Vermosh

Getting there

car. Ninety-five kilometres from Shkodra on the road through Koplik, at about 1,050 m in a valley of the Albanian Alps. The distance is the smaller half of it: this is mountain road, and the straight-line gap is only sixty kilometres.

Parking: In the village.

Photography

Best light: sunrise, golden.

The valley floor with the ridges either side is the picture, and it wants early light before the walls throw shade across it. 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.

Vermosh is the northernmost village in Albania, in a valley of the Albanian Alps along a river of the same name, in what was the Kelmend municipality and is now part of Malësi e Madhe. It is ninety-five kilometres from Shkodra by the road through Koplik, and the straight-line distance is sixty, which tells you most of what the drive is like.

It was for a long time a seasonal place rather than a year-round one. The village was settled for the four to six months of spring and summer because of winters that regularly bury it under three feet of snow, and that history is still the shape of the year here: the season is short, it starts late, and it ends without much warning.

There is no fee, no gate and nothing to book. What there is instead is the northern end of the country, which for a certain kind of road trip is the entire point, and the knowledge that the drive back is the same ninety-five kilometres.