Three days on the Albanian Riviera, without the crowds

The road from Vlora climbs for forty minutes before it shows you anything. Then the Llogara pass drops away and the whole Ionian coast is below you at once — a hundred kilometres of it, folded between the Ceraunian mountains and water the colour of a swimming pool. Most people drive the length of it in a day. Give it three and the Riviera becomes a different place entirely.

Day one: over the pass, into Himara

Leave Vlora before nine. The Llogara pass is at its best in morning light and at its worst behind a tour bus, and by eleven there will be several. Stop at the top for a coffee among the pines, then take the descent slowly — twenty-nine hairpins, each one opening onto more water than the last.

Himara is the natural first base. It has enough of a town to feel lived-in outside July, a castle on the hill above it that almost nobody climbs to, and a string of beaches south of the centre that get quieter with every kilometre you walk.

Day two: the beaches nobody photographs

The famous ones — Jale, Dhërmi, Gjipe — earn their reputations. But between them are bays with no sign, no car park and often no name on the map. These are the three worth the walk:

• Filikuri — reachable only by boat or a steep forty-minute path from the Himara road. Pebbles, one cave, no bar.
• Gjipe — a canyon that opens straight onto the sea. Park at the top and walk down; the last stretch is loose gravel, so leave the sandals in the car.
• Porto Palermo — less a beach than a fortress on a spit, built for Ali Pasha and still standing in the shallows. Swim off the rocks to its left.

Every bay here has a road being built to it. The ones without one yet are the reason to come this year rather than next.

Ilir, boat captain, Himara

Day three: south to Ksamil, slowly

The coast south of Borsh flattens and the olive groves take over — some of the oldest in the Mediterranean, a few of them planted before the Ottomans arrived. Break the drive at Butrint, where a Greek theatre, a Roman forum and a Venetian tower sit inside three hundred metres of each other, and finish at Ksamil for the last swim.

One practical note: the coastal road has no fuel between Dhërmi and Borsh — roughly fifty kilometres. Fill up in Himara, not after it.

What it costs

Rough per-person figures for three days, outside the August peak:

How to do it differently

Drive it north to south and you chase the sun all afternoon. Drive it south to north and the light is behind you the whole way, the sea reads turquoise instead of silver, and every viewpoint is on your side of the road. It costs nothing and changes the entire trip.