The Kotor Serpentine is a series of 26 bends, running up the mountain behind Kotor. It’s a little scary, but we got lost getting to the start of it, and took a much more dangerous road up to the Fortress Blanche wrote about. There was a big – big earthquake in Montenegro in 1979, everyone we have spoken to remembers it. Mercifully it was a Sunday morning, and there had been a rather strong Pre-Shock, which had alerted people to get into the open. I’m not sure all of the roads have been fixed from that earthquake, some of the smaller roads have contorted surfaces, and some of the edges are missing.

Kotor itself was almost totally destroyed, but has been painstakingly put back together, as have other towns along the coast, which stretches from Herceg Novi to Ulcinj and were severely damaged as well.

Earthquakes are a regular event along the Montenegrin coastline, here’s a sample of the log of the last few weeks. There was one moment when the earth shook, but we were not in the region. We were in Durmitor, so missed our first genuine earthquake experience.

Anyway back to the Serpent. At the top of the serpent, there’s a new , and very good road to Lovcen National Park, the road eventually passes Cetinje, the “Old” capital of Montenegro, which boasts of never having been captured by any one of many besiegers.

We went up the Serpent, the brakes on the Paocher are 40 years old, and this was not the place to test them. Also when descending we use engine braking, sometimes travelling for kilometers in second gear, feet off the pedals,

If you want to see the downhill version , maybe play the clips backwards ?