CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
131 km round from Žabljak - plan on about 2 h 44 of riding. On the way it passes Sedlo Pass, Trsa and Tara Canyon. The highest point is about 1,900 m. Sedlo Pass is subject to seasonal closure - check it is open before you set off. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
18 km on Montenegro Durmitor Ring.
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
For about 64 km this is Montenegro Durmitor Ring, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it. Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
Žabljak claims to be the highest town in the Balkans, at about 1,450 metres, and it sits on a plateau among the peaks of Durmitor, a national park and UNESCO World Heritage site in northern Montenegro. The town is small, a place of low houses and mountain lodges, and it exists mostly for hikers, skiers and the occasional motorcyclist who has made the effort to come this far. Pines and spruce close in around it, the nights are cool even in summer, and the snow comes early.
Read the complete Near Žabljak write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Zabljak is where the day begins. Next is Sedlo Pass.
Sedlo means saddle, and this one, at 1,907 metres, is the high point of the road that circles the Durmitor massif in the north of Montenegro. The road climbs through forest and then through bare limestone country, where the trees thin out and the ridges seem to catch the sky, and at the top, a pass opens to a view of Bobotov Kuk, the highest peak of the range at 2,523 metres, with its grey cliffs streaked with snow. The air is thin, clean and cold, and the silence is broken only by wind and the bells of sheep.
Read the complete Sedlo Pass write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sedlo Pass comes up about 18 km into the recorded legs. Nothing on this route is higher. Next is Trsa, mostly downhill.
Trsa is a name on a map more than a place with a centre, a scatter of houses above the long green reservoir that drowned the Piva canyon. Plužine is the nearest village of any size, a few kilometres up the water, and Žabljak sits on the Durmitor plateau beyond that. What you are really riding here is the shoreline road, and it is one of the odd ones in the Balkans: it clings to the canyon wall, ducks through short rough tunnels that look as if they were cut by people in a hurry, and opens out every few hundred metres onto water the colour of bottle glass.
Read the complete Trsa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 41 km into the recorded legs you reach Trsa. Next is Tara Canyon.
Everyone who talks about the Tara canyon quotes the same number, and it holds up: up to about 1,300 metres from rim to river, which makes it among the deepest gorges in Europe and the deepest in this part of the world. The Tara runs for roughly eighty kilometres, cuts through the north of Montenegro on its way to join the Piva and become the Drina, and the whole thing sits inside a protected biosphere reserve. From the road you see the green end of it, black pine forest dropping into a thin turquoise line a very long way down.
Read the complete Tara Canyon write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tara Canyon, late in the day. Next is Zabljak.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Near Žabljak write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Zabljak. That is the ride.
Zabljak → Sedlo Pass is 18 km. This is the part worth slowing down for - look through the bends and use the pull-offs.
Sedlo Pass → Trsa is 23 km. Brakes and eyes forward; the views are behind the corners, not in them.
Trsa → Tara Canyon is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Tara Canyon → Zabljak is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.