into Croatia

Thursday
We'd packed away our knife and had no room to carry a melon we'd bought so decided this was a good opportunity to share it with our neighbours and get a chance to be nosey and see what it's like inside a winnie bagle. They were equally fascinated to see our paraphernalia reduced to a size we could load onto the bike.
We continued south on the edge of the J Alps, following the river Idrijca on a small twisty road. There wasn't a lot of traffic and the frequent roadworks meant we could manoever to the front of the queue and had a clear road without doing much overtaking. Navigating was becoming a little more difficult and sometimes required stopping for a coffee to have a better chance of finding someone with the time and patience to study the map with us and correct my poor pronunciation.

We crossed the border into Croatia at Prezid. It is a sleepy border post and we were the only ones around. The road deteriorated and was chaos as it was being dug up manually until we were diverted onto a rough gravel track. Alan asked if we were in Albania already! We rode towards Cebar, an area of small farms , wooded hills and flowers and geraniums everywhere, even in houses still being built. I wondered if people were in fact living there.

We stopped for coffee and TV starved Alan managed to find a telly. It was incongruous hearing Angela Lansbury's voice blaring out in this small village where no-one spoke English.

As we climbed higher the farms petered out and we were in the forest with trees obsuring all but the occasional view. We rode for 50km with barely a car passing until we started descending again. The other side of the mountain range the land is dry and sandy with rocks and scrubby bushes. As we finally reach the coast the air is polluted and smoggy, giving a pinky haze. This part of the coast looks industrial and we give up an idea to visit Rijeka. Instead we hit the busy coastal road. It was the opposite of love at first sight for me. Despite the spectacular views, it was dangerous with twisty, steep narrow places. The traffic was horrendous and we saw more than our fair share of crazy drivers. I felt a great sense of relief when we could finally leave it hundred of miles later in Montenegro.

We found a camp site and pitched our tent right on the cliffs. We even had access down a rocky path to the water and no longer did we have to brace ourselves for cold water. There were even hot current in patches! That night we walked down into the little harbour and had pizza on the small quay side.

The next day we spent reading, swimming and lolling about. Late afternoon we walked into Novi Vinodolski for dinner. What a shock it was to go from our laid-back sleepy village into a throbbing tourist resort with all the worst trappings. We found a fish restarant on a back street which was pleasant.