The lake, the woods and the fire
Out of the door
There is no programme here. The lake sits below the garden, the woods start where the garden stops, and the fortress has been on the ridge since long before any of us.
Most days arrange themselves. Someone walks down to the water before anyone else is up. Someone else lights the fire in the garden at four. Dinner happens when it happens.
What follows is simply what we would do with five days in Bostan, set down in the order the light tends to suggest. Take all of it, or none of it.
The lake
Straight below the villas
The fortress
Up through the pines
Breakfast
Halal, on request
Pristina
About 45 minutes
01 – 05
01
The lake sits directly below the houses, with a footpath running along the shore and fish under the surface. Nothing to book, nothing to carry. You walk out of the garden and you are there. Nearly every villa looks onto the water, so you can see what sort of morning it is before you decide to go down at all.
02
The pine woods begin where the garden stops, and the tracks through them climb towards the ridge. At the top of it stands the fortress at Novobërdë: medieval, mostly walls now, and more often than not empty. It is a proper walk rather than a stroll. Ask at the door and we will show you where the path goes.
03
There is a brick fireplace in the garden and a barbecue beside it, and between about four in the afternoon and whenever people give up, that is where everyone ends up. Dry wood is stacked by the store. Lamb, peppers, bread. Bring it out yourself, or leave it to the kitchen and think about none of it.
04
Breakfast is not a thing to be got through. It is laid in the villa or outside on your balcony, whichever you would rather, and it is halal: eggs, bread, honey from the hills, tomatoes when they are worth eating. Coffee comes out first. The water is right there below you while you eat, which is the only argument we have for getting up early.
05
It does rain, and the lake is better for it: grey, dead still, left to the fish. The honest answer is that most people stay in, because every house has a kitchen worth cooking in, there are books, and the wifi works if you insist. The fortress is a short drive up the ridge and looks considerably more like itself under cloud.
Round the year
Spring
The water comes up.
The track along the shore is mud for a fortnight. Then the woods fill in, the birds get loud, and the whole valley turns over at once.
Summer
Everything moves outside.
The pines hold the houses cool until late afternoon. Lunch runs long on the terrace and the fire is lit most nights.
Autumn
The best light of the year.
Cold mornings, fewer people, and the hills above Novobërdë changing colour. Fires are going by five.
Winter
Snow on the ridge.
Stoves burning, the lake flat and grey, and the fortress walls with nobody at all on them. Bring proper boots.
Up the ridge
Old silver mines, a fortress on the skyline, and a town that once gave up six tonnes of silver a year. All of it on the ridge above the lake.