The Perfect Hike in Novo Berde

What a way to spend a day exploring some of the local natural and historic beauty in the hills no more than 1 hour outside of Pristina. Novo Berde is known for being an very large and beautiful historic trading city with a castle atop the hills. So that's where we went. Kind of magical to be climbing around the remains of something so old and beautiful atop a hill with a 360 degree never ending view of Kosovo. Doesn't take an engineer to figure out why they built the fort where they did.




Since it took us less than 20 minutes to climb the hill from our car Pranvera and I both agreed we were up for a more complete hike exploring the area. And since neither of us knew the trails, from the fort we could see a narrow clear-cut through the trees in the valley below that went all the way down the hills into the valley below. So we set out upon on our rewarding adventure which clearly began as an old cow track complete with their little presents, a water troft and a patch of mud we had to climb around. At least the animals were big and wide which I guessed (wrongly) would keep the trail well conditioned. Hiking down and down into the valley the trail kept getting narrower and narrower until it appeared to close in on itself and create a small tunnel under the brush for us to see our way.



Despite the fact that we had just removed a thorn from the middle of Pranvera's forehead and my legs were thoroughly cut up from all the brier, we decided to continue on almost on hands and knees. Our bravery was quickly rewarded as we broke through the thick underbrush into fresh spring, creek and a connecting mountainside hill that had completely different vegetation of only tall standing spread out trees and soft deep rich dirt tracks heading in two different directions. After filling up on the heavenly water, we picked the trail better traveled each praying silently that we would not get so lost as to have to climb back up the mountain on all fours through the thorns.




The trail wound laterally around another mountain and started to widen into an unused cart track that led us to a field with huge apple trees. Lunchtime!!! We collected a fair amount of the slightly sour apples and marveled at the scenery and unobstructed view of the distant villages and forests all around. Continuing on we arrived at an abandoned house/farm that appeared to stand still in time for the past 30ish years. Although quite a remote location and most likely inaccessible during the winter, would still be the perfect place for a summer cottage. Empty fields surrounded the dwelling with crumbling fences, an outhouse and a large collection of farm equipment. On our way down the 'driveway' we discovered another fruit tree with a local berry type snack that Pranvera grew up on.



Fortunately this road began to curve around and climb back up the mountain in the general direction we needed to reach the car. After quite some time we came across a couple of occupied homes and a road that was actually used which led us directly to our car??? And as we unlocked the vehicle and pulled all the burs off our socks, the rain began to fall signaling the end to our perfect Saturday outing.