Every evening we slept at a guesthouse or small rural hotel, where dinner was served.

There are no shops in many of the foothill villages, so dinner was made with local food from nearby farms:: home-made bread, cheese, often a lamb roast or stew, and local vegetables, of which tomatoes, potatoes and cucumbers appeared every night. With wine. Also sometimes orange juice (not local). 
We had fish with our dinner on one night. The food was great!

Breakfast the next morning was always large and tasty, and generally much the same as the breakfast before (as expected: drawn from local foods).

Typically: toast, milk, butter, yoghurt, cereals, home-made jam (yummy!), beef or pig bacon, eggs, apples.

After breakfast, lunch ingredients were laid out on a table for us to make our own lunch: fresh-baked bread, butter, soft cheese, preserved meat, tomatoes, cucumber and apples.

We usually slept three or four in a bedroom. I brought ear-plugs for everyone, as I was worried that my snoring would create a nuisance.

In the above photo (a farm on the outskirts of a village) the building on the left is an original farm structure. 
Sheep would be milked here, and the owners would use the milk for drinking, as well as making butter, yoghurt, and soft cheese.

The building on the right was created as a guesthouse, mostly catering for hiking tourists.  
A group of small huts was also built, each containing two bedrooms, a shower and a toilet. 
This photo was taken from the door of my hut. To the right of the main building, you can just make out an outdoor eating area.

Below, the start of our first walk, which was of course day two (day one was the airport pick-up, followed by the drive north to the foothills).

Astrit, our guide, had given us a gear list, which included walking poles.

Walking poles are not widely used by hikers in Australia (here hikers are referred to as "bush walkers".  In New Zealand "trampers".)

Many of the tracks in Albania are surfaced by loose rocks or gravel, and often steep.  I found my walking poles a great help.

I was the oldest of our group. Particularly on the first day, I struggled to keep up with the others. For the whole of that day, I was concerned that 
I might have to pull out of the trip completely, which would have been extremely disappointing. However, the remaining days proved better for me, and at the end of the trip I felt rather pleased with myself. I had lost a lot of fitness in 2022, after two major knee operations. 

We were soon in a magical forest....

Our days would start with a leisurely breakfast. Then each of us would make and pack our own lunch.

Almost every day, our hike took the same form: 

After leaving our guest house, our trail would climb steeply, passing though beautiful forest as we walked uphill.  Astrit said these were beech forests. In some places the forests were different: mostly conifers. As we climbed higher, we left the forest (usually quite suddenly) and entered large expanses of alpine pasture. These are grazed (as I suppose they have been grazed for thousands of years). We mainly saw sheep, but there were also a few cows.

Sheep are kept for milk, meat and wool.

The track was steep, so we would stop for a rest every now and then.

There were many wonderful flowers amongst the pasture.

Wild strawberries: small but VERY tasty!

After lunch on the ridge, we walked down the other side, first through alpine pasture, then through beech forest.
The highest point we reached was a hilltop near a saddle. Height was 1900 m ASL (above sea level). 
We did not attempt to climb peaks, although many are accessible to hikers.

Nearly home....   mostly we had a different guest house or small hotel each night.  On this occasion it was a small rural hotel.

The view from the hotel balcony.

As usual, our track on Day 3 took us through forests of outstanding beauty.

As yesterday, we suddenly emerged from the forest into equally beautiful alpine pasture.

Again, with beautiful flowers amongst the pasture.

Sheep

The ridge-line is the border between Albania and Montenegro. My phone announced "Welcome to Montenegro".

As the day before, we had lunch at the saddle, before descending (this time, into a different nation: Montenegro).

As we had the day before, we descended into forest.

It was the middle of summer, of course, so the forest provided welcome shade for a rest stop.

Ultimately returning to Albania

Our guesthouse that evening was situated in a small alpine village (image below). 

As was often the case, the guesthouse was built with a large central building, surrounded by small sleeping huts.

As you can see from the image below, small windows are often favoured, even on newly built dwellings.

That ends the story about days two and three of the hike.

There is more information about Albania in my YouTube channel:   https://youtube.com/@jonathannevill/videos

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