Before coming here I had visions that Albania would be like Croatia and Montenegro. Inland, broad tracts of rural land, and by the sea beachy inlets of newly built tourism centred around historical seaside villages. It really is too early to say, but my first impressions is that Albania is not quite like this.

Travelling westwards between Tirana and Durres, located on the coast, reminded me of the A5 leaving London. A poor quality, very tight dual carriageway of some dilapidated businesses and some glossy new. I was expecting to see the sea at Durres but infact the coast is hidden by block upon block of new housing and hotel buildings lifting out of most likely barren scrub land.

It is only once you get near Vlorë that the road improves ( most likely to support the newly opened airport there) and the road passes through a huge U shaped valley with fields upon fields of sweet corn, water melon and new plantations of olive trees that edge up to the very top of the surrounding hillsides.

There are beautiful stretches of monstrous mountains towering in front of the road, but in places, as you heart breakingly see in Turkey, the land is also scarred by earthworks to feed the build build build mentality for more housing units and new hotels.

Nearing Ksamil on the very southern coast of the Albanian Riviera you are suprisingly faced with a strip of what I would call semi rural decay. Some of the real Albania revealed ; poor quality road surfaces, high weeds along the road edge, crumpled barriers, old rusting obliterated road signs, half built houses or total shells of houses creeping up the barren hillside. Not what you wish for your visitors to see before finally arriving at the gloss of the tourist resort.

It is only after a 4 hour drive, and arrival in Ksamil that the Adriatic sea comes in to view for the first time, with the Greek island of Corfu in the left foreground. One tourist book bravely calls Ksamil the ‘Maldives of Europe’. All I can say is that this writer has never been to the Maldives, but nevertheless a pretty view from the hotel room ( main picture) and for me, importantly, sitting a stones throw from the most significant archaeological site in the country.

You do wonder how all these tourists came to be here, but the clue is in the car plates: Croatians, Kosovans, Czechs, Macedonians and Serbians. This place a big draw to land locked populations wishing to holiday by the sea. There is the usual trappings of tourism here ; souvenir shops, tightly packed sunbeds and pumping music until midnight ( maybe not so late really).

Wider international tourism can only take off this far south if a closer airport is built, and on this subject I will show no mercy!

Just this year an airport has opened in Vlorë with a capacity for 1.5 million visitors and a planned increase to 10 million. Placed in the heart of the Riviera it is, as the Government says, a boost to their economic growth and jobs for the local people.

Yet, there is absolutely no justification for building it slap bang in the middle of the Vjosa -Narta Delta Protected area, defying a strongly worded EU commission report ( I have read it) stating that construction must stop, it breaks with the Bern Convention and threatens their accession to the Union. The protected area wetland is home to 200 migratory birds on the Adriatic flyway, including the endangered Dalmatian Pelican. It is also home to loggerheads turtles and monk seals.

Trust me when I say this. I have just driven past Vlorë and it is like driving across Lincolnshire, there are huge swathes of flat fenced off land with no cultivation. Why build an airport on Protected land when the choices are infinite? I assume the discussion was helicopter fly time to the new top end island resorts planned nearby.

I’m not normally a conspiracy theorist ( infact I dislike them) but the Kushner ( think Trump) name comes up in local media reports about the new airport, he thanking the Albanian Government for ‘their vision’, opening up the area to new tourist possibilities. Albania secured a 10% tariff to the US. Was this more important than EU accession?

At the moment Ryanair and Wizz air, naturally, fly you to Tirana, but there are no flights to Vlorë. Are these coming soon? Who decides on the routes? Does the EU have a sway? Are we, the tourists, ever made aware of the damage caused? I know the conflicts between humans and nature are constant but this is the most blatant disregard I have seen so far.

Pelican pic thanks to Spyros Skareas.