the other end of North Macedonia

After a week in and around Skopje, I took the bus down to Ohrid, apparently one of the oldest settlements in Europe.  It’s beside Lake Ohrid, which is one of the oldest lakes in the world, almost certainly the oldest in Europe, and also among the deepest.  It was a lovely area to explore at leisure – with some beautiful views across the lake (still with snow-capped mountains around), and a lot of historical stuff from different periods.

To give an idea of that history, this picture above, of the Church of Saints Kliment and Pantelejmon - the world's oldest Slav monastery, with 5th century Roman ruins in the foreground - was taken from Tsar Samoil's fortress, dating from the turn of the 11th century (when this was the capital of the First Bulgarian Empire), but built on the site of an earlier fortification dated to the 4th century BC.  I can't pretend that I even began to get my head around the history in the town - too much for my ageing brain! - but it was all very nice to look at.  Including the interiors of many of the churches, with incredible old murals in various states of preservation.

I took a boat trip along the side of the lake, too, where we stopped to visit a reconstructed Bronze Age stilted village on the way to St Naum's Monastery.  There was cherry blossom around ... and I also caught a glimpse of a spotted woodpecker, although not a long enough glimpse to identify the precise species, let alone to capture a photo.

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