planned unmanned crossing from Bosnia to Montenegro south of Hum.
Emailed a few gov addresses I have found but no luck.

Can you elaborate on the illegal border crossing?

That one was a strange one - there was a way through the mountains which we wanted to take that would get us from Bosnia to Montenegro - komoot routed through it, maps.me routed through it, not sure about google. We started climbing and police car caught up with us. The guys were very polite and warm (as with all the people there) and said that we can't continue - problems.

Having already climbed some 400 vertical meters we didn't want to to turn around as the border was like 10 kilometers away but they didn't want to let us continue. We asked what sort of problems would we face - would it be fine or jail or what but they weren't very explanatory about it just pointed us to an official border crossing where we had our passports checked, got stamps and so on.

We thought maybe they wanted some bribe or something but then the other day, a guy from another village we stayed in - Grahovo - warned us in advance not to go some way that leads towards Bosnia because many travellers take it and get turned around.

So from what I understood - Bosnia / Montenegro border crossing must be made through official border checkpoints and not all the roads have those and this rule also does not apply to locals.

Yes in tcr some years ago people had this issue.

Need to see more of this bike!

We might see it again this year. Isn't Durmitor a control/parcours again?

Yep https://bikepacking.com/news/transcontinental-race-2022/

wonderful

It's nothing fancy - just a soma wolverine. For this tour I've removed the fenders.

I wanted a budget commuter + touring bike and somehow ended up acquiring the bling parts like klampers, nitto sim works bits and so on.

Can't say I like it very much - it feels very rigid in comparison to my other bike (Stelbel nina) but maybe it's not just the quality of steel that is different but carbon parts on the other bike as well.

But I like it slightly more after this trip. In general I think it's a very nice multi purpose bike.

Oh and dynamo hub is truly amazing - from now on i'll be putting it on all the bikes I have.

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Lovely colour! Works really well with the silver components.

nothing fancy!

thats really nice!

And this just makes me want to get the Wolverine even more now. Time to save the pennies unless someone here is looking to offload a medium-ish one.

Stelbel nina

Let’s have some pics of this then

Relevant and great.

https://vimeo.com/650072735

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CWtx53Uoe-4/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

Nice bike! It is fancy for sure, silver parts love, and interesting border crossing story

Photo of my gravel (maybe monstercross?) From last trip in Balkans

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What's the bartape of choice for the wider bars these days, something to fit 48cm cowchippers?