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At a leisurely 8am, I was met by Janko and foreboding clouds. The weather was meant to be variable and by the time we'd picked up a young man from the Russia Kazakstan border and a couple from Austria, there was a full blown lightening storm.
The mountain we were going to had a section of exposed face about cloud level so we would be walking through the lightening. Janko decided to rethink our plan.
For a bit of fun, he drove straight for the middle of the storm up the hill aiming for the lightening.
Ten minutes later, the lightening was cracking like a strobe above us.
We continued on through the storm until the rain began to ease. Janko did a great tour guide bit of taking us through Austro-Hungarian historical sites. This included a bakery for the soldiers, which was at 1000 metres above sea level, a fort that was used to warn the coast of any invasions and a series of roads which had been built 150 years ago and had still survived.
We drove up the mountain to have a look at the conditions but Janko pulled the plug on that hike.
What we could see from the top was the weather clearing west of the mountain range. We headed west to the edge of the range knowing the weather was going to get clearer.
During this drive, my mobile phone changed from Montenegron provider to Bosnian then Croatian providers. This mountain was on the intersection of the three borders.
We were going to climb 'The Subra'. A mountain of 1644m (higher than Ben Nevis) and with sheer cliff faces on either side. We were going for the north face.
A bit of background on Janko. His favourite summer sports were mountain running (he took 30 minutes of the record for a 30km run through mountains which spanned an elovation of 1.5km) and climbing. This was his favourite mountain to climb. There were 500m of sheer cliff to climb.
We set off in long grass - with a warning to watch for snakes - and began a gentle ascent.
This got gradually more difficult and took us through beech woods, up and over some smaller hills and some plains.
After a few hours of walking we came to the foot of 'The Subra' cliffs. These were absolutely massive. I had to lie on my back to get the full cliffs into the picture.
We stopped here for lunch and to prepare for a part ascent of the cliffs (We weren't going to make it to the top because of the late start but we would get within 200 vertical metres from the top. The last 200 metres would have taken 1 and half hours to climb.)
On the way to the top we stopped at a sink hole, which a boulder had become wedged in. This part of the mountain saw no natural light so the temperature dropped from 27 degrees to 5 degrees and still had snow in it from a May snowfall.
From here we made a 45 minute ascent to a spring which was as far as we would go. This was only 100 metres up the slope but covered sections of skree and limestone boulders.
From 1400m above sea level you get some fantastic views across the Orjen Massif.
As promised yesterday, Janko was going to take me free climbing, however the delayed start made this impossible. We did do some bouldering and small climbs on a couple of cliff faces and then began the descent through a free climbing game.
There were some baby birch trees on the descent that would bend and not snap. The game was to climb the trunk using arms only until the tree began to bend. Then when it bends catch hold of the next tree, climb up until it bends and so on. You had to see how far down the mountain you could get without touching the ground.
This was great fun and I managed two trees but couldn't get my second tree to bend in the direction of my third one and had to slide down the trunk.
The last bit of climbing I did was a boulder lower down and I got a 'take home hold', where the rock I was holding broke off the boulder. Fortunately, it was only a small fall.
We made it back to the Defender by 6.30pm and drove back towards Herceg Novi. This was Janko's favourite road to drive on - a one lane track down a cliff - and to prove this, he flew down the road at breakneck speed.
This was my last day in Montenegro (I'm writing this waiting to cross the border into Croatia). I was shattered and my knee, though a bit sore, had held up so much better than it would have done in the last 4 years.
Montenegro is a stunningly beautiful country, even more so now I've seen more of the mountains and canyons. The people have been so friendly, Janko, Slobodan, Mirka (who owned the hostels in Kotor and Budva) all made the biggest effort to allow me to see the best of their country. I would love to come back but would hire a car next time so I would have the freedom to see some more obscure areas of the country.
The food has been good too. I haven't had sea food here but have had some fantastic steaks and cuts of different meat.
The ammount of adventures that I've had here has even tested my energy levels and I am now heading for some rest on the island of Korcula.
I'll be hitting seafood in a big way there, hit some beaches, hopefully hire a boat and have cocktails at the top of a fort.
Goodbye Montenegro, it has truly been a pleasure.
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