It is just a short walk of 1.7 km with about 75 m climbing (one direction) from Trpejca to the Church of St Bogorodica Zahumska (St Zaum for friends). What makes this walk so special is that almost everybody thinks that St Zaum can only be reached by boat. Only few people seem to know about this hidden trail to the church, which we discovered in July 2019 while looking for the Naumova Cave.
We parked the car on the parking above the village Trpejca and took the asphalt road on the left downhill towards the lake. This road passes the small Recreational Vehicle (RV) campsite Grebnos in Trpejca (info@grebnos.com, whatsapp +38971387241) run by Dutch/Macedonian people. Almost immediately after the campsite, there is a trail to your left into the bushes. The first meters you have to be careful where you place your feet, the path seems to be used as an outdoor toilet. At the first junction, take the left trail (if you walk straight ahead, you’ll arrive at a quiet beach). Just keep following this path. At many points this path is pretty overgrown, sometimes with thorny bushes. When we were there in 2019, it was never so badly overgrown that we could not walk further.
Along the way there are several small deserted beaches, so it may not be a bad idea to take a towel and swimming gear with you. There also is a beach at St Zaum.
At the level of the lake, the shore is littered with a lot of plastic rubbish, ranging from bottles to shoes to water pistols. If you feel like it, take a bag with you on this hike and help cleaning up a bit! At the end of the trail when you reach St Zaum, there is a building with a small iron fence, which you have to step over.
The small church of St Bogorodica Zahumska was build and fresco-painted in 1361. In 1898 the Zaum monastery was demolished, and later reconstructed. The last monk lived here in 1921. The frescoes are highly damaged. The first time we visited St Zaum was in 2007, with a small boat + captain at that time. A funny detail was that the outboard motor broke down on the way back and the captain, my friend and I took turns rowing back to Trpejca, while the captain was sharing his bottle of home-made Rakija with us. In 2007, there was just the church and a small beach. To our surprise in 2019 a whole monastery was built next to the church. The monastery is for church officials only.
St Zaum became big business and large boats with tourists were coming and going. Entrance to the church, which is being renovated, is 100 denars (1.65 euros) for foreigners. There are toilet facilities as well.
We actually were not even looking for a way to reach St Zaum by land, but were trying to find the location of the Naumova Cave near Trpejca. During this attempt we noticed that “St Zaum” was written on a rock with an arrow pointing to the trail. At that moment we already had given up finding the cave and decided to see if this path was really leading to the mysterious church that according to everybody can only be reached over water.
Riste, the friendly guy who was selling tickets for the church, invited us for a coffee between the loads of arriving tourists. He also told us the location of the Naumova Cave and Krstova Cave near Trpejca. Even with his help, we were unable to find and reach the Naumova cave this day over land, because we were tired and the trail seemed too overgrown. When we were back near Trpejca, I actually swam from the most northern beach on the map to the Naumova cave to confirm its location from the water. Unfortunately, the stones, pebbles and dense thorny vegetation made it impossible to reach the cave with bare feet. So I came back a few days later to visit the Naumova cave.
It is just a short but rewarding walk from Trpejca to St Zaum. It’s always cool to discover something unexpected, like this trail only few people seem to know about. 4 out of 5 stars!
If you are looking for other things to do in the neighborhood, check out this page: Sights along the road from Ohrid to the Monastery of St Naum.
You can see and download the GPS track here: https://www.wikiloc.com/hiking-trails/trpejca-to-st-zaum-39673767
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