Even a week after I returned from Albania, in my mind I was still in the Accursed Mountains, a fitting name for the dramatic limestone karst and thick beech forests that stood before me. One could ...

I’m hiking along the Ropojana Valley, in Prokletije – the so-called ‘Accursed Mountains’ which make up the rugged borderlands of Montenegro, Albania and Kosovo. It’s an evocative name, but one which ...

After a four-hour, lung-busting ascent, we climb the last steps up the rocky scree to reach the vertiginous summit of the Valbona Pass. Surrounding us is the untamed wilderness of the ...