STARRY ALBANIAN SKIES, Athens, 1 November

The border guards at Montenegro see us coming. A mile off. Our van, despite being fitted out with bunk beds, a sink, a cooker and a family of six, is apparently not a camper. It is a commercial vehicle. We try and argue our case, but the guard smiles knowingly and points to our vehicle registration document. Commercial vehicle. N1 classification. It says so, right there. We have to pay him 80 euros for a sticker with N1 printed on it so that everyone we meet on the road through Montenegro will know that contrary to all appearances, we are not a camper van but a commercial vehicle masquerading as a camper van. We kick ourselves for not updating the vehicle documents before we left home then move on to the next guard.

He sees us coming here too. Taking our passports and our vehicle documents, he tells us our insurance is invalid for Montenegro. Sam argues the case, but the guard is intractable and insists we must buy insurance from a company conveniently situated across the road from the checkpoint. If we don’t buy the insurance, he won’t let us through. We are in a quandary, but in the end we fork out. We feel like innocents abroad and determine not to spend another cent in Montenegro.

Just as we are leaving the border, I see one of the guards begin a vehicle inspection. As he bends over to take a look in the back of the car, the driver tucks something into the breast pocket of the guard’s jacket. The car is waved on. That’s how it’s done, then.

The Montenegran coast is stunning and a bit bling: lots of nightclubs and casinos; beachside apartment blocks; men sitting or standing outside cafés. When we arrive at the Albanian border, we pass through without any problems. Our destination is a Dutch-owned campsite about an hour’s drive away.

The first sign that Albania is different to every other country we have passed through comes with the road sweepers. No gully sooker machine here. There are women in headscarves with large brooms sweeping leaves off a new stretch of dual carriageway in the dark.

We arrive at the campsite at 10pm to find the metal gates of the campsite closed. A young boy runs out of the main building and welcomes us in Dutch-accented English before directing us to a suitable pitch. We can’t help but notice he is accompanied by a man carrying a shotgun.

I am suddenly conscious of how starry the Albanian sky is. Parked up on the edge of the campsite, I look out into the blackness. There are no streetlights but a lot of barking dogs. Walking across to the toilet block, I pass the night watchman sitting on a plastic chair and smoking a cigarette, his shotgun across his knees. The boys don’t want to sleep in the tent, and Sam ends up getting turfed out of the van. Again.

The morning dawns bright and warm and as soon as we’ve had breakfast, we make our way along country roads to the main highway. Here are a few of the things we saw on and adjacent to the Albanian motorway: horses and carts; cows tethered in the central reservation; cyclists coming the wrong way along the dual carriageway; countless old Mercedes’ full of people; children riding donkeys and eating crisps at the same time; haystacks; butchers slaughtering and selling meat on the verge; boys herding turkeys; a perplexing number of new or half-built petrol stations; men pushing wheelbarrows; and people. All along the main highway into Greece there are Albanian people walking, carrying suitcases, leading animals, climbing over crash barriers, selling fruit, hubcaps and plastic bottles of engine oil.

Every so often, a fast bit of tarmac ends without warning and we are driving on gravel. Nowhere do we see a supermarket. The potholes in the road are cavernous. A bread shop sells a few stale white loaves and a lot of bags of flour. This is a country in transition. Albania has applied for EU membership but I can’t imagine how this squares with the roadside butchers and the people who use the highway like a country road. We feel anxious for the donkey riders and the shepherds dodging the speeding traffic. Once this road is finished, it will be lethal.

Not long after discussing this, we come across an accident. There is blood smeared across the road and a lot of people standing about. We think a cow has been killed but we can’t be sure. A couple of hours later, we see an enormous wild pig hit by a lorry. There are dead dogs every few kilometres. The highway feels like a big, brutal thing seared into the landscape.

After queuing for an hour or so, we cross the border into northern Greece and spend the night in the mountains. We visit Meteora where there are monasteries and nunneries perched on the top of cliffs. My vertigo sees me lying on the floor of the van as we wind our way up the mountain, trying not to look. Sam takes Michael, Max and babies to the edge of the cliff while I lurk behind the van feeling pathetic.

By evening, we are in Athens, enjoying the hospitality of Ruth and Emilios Bourantinos. This evening, we catch the ferry to Tinos. It feels very strange to think of actually arriving.