Bald blokes on bicycles in the Balkans - what could possibly go wrong?

Amiddle-aged friend and I had been secretly planning our bicycle trip along Eastern Europe's Adriatic coast for months. But when we announced the news, the rebukes flew as thick and fast as heavy-duty saucepans hurled forcefully across a kitchen table.

The fiercest hit me like a copper-bottomed stockpot with a full load of stew. "I know why you're doing this," my wife raged. "You just want to escape the children and spend a week drinking beer and ogling women."

"You're only two-thirds right," I protested, hastily. "No woman the length of the Adriatic can compare with your beauty so what could possibly possess me to ogle at weather-beaten Balkan crones?"

And with that expertly delivered piece of silver-tongued flattery, the threat of acute physical injury subsided and my friend, David, and I were as good as in our saddles and on our way for our reckless expedition: a 650km bike ride from the southern tip of Albania to Dubrovnik, in Croatia.

OK, so it didn't happen quite like that. In reality, my wife appeared suspiciously keen for me to leave her in the sunshine of Greece while I pedalled up and down a mountainous coastline with an equally bald and wrinkly fellow veteran hack. But any mid-life crisis adventure requires a measure of boyish mischief and mild female disapproval. So it was that, with a cacophony of imaginary tut-tutting in our ears, we squeezed our bulging frames into tight cycling shorts and headed manfully for the hills of Albania.