A Beach Fit for Kings.

There is an easy way to walk along the coastline from Budva beach to Sveti Stefan beach and there is a less easy way! It certainly looked as if the path led from the built up bay strip onto a rocky headland. However, we had doubts when it led over a bridge with few remaining slats and through a dilapidated site of rock, fallen concrete and glass and then reached a long narrow inlet of water with no way round. Anita led a gallant escape route scrabbling under prickly brush up hill until we emerged in a new construction site with a lot of construction workers. These studiously and unsmilingly ignored us (a Montenegrin characteristic perhaps? – the waiters are like this too) as we walked through, shaking dirt off our knees and picking black-jack seeds out from our clothes.


After wending through the next labyrinth of suburban and beach side new build, helped by an extremely polite small boy who was bursting to use his English but could not dredge up one word except ‘Goodbye’. We felt for him there!  


Eventually we arrived at the beautiful King’s beach, the first and perhaps only one with just forest growing up the mountain side behind and one elegant old building facing the sea. Presumably the sea-side house of Montenegro’s one and only King, Nikola 1. Swimming off the rocks in the sunshine and looking down through the clear water at fishes flitting around our toes made it the best place yet.


After lunch we walked on through Cupressus and pine woods to Sveti Stepan beach, overlooking the holiday island of the rich and famous. This and the private ‘Queen’s beach were security guarded.


We found a less challenging way home by following two girl hikers who led us through an un-marked solid iron gate (abounding with friendly puppies) and down a narrow country foot-path back to the promenade (abounding with pleasantly polite cats.)


What else?
We enquired of our new rep. Khadir about car hire hire and scuba diving. He sold us the first but had no interest in diving. It is probable the season is closed now.


The weather is unseasonably warm and sunny, which is great for us. Usually it would be much chillier, windier and with more rainy days, which it appears are necessary for the black olives to ripen properly. Weather is lurking though at about 900 feet up where the mountains are completely shrouded by a layer of thick cloud. 


Thank-goodness we did not come here in season! Pictures show no beach, just rows and rows of sun-loungers. Notices  say you are allowed on the beach without hiring a lounger but you'd be hard put to it to find a space. Today we walked for much of the time past the continuous row of small beach-side businesses, single storied cabins, booths and shacks which would have sold food, drink, beach clothing and souvenirs but are now mostly shut and sand-baggged against the winter storms. Behind them loom huge acommodation complexes taking up all the narrow coastal strip and new-build being bulldozed into the cliffs. As one of our group said it would seem that the developers are trying to construct as much as they can before entering the EU when legislation will come into play. In the meantime it is the common nightmare of a beautiful place and unique habitat being systematically wrecked by consumerism and seeded with plastic bottles.