Arriving somewhere new during golden hour is one of travel’s great pleasures. Within 40 minutes of leaving Podgorica airport, my husband and I were in tree-lined lanes leading to Jablan Winery outside the hamlet of Rvasi. Dropped off in one of its two self-catering rentals, we immediately felt the remoteness of this part of southern Montenegro — limestone mountains rising over vineyards and forests, everything bathed in soft early evening light.
Our temporary home was a little stone house with a bedroom and an outdoor kitchen on a terracotta-roofed terrace. I headed straight for the rope-swing seat hanging from the ceiling and gently swayed beside a potted lemon tree, breathing in the scent of lavender. Hello, rural idyll. You were exactly what I needed.
Boris Jablan, who runs both the old family winery and an adventure tour agency, 3e Travel, with his Austrian wife, Angelika, gave us a flavour of what to expect during their wine tastings: cured meats, cheeses, tomatoes, olives and fat rounds of bread along with bottles of organic Jablan rosé and red (wine tastings from £26pp; 3etravel.me). Angelika, he told us, would be here in the morning to make us breakfast and take us off on a cycling adventure.
That left us with nothing to do but feast our eyes on the vivid greenery around us, while feasting on the excellent food and wine as the sky slowly darkened. Somewhere an owl hooted and a comically chubby toad waddled around the garden evading the prowling cats. The air was deliciously sweet and pure.
Jablan Winery is run by a husband-and-wife team
This is the Montenegro I’ve always preferred in my 15 years of visiting this small mountainous country wedged between Croatia and Albania. Not the Montenegro of swanky five-star resorts, superyacht marinas, concreted-over beach resorts, casinos and massive cruise ships crowding the Bay of Kotor.
While parts of Montenegro want to become more like Monaco, others prefer to celebrate the bounty of nature that comes with rugged mountain ranges, the biggest lake in the Balkans, canyon-filled national parks and family-run farm-to-table restaurants. Rural tourism is having its own quiet little boom, even if some elements are a bit rough around the edges.
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A stay at the Jablan Winery
And now some are looking upwards, specifically at the stars. Jablan Winery is one of only three rural tourism businesses in Montenegro that are members of Visit Dark Skies, a Berlin-based company that offers virtual “guided stargazing”, and I was here to see what it was doing for dark-sky tourists. The idea is to plonk yourselves in a place with no light pollution and turn on a speaker with a downloaded commentary on what you’re seeing in the night sky (£20; visitdarkskies.com).
Mary Novakovich on a scenic cycle ride in the hills of Montenegro
ADAM BATTERBEE
While there was some light pollution near our cottage, there was a neighbouring field that would have made an ideal stargazing spot. That’s if the weather had been behaving itself, which it wasn’t. No starry, starry night for us.
The next morning Angelika made an enormous breakfast of eggs and mushrooms to go with meats and cheeses — all that lovely protein before our bike ride, even if it was on ebikes.
It wasn’t long before we reached one of the most photographed viewpoints in Montenegro, Pavlova Strana, three miles to the southwest, where the madly serpentine Crnojevica River was at its most dramatic. Between the various shades of green of forested hills and reeds flanking the river, this horseshoe bend offered a taste of the scenery to come.
Swapping bikes for a boat we joined the restaurateur, chef, boatman and tour operator (there’s a lot of multitasking in Montenegro) Dusko Jovicevic on his small boat in the village of Rijeka Crnojevica, a few miles further on. Our treat before lunch of grilled trout and an outstanding fish soup at his Skadar Lake Family Resort restaurant, halfway between Pavlova Strana and Rijeka Crnojevica, was a boat ride along the meandering river towards Lake Skadar and its national park (mains from £12; skadarlake.me). I’d been on the Balkan peninsula’s biggest lake a few times before, each time completely spellbound by its blue-green intensity and utter serenity.
The Crnojevica River is surrounded by forest
ALAMY
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Yoga in a flowery meadow
Soon it was time to drive 90 minutes north, just past Montenegro’s second-largest city Niksic into an area that made tranquil Lake Skadar look like a metropolis. In the midst of wooded hills, thick forests and wildflower-filled meadows, Andjela and Matija Djokic have created GEA Retreat, combining yoga, wellbeing and mindfulness holidays with stargazing. Guests stay in one of the apartments in a neighbouring cottage, while they’re free to use the kitchen, sitting areas and veranda in the main house where Andjela and Matija live. The couple had finished this major renovation project only two years before while commuting daily from their city home in Niksic.
Moving here full time was a no-brainer for Andjela. “The only thing is that I really enjoy living in nature,” she said. “For me, it was this connection with nature that made the choice easier.”
It was natural to start the day with yoga in a flowery meadow serenaded by birds and cicadas. After a breakfast of scrambled eggs courtesy of Andjela’s hens, we hiked along the Heart Trail, a footpath the couple had cleared through a portion of the woods on the property. Our companions were their adorable dogs, the younger and more energetic Sivi and the gentle giantess Arya, whom I immediately fell in love with and whom I would have taken home with me had she not been the size of a St Bernard.
Outdoor yoga provides a serene start to the day
ADAM BATTERBEE
Rustic in an Instagram-friendly way — cute wooden signs, pallets upcycled into bed frames and sofas covered in plump cushions, swing seats on the veranda — GEA Retreat embodied Andjela’s eco-minded ethos, with free-range chickens, rainwater collected for the permaculture garden and vegetarian menus (including lovely burek-style filo pies). We had a mindfulness session with Andjela’s psychologist friend Kristina Sestak, which was essentially a thoughtful discussion on ways to make life more pleasant. Sitting there, with my new best pal Arya beside me and surrounded by greenery, was one of them.
Come night-time, the yoga meadow doubles as a stargazing spot. The weather had other ideas, though, as thunderstorms drove us inside to drink rakija and exchange stories instead.
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A homey base for hiking and cycling
I could see a pattern developing here. Would the stars come out at our final stop on this dark-sky tour? Forty-five minutes away on the eastern side of Niksic was one of Montenegro’s original ski centres, Vucje Tourist Centre, where Andja Vukcevic Zoric runs a hotel, restaurant and activity holiday base. Looking like a typical wooden alpine lodge, with a dinky little drag lift and a barn where hundreds of hams were being smoked and cured, Vucje offered a homey base for hiking, cycling and riding. While the rooms could definitely do with a refresh, the restaurant was the star turn. Grilled trout for £6 and roast lamb for £11? Yes please, especially as the quality was as high as the prices were low.
Andja loved dogs as much as Andjela did, having adopted many strays over the years, and a few of these furry boys and girls ambled with us on our walks through woods and up the herb-covered hills that doubled as ski slopes in winter. Sadly, once again, rain that evening blotted out even the brightest star, Sirius — the dog star. But we found our stars closer to earth: superb food and wine in calm, friendly and magnificent settings rather than Monaco in the mountains.
Mary Novakovich was a guest of Jablan Winery, which has one night’s self-catering for two from £51, and a bike, wine, boat tour and lunch from £112pp (jablanwinery.com); GEA Retreat, which has three nights’ B&B from £389pp, including yoga programme (gearetreat.com); and Vucje Tourist Centre, which has B&B doubles from £32 (vucje.me). Fly to Podgorica