Sedlo Pass – Montenegro To Hum, Bosnia, by Truck (WithVideo!)

Sheer Drops, Hairpins, Tunnels, & A Bridge Made of String…

At 8 a.m., a rap on the door shot us out of slumber straight into the day we were dreading.

It was a ranger, who had a kind but tough-as-nails face. Be nice, and he’d help you to the end of the earth. Cross him and he would knock you into next week. With a warm smile, he handed over three tickets to confirm we’d paid our €3 per person for the night, plus €3 for the truck for the duration of our stay in Durmitor National Park.

The previous evening had been free, since the charge only applies if a ranger sees you.

Montenegro positively encourages wild camping, even somewhere as enchanting as Durmitor. This is a stark contrast to their neighbour, Croatia, where you can expect punitive fines of up to €400 for staying overnight anywhere other than a campsite. In national parks, many of which levy a daily charge of €30 per person just to walk, the fine multiplies exponentially. Try your luck in Učka Nature Park and you could leave €2,000 lighter!

Our second shock was the attempted break in.

To prepare The Beast for the challenges ahead, Mark went to get his grease gun from the storage box on the rear of the truck.

“The metal’s all bent by the hinges. Someone has tried to lever it open!”

I checked the habitation door and found scratches and damage to the rubber seal near the latch. Mark was sceptical.

“We fold away the steps, so how would they reach that? It’s two metres off the ground.”

Clearly, they’d been keen.

Even though he didn’t believe me, I felt reassured by our security door, which has a 5-point locking mechanism and is impossible to lift off its hinges.

Unless the thieves needed urgent supplies of engine oil, white spirit, and NATO green paint – or any of the other liquid nasties we don’t want to keep indoors – the contents of our rear storage box would have disappointed them.

Over breakfast, we chewed over the incident.

“Where d’you think it happened?” I asked. “In Albania, we parked in the centre of Tirana, but that was weeks ago. Surely, we’d have noticed it by now.”

“It could have been North Macedonia. The park ups in Ohrid and Skopje were a bit rough,” he replied. “Or perhaps it was when we were blocked in amid all that Liberation Day madness at Biogradska Gora.”

We’ll never find out, but it was a massive relief to be know that The Beast’s security had foiled such a spirited attempt to rob us.

Despite our altitude, the daytime temperatures had been too hot for a strenuous walk and we tended to take The Fab Four out in the morning or evening. Durmitor has forty-eight peaks above 2,000 m (6,562 ft). We were close to the trail to Bobotov Kuk, considered the highest point in Montenegro, even though there are three higher summits on the shared border with Albania. The Accursed Mountains, Zla Kolata, Dobra Kolata, and Rožni Vrh pip Bobotov Kuk by ten, five and one metre respectively: (33, 16, and 3 ft).

Quietly, I wished my surname was Cook, and that I had a son or daughter whom I could christen Bobotov.

Perhaps I could write a thriller called The Accursed with Bobotov Kuk as the hero who thwarted the evil twins Zla and Dobra Kolata, with their associate Rožni Vrh, when they tried to hijack a truck…

In the heat, we had given up on our proposed assault on the 2,523 m (8,278 ft) peak. There was no second chance. We had run out of food and now, we had to face our nemesis.

The final section of the Sedlo Pass.

The reasons for our trepidation were many.

For a start, the last 2.5 miles looked like the road engineers got drunk, aimed a can of Silly String at a map, giggled when it landed on a cliff, then determined, “That’s where we’ll build it!”

To remain faithful to their Silly String master plan, they needed switchbacks, tunnels with switchbacks inside them, then a few more switchbacks to connect all the switchbacks. All on a cliff face about a mile high.

In the previous 24-hours, Mark and I had developed ATA.

Acute Tunnel Anxiety.

We were all too aware of the limitations of our method to assess the tunnels’ fitness to accommodate The Beast, a vehicle almost 4 m high and 10 m long. Thumb-and-forefinger extrapolation of car height to tunnel height on a laptop screen is always going to have a substantial margin of error. Yet we still entertained the idea that if we had problems, we could turn around.

On switchbacks.

On a cliff.

The Beast rumbled down the unmade track from our isolated hummock in the wilderness to the metalled pass. A parked car posed the first challenge, making it difficult to reverse around the corner on to the narrow main road.

Initially, we drove across the plateau. The occasional farmstead, with steeply gabled red corrugated roofs, punctuated wild rock-strewn meadows of yellowish grass. We passed the Durmitor Flysch, where the contorted geological layers soar upwards at a 90-degree angle from the Durmitor Massif.

Once, we had to confront a Montenegrin shepherd dog of the genus woolly mammoth. Since they are bred to see off to apex predators such as wolves or bears, a 16-tonne army truck travelling at 40 mph was not going to cow this canid into moving off the road.

Minor drop offs of mere hundreds of feet made my stomach sink into my boots. It still didn’t prepare for what was to come.

Suddenly, the horizon disappeared into a void.

Opposite, I could see tree-covered hillsides.

Below, I caught occasional glimpses of a ribbon of deep blue.

Quarter of a mile beneath us, Piva Lake wound through the abyss.

We hoped the tunnels were big enough. Otherwise we would have to drive back to the start of the pass at Žabljak.

As he shuffled The Beast backwards and forwards to round a hairpin bend, I first emitted a nervous laugh, then snapped, “Don’t go near the edge, Mark. It’s a bloody long way down…”

A rusting Armco barrier guarding the towering precipice would be no match for gravity and The Beast.

Although narrow, the pass is two-way. Inevitably, we always encountered oncoming traffic when we were on the OSS. The Oh Sh** Side is the side next to the drop.

When we pulled over on the wrong side of the road, we were unrepentent when it was furthest from the chasm. We had no intention of adding a 16-tonne challenge to the already crumbling margins.

Here goes… I thought, as the rough-hewn arch of the first tunnel hove into view.

“I reckon we’ll get through here…” I said optimistically.

“There’s a hairpin in the tunnel,” Mark replied.

“Oh joy…”

As I regarded the gaping hole in the mountain, I noted silently, There’s nowhere to turn around…

If we couldn’t squeeze through the tunnel, we would have to re-negotiate the hairpin on the precipice that had just required three shuffles to get around.

In reverse!

Above the roar of the engine, I listened carefully for a reassuring absence of aluminium truck body grating against the limestone walls.

“I think we’ll be fine if you take it wide,” I said as the tunnel curved to the right.

“Oh my word…” followed, as rough rock enveloped us like a compression sock. “It is a bit of a squeeze.”

There was no wiggle room here.

A car shot across our nose as we exited the tunnel.

“That was exciting!” I said, with a mixture of relief and apprehension.

It was a tight right turn out of the tunnel, but for once, we weren’t on the Oh Sh** Side.

We’d made it.

“One down…” I giggled, hoping the Silly String surveyors had built all the tunnels at least as big as that one.

The brakes screeched as they arrested us on steep hairpins, both in and out of tunnels.

The Beast has a drum braking system, which overheats with high use. After our first incident of smoking brakes in the Italian Alps, my friend Simon told me, “When they get hot, they can fade very quickly.”

Brake fade on Sedlo, with no escape lanes, would be catastrophic. Brake failure meant two options: plunge into the abyss or crash into the rock wall and hope for the best.

About half way down, I agreed when Mark suggested we pull over to cool the brakes. I could smell the familiar brimstone aroma of heat-stressed brake linings.

“I saw a building down there. Perhaps we can stop and get a coffee.”

Like ‘the places to turn around if we can’t fit through the tunnels’, the coffee shop was a mirage brought about by wishful thinking.

All we could do was find a straight section of road and pull over well clear of the vertical drop. We kerbed The Beast, using stones as chocks and facing her wheels and nose into the cliff face to stop her continuing her journey downhill without us.

We took the dogs for a leg stretch, then hopped inside for a cup of tea.

An hour later, with our sense of dread slightly rested, we continued our torturous descent.

The view of the cerulean lake meandering through steep green peaks that formed the valley was spectacular. Sadly, conscious of avoiding the quick way down, neither Mark nor I were in any fit state to appreciate it.

Finally, we reached the first last hairpin.

It was in a tunnel.

It felt like we were stuck in a self-replenishing nightmare.

Then, when I thought we’d cleared the ultimate tunnel, a whole series of tunnels appeared, including a tunnel with a junction inside!

When I thought we were down and driving safely along the Piva Lake to the border with Bosnia, more tunnels confronted us. Beyond the Mratinje Dam, more stomach-sinking drops to the true level of the Piva River yielded a glimpse of how much more precipitous Sedlo would have looked had they not dammed it.

But the journey had saved the best until last.

We left Montenegro at the Hum border crossing: a tiny austere concrete hut in the middle of nowhere. Once we’d cleared customs, we drove down the E763/M18. A border crossing with a double-barrelled road number might lull you into thinking it was a major route. The reality was narrow and snaking, with another sharp hairpin bend.

A new country, Bosnia and Herzegovina, was in our sights.

It was across the Tapa River.

All that separated us was a bridge spanning a gorge. 

A rickety bridge made from wooden planks and string that looked like it might collapse if a butterfly alighted on it.

Mark and I sat and stared.

Hum was no exception to the day’s theme of ‘nowhere to turn around’. Our alternative was a mile-long uphill reverse on a narrow road, around the hairpin, back through the border we’d just cleared, followed by a u-turn and a hundred-mile detour.

“I wouldn’t fancy driving up those hairpins on the Sedlo Pass,” Mark said.

It’s one thing holding the truck on the brake while performing a fifty-point turn going downhill. Our shattered nerves were not up to contemplating the series of zero tolerance hill starts required to manoeuvre such a heavy vehicle around tight uphill turns on a cliff edge.

Mark got out to inspect the crossing.

While the thumb-and-forefinger method has its place in estimating the height of tunnels, we had no useful hacks to judge the load-bearing capacity of a bridge. The rationale we’ve used before is that if we travel quickly, we weigh less. At least we’re not stressing any one part fo the bridge structure for a long period.

But on the far side, a hard left turn obstructed our view of oncoming traffic.

“There’s no way I’m stopping on that bridge. And I’m not risking the weight of another vehicle on there with us,” he said.

“It’s a border crossing. It must be okay.” I said, trying to convince myself. “Surely, the border guards would have warned us if not…”

Thelma and Louise-style, Mark put his foot to the floor.

As we raced across, I could hear the wooden boards splinter and crack beneath our weight. I don’t remember ever feeling so stricken with terror, even when I jumped out of a plane at 12,000 ft. On that occasion, I had both a parachute and a backup canopy to arrest my fall. If the Hum bridge collapsed, the only certainty was that we would all plummet to our deaths.

Thankfully, nothing appeared around the bend.

We crunched our way into Republika Srpska, one of the two entities that makes up Bosnia and Herzegovina, on an unmade gravel track.

I’d like to say that was the end, but our marathon trip of terror continued. The road margins were falling away and we were confronted by more unnerving bridges.

When we spotted a truck ahead, it reassured us.

“If he can cross it, we’ll be okay, so long as we don’t get on the bridge at the same time…”

When a 50-mile journey takes nearly five hours, a girl’s sense of humour can take a battering.

Fortunately, despite the terrifying drops, tunnels, hairpins, hairpins in tunnels, plus a bridge made of string, followed by the awful crumbling road that seemed to go on forever, we arrived at Foča.

I know it’s really childish, but like Twatt in Orkney, Bell End near Halesowen in Britain’s West Midlands, and Dorset’s fine selection of Piddles, finding somewhere with a rude name is guaranteed to make my day.

Even when I’m Hangry, because it’s 4 p.m. and I haven’t had lunch.

Even when the stifling heat transformed into a torrential thunderstorm.

We stopped at a supermarket in Foča. While Mark bought supplies, I devoured a full Bobotov Kuk of pastry-based snacks sourced from the neighbouring bakery.

We skipped the hassle of looking for parking on Park4Night and went straight to Autocamp Drina, a family-run campground by the river.

Little did we suspect our final hairpin would be a shunt around the campsite entrance, which turned almost back on itself!

Once inside, we spotted the wonderful vintage fire engine we’d first seen at Camp Eko Oaza in Montenegro. Despite the rain, its owner, Fritz, came out to give us a wave.

The owner’s son, Philip, didn’t seem too worried about our size. His main concern was the grass.

“Don’t turn the wheels in place,” he said, and guided us to a lovely riverside pitch.

Mark positioned the truck and asked, “Is this okay?” to which Philip replied,

“We don’t do okay. We do GREAT!”

It was a comforting welcome after a long and traumatic day.

Secure and safe, after a sustained period of terror, our thoughts moved towards beer.

As luck would have it, Philip’s cousin had a brewery next door and supplied the campsite’s delightful log cabin restaurant, which sat right on the bank of the Drina River. After the storm, a swathe of mist hovered moodily over the water.

The golden ale was refreshing, hoppy and more-ish.

“We’ve just prepared our speciality!” Philip told us as he brought our second pint. “Slow-cooked, home-smoked ham hock.”

“We might have it later,” we replied.

“There won’t be any left later,” he said with a grin.

I wasn’t overly hungry, having smashed my way through the bakery’s full inventory, but we shared a portion of the ham hock. It melted in our mouths.

“That was delicious,” we told Philip as he cleared our table.

“You must try our fish!” the budding salesman said.

We had an early night, following our exhausting, exhilarating, and spectacular day.

Mark and I both agreed that the Sedlo Pass is the most fabulous road we’ve ever driven, but even without the E763/M18 and the Hum Border Crossing addenda, it’s not for the fainthearted.  

In the final 2.5 miles, we’d descended 1,300 ft (400 m) and negotiated 11 tunnels.

Mark admitted, “That’s about as exciting as I want driving to get.”

“I’m glad you said that,” I replied, since Mark can be a little gung-ho and often dismisses my fears. “That was right on my limit.”

If you intend to drive the Sedlo Pass, I suggest you pack a head for heights and concrete underpants!

Join us next time as we head for Sarajevo.

The Fab Four pose in Sarajevo’s Olympic bobsleigh run.