Kolašin

The line that runs from the coast up into the mountains has a station here, which means the north is reachable from the sea without renting a car or driving a canyon road. That is a genuinely unusual piece of infrastructure for a country this size and it reshapes what is possible for car-free travellers: coast in the morning, mountains by afternoon, with the climb itself spent looking out of a window at viaducts and gorges rather than at the road. Anyone weighing whether they need a car in Montenegro should weigh this first.

The main reason to come is a short drive east, where one of the last unlogged forests in Europe grows around a glacial lake in a bowl of mountains. The distinction from an ordinary managed woodland is visible once you know to look: trees of every age including very old ones, standing deadwood left where it died, fallen trunks rotting into the floor, and the density of undergrowth that follows from centuries of that going uninterrupted. There is an easy lake circuit and a set of longer trails behind it, and the whole thing is small, quiet and unstrenuous.

The slopes above town carry the country's more developed ski infrastructure, modernised in recent years and generally regarded as the better lift-served skiing in Montenegro. It is a small area by Alpine standards and inexpensive by the same measure, and it fills with domestic and regional visitors through the season. In summer the same lifts open for walkers wanting the ridge without the climb.

Kolašin and Žabljak are two hours apart and answer different questions. Žabljak is higher, barer and closer to the canyon and the big massif — the base for rafting and serious mountain days. Kolašin is lower, greener, easier to reach, and sits beside the forest rather than the gorge. Travellers with a car and an appetite for the dramatic generally want the former; travellers without a car, or with less time, or who prefer forest to rock, do better here. The trip-shaping argument for having a northern base at all is in the planning guide.