13 October 2023, Kochani, 29.5km
Apartment Fila 1400 den [R454]

Friday 13. A good day for us with an easy 30km run on routes 601 and A1 to Kochani (Kočani).
The cheapest accommodation we could find here is an 86sqm two-bedroom apartment at just €23! Egg salad value for money!
In addition, it is located next door to a Kit-Go Supermarket, one of the better shopping options in North Macedonia.
We have often been disappointed by food stores since entering Serbia. We have bought very fresh and tasty fruit, for example, from roadside stalls, but found the fruit and veg offerings at the _Spar_ and misnamed _Family Fresh_ in Pristina, for example, not just disappointing but shocking. We have seldom if ever found the varieties of delicious bread rolls we grew accustomed to from the smallest shops in Poland. Supermarket bread is usually dull and while you will find much tastier bread at dedicated bakeries, there is less to choose from. There are limited chocolate options and virtually no known biscuit brands. Those couple of biscuits we have bought to accompany our 3-in-1 Nescafe sachets (easy to carry on the bikes), have been grainy dry.
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Tomorrow we have a longish ride to Delchevo where we will spend our last two nights in North Macedonia. Then Monday we climb into Bulgaria. Exciting.
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We have been on the road a little over seven months, one of which we were visa hunting and did no cycling. In total we have cycled (only) 4487km. We had planned 1000km per month, so are well short of the hoped 6 to 7000. Ah well...