On the Macedonian (or Former Yugoslav Republic Of Macedonia as the Greeks will have you call it) flag is a large sun, with its wide golden rays spreading out in all directions. We soon found out that the neighbouring Albanians, with their love of Norman Wisdom, don’t have a monopoly on senses of humour in this region. Irony is alive and well in FYROM!
We entered FYROM near Strumica, to dark clouds, and soon the heavens opened while we were pedalling up a cobbled section of the ‘M6’.
For the next 300kms Neil couldn’t get ‘Purple Rain’ out of his head as we cycled through downpour after downpour, and camped in mud bath after mud bath. Every now and then the sun would appear and the Ramones´classic ‘Macedonian Sun’ would surface, but these moments were all too few and far between.
On one occasion the sun came out while we were passing through an orchard and Neil decided to take a photo of us among the heavily laden apple trees. But by the time he’d taken his camera out of its waterproof bag the sun had gone, and by the time he’d put the camera back it was raining again. On another occasion the sun appeared, and Haz was so taken aback she almost fainted.
At one of our many daily chocolate stops we met an old man who was bemoaning the fact that this was the tenth day in a row of solid rain. Prior to that there had been no rain for 4 months.
It is a pity that the rain is our overriding memory of our time in FYROM. All the people we met were friendly, the food was good and in the brief glimpses we had, the landscape was pretty. On our rest day the rain held off and we enjoyed rambling round the steep streets of the UNESCO World Heritage Site town of Ohrid, by the lake of the same name, in bright sunshine.
I suppose we just timed our visit badly for the sun was still shining when we cycled round the lake and into Albania the next day.

‘Yeah we`re out there having fun in the warm Macedonian sun…..’