Ljubanci - Ruins of St George

See https://mymacedoniablog.wordpress.com/ for more info about sightseeing and hiking in Macedonia.

This hike starts at the parking of restaurant Kvin in the village Ljubanci, about 15 km north of Skopje at the foot of the Skopje Crna Gora mountains. The last part of the road to Restaurant Kvin is unpaved and you have to cross a small narrow bridge, so leave your car in the center of the village if you are uncomfortable with that. However, everybody visiting the restaurant takes that road as well so don’t worry.

This was the first hike that we did end of August during our summer holiday of 2022, so with 10 km and 450 m climbing this is a relatively short hike with not too much height difference to train our lazy legs.

It is a pleasant hike, with quite a lot of blackberries along the trail. Besides the blackberries (and people collecting them) we found chestnuts, hazelnut and blackthorn (trninki).

After about 3 km, there are the ruins of the Church of St George. There are some benches and this makes a good place for a short stop or picnic. I could not find any information about this former church, please let me know if you have some additional information about its age or history.

The second half (downhill) of this hike is more scenic than the first part.

Once we were back at the start, we wanted to have lunch at restaurant Kvin (Queen). The restaurant has its own fish farm and quite a large area for outdoor seating. However it was fully booked because August 28th is the religious holiday of the Assumption of Mary. We were surprised to see that this restaurant in the middle of nowhere was so popular. Allegedly, people from the entire Skopje region come here because the food is good and the nature is beautiful. We went back a couple of weeks later and had a great dinner. Both fish and ribs are highly recommended!

The hike gets 3 out of 5 stars.