Velipojë

Getting there

car, bus. About thirty kilometres from Shkodra at the mouth of the Buna, at sea level. The straight-line distance is twenty-four, so the road is close to direct by the standards of this country.

Parking: Behind the promenade.

Photography

Best light: golden, blue.

The estuary rather than the promenade is the picture, with Montenegro on the far bank. Check drone requirements with the AAC before travelling.

Drone: not confirmed. Albania's registration requirement is reported differently by every secondary source, so verify with the AAC before you fly.

Velipojë sits on the estuary of the Buna, the only navigable river in Albania, where it reaches the Adriatic and becomes the border with Montenegro. The beach is long and sandy with a promenade behind it, and the whole place has been inside the Buna River-Velipoja Protected Landscape since 2005.

It is Shkodra's beach rather than an international one. The source describes a resort that has recently begun to expand and is favoured especially by the inhabitants of Shkodra, and that is the crowd mechanism in one sentence: it fills in July and August with people who drove thirty kilometres, and it is empty either side of them.

The estuary is the part worth planning around. A protected landscape at a river mouth means birds, and it means the reason to come in April is not the water. The Land and Sand Art Festival carves sculptures along the beach; no dates for it could be sourced, so none are printed here.