Albania

27 Crags – topos are created by the community who are actively developing and maintaining Albanian crags. By signing up to access the topos, money goes back to the topo creators and the community.

Rock Climbing in Albania – Facebook group.

Climbing Albania – website providing a nice overview, however we found the most up-to-date sources of info to be from 27 Crags and the Facebook group.

The Crag – always worth a look for any useful comments, latest logs etc.

I always find the country summaries on Climb Europe helpful – the Albania page is no exception, however it does focus on crags around the capital Tirana. It only makes a brief mention of Gjipe and misses Petrela and Gjinkar near Langarica Canyon – and all three of these are prime family crags.

Roads are variable in condition with a lot of active roadworks – so improving all the time. We made sure to read the latest park4night and google reviews for places we wanted to visit for most recent comments. Don’t be surprised if Google maps is a bit out of date (especially in Tirana) and watch out for changes in road conditions quite suddenly. Local drivers often drive fast in the middle of the road towards you but they do pull over in time!

Camping park4night was (as always) a great resource and we mixed it up between free camping and private sites. The latter felt well-worth it where they were usually small businesses – often where you could also get a good meal, meet locals and contribute to the local economy. We needed to plan a bit strategically for services, especially black water where availability could be sporadic.

• Theth: new road to get there (windy and narrow but all tarmac) and an amazing destination.
  • Blue eye lake walk deservedly popular, make sure you check out the rose-coloured rocks at the start.
  • Pop-by the lock-in house, super interesting way to get closer to the culture and history of blood feuds.
  • We parked overnight in the garden of a guesthouse and ate the most amazing food – Gurra Family Restaurant.
• Bar Ledh: free camping at a beach bar owned by a wonderful family who have created a little oasis.
• Berat: getting lost on the old town streets, learning about its multi-cultural history, this would be our pick of the historical towns we visited. Kruje and Gjirokaster also had well-curated museums as well centred around medieval castles.
• Tirana: Bunkart and the cable car was a good day out – noting that Tirana driving was probably the hairiest we had!
• Butrint: a worthwhile stop – scattered archaeological ruins since the Hellenistic period in a concentrated beautiful setting. We couldn’t work out the attraction of Ksamil, perhaps driving a big vehicle did not help!
• Orikum: we were just passing through but parking-up on the beach here was super easy and nice.
• Osumi canyon: it was a long return-drive to get here but we did have a magical time at the canyon making mud-art, enjoying the water and exploring the canyon. With an appropriate vehicle you can take a connecting gravel road to Permet which could make it more worthwhile – it looked like a scenic option if for the conditions.