Buy a campervan, dig your tent out of the loft, or stay in one of their trendy cabins but get yourself down to the Camping Bled site for the best shower you will have anywhere. 16eu a night for my out-of-season, no electricity, single person stay in this gorgeous quiet location despite its proximity to hustle and bustle. Gushing 🤣
Top showerToilet BlockTrendy cabins
I came on this trip for Croatia and feel that justice has not been done to it given the limited time I was there, very much overshadowed by the impending practicalities of working.
But on this trip, Slovenia, and the return journeying is stealing it. All the countries’ motorways have been quiet enough to be able to take in the so impressive countryside of Austria, Slovenia, and Croatia. I hope I can return before too long to all three to do more exploring.
Yesterday afternoon and night was spent on the Stellplatz (motorhome dedicated parking places) of another lovely town in southern Germany on the edge of the Alps called Prien am Chiemsee. One of the great things about driving my van on the continent is the confidence I have from feeling that my stay is welcomed in little places along the way, due to their extensive provision, and therefore you can get to see so much more. Motorhomes/campervans are everywhere, taking for granted their right to be there, and the equally-impressive well-maintained, pretty-much litter-free roads accommodate them.
Vikings also here
Today I am typing this from a McDonalds at a service station just outside the town of Ulm so that I can get decent wifi to upload photos. My companions on the road have been the many, many truckers pounding the concrete at the same speed, annoyingly disrupting my cruise-controlling. We are on our way across southern Germany to Baden-Baden, in contrast with the travelling down on a lorry-absent Sunday. And the radio station Bayern1 providing me such classics as Kylie Minogue’s ‘The Locomotion’, the Carpenters ‘Mr Postman’, and the track which I have on my ‘About Me’ page.
My alternative to travelling half of the distance to my next destination on Friday night, was to aim to set off at 5am this morning, and do the journey all in one go, with the idea that traffic would not have built up. I also decided to take a risk and actually take a cross-country stretch not on the motorway, rather than go out of my way around Zagreb, repeating the outward journey. This would mean that I would do the border crossing on a lesser road so I figured there would be less queues.
I did apologise in advance to my immediate neighbours about the to be sound of the diesel engine and van maneouverings off the pitch the following morning, and I did make an exit by 5:15 in the dark, fingers crossed that nothing was left behind.
The journey up through Croatia was great, and I was again struck by the significant mountains, hills and uplands. Some glimpses of the coastline looked similar to pictures of fyord coasts, with mountains going down to the sea. There are many beautiful national parks with lakes, and rivers to visit as well as the Istrian coast, Dubrovnik further south, and islands up and down the coast, so a repeat visit is definitely needed.
Plaudits must be given to my companion on this trip – the fabulous catalogue of the one and only Stevie Wonder. He and I belted out all the well-known classics, but what about ones like “I ain’t gonna stand for it baby” and “one more time, one more time – For Your Love”. I know my fellow fans will recall these instantly :).
The risks of ending up going on single-track roads with hairpin bends up mountains given my lack of a detailed map didn’t materialise, as I cut a corner off from near Karlovac in Croatia to Slovenia’s Ljubliana. This route confirmed the many reviews I had read about the landscapes of Slovenia. The sun was shining, but notwithstanding it was really beautiful, and I was so glad that I hadn’t stuck to the motorway.
These were the roadsthrough this type of countryside
The roads were great, but it does help when stopping to check two satnavs and the map, to be sure of the road you’re actually on, rather than the one you’d planned and had assumed you were on! I actually took road numbered ‘3’ crossing the border at Vinica rather than the planned ‘6’, which explained my continuing confusion as I failed to understand what was going on. Blame it on tiredness rather than plain inability or ageing. It was only when I arrived that I deduced exactly what had happened; in effect the roads were pretty parallel and similar distances so I don’t think I did unnecessary miles. However, due to the number of times I ended up stopping on the journey for various reasons including these, I didn’t take enough photos of this route.
The plan variation worked thankfully. The long drive was done on pretty empty, stress-free roads, at 58mph for the motorways, and despite knowing that I had just reached the end of my willingness and capability to drive further, my arrival early afternoon nick of time was accompanied by excitement at the new place.
Conspicuous by its absence, I am putting right the recording of this event. It was not a case of deliberate omission and I happened to be listening to R4 when the news of her death was announced. It did cause an emotional response from me because of the weight of the significance of this passing for the UK, her family and for my own lifespan.
I’m not a royalist, but I acknowledge the service that she has given so steadfastly and intentionally it seems to me, despite how difficult this role, and the other ‘royal’ mantles, must be for anyone.
I feel the UK, and the world in fact, is up ….. creek without a paddle in this period, and she was a steady rock in such turbulent times. But in my opinion, Charles will be a good, perhaps needed ‘continuity’ figure and I am glad that someone with his such longstanding views that he has seen ft to share on the needs of our planet and the damage we are doing to it, is now in that role.
This cartoon, from the Guardian newspaper sent to me by a friend, is a good one for me.
My poor ankles and feet were swelling from sitting at my computer in that heat, and trying to get them raised just added to the twisted position I had had to adopt, given the best layout of my kit. I had to sit-on a quadruple-folder thick towel in my swimming attire, and even ended up abandoning the decorum of the tee-shirt. Whilst the bottom half of my body could not be seen, and even though I had disguised my campervan office with an MS Teams background, when there were no more formal meetings, I had thrown caution to the wind removing the tee-shirt and who cares if I’m sitting there in a tankini top. I had thought I was safe with this, but it did cause the retired house-husband and acting butler of my colleague, with whom I am regularly MS-Teaming – the colleague not her butler – in the first instance to suddenly avert his eyes/nay presence when he caught a glimpse of me on the screen, to then deciding if you can’t beat then join and suggesting that he should take his top off when delivering the cups of tea/coffee.
Well, I worked the full 5 days this week but am not working next week so that I can be un-pressured in the long journey back.
The map told me that I shouldn’t do a stay at Lake Garda, as there were other places to visit on this trip as part of a more direct route home. My first main destination was approx 350 miles, so I was going to set off Friday after work and stop over at the campsite on the Mreznicki river again, thereby being able to leave early for Slovenia on Saturday morning and beat the border queues for the stamp in my passport.
No sooner had I made these plans literally yesterday, than a rare, in fact pretty (not a comment on how they looked 😄) non-existent, fellow sole traveller female from Germany invited me to join her for a restaurant meal in the evening. The restaurant meal would be the first such on this trip, and Claudia seemed nice based on one little conversation where I told her that the pitch opposite was better for the shade. Plus I do try to be open to unexpected opportunities…. but my journeying plans would need to adapt.
We spent a lovely evening together – although I was significantly germanly-challenged, as she didn’t speak too much English. And thank you my brain for presenting me today, having singularly failed me yesterday, with the words I wanted to say such as ’empfehlen’ – to recommend – as our conversation ranged across divorce – she similarly is, and has 3 adult children – 2 sons and a daughter, our jobs and trying to explain mine!!!. She is a physiotherapist and part of her work is therapy through horse-riding – she has a very gentle, aged ‘therapy horse’, lives in Villach, Austria. This was her first trip alone in the campervan she and her daughter own, and from today she is spending a week sailing round the islands with 4 other sole individuals from all over Germany, leaving her van at Trogir marina. I haven’t described all of this to underline the depth of the linguistic challenge in exchanging all this information, but more to record another interesting set of stories from random meetings.
3 days work has been completed from the inside of my over-heated metal box, given temperatures of late 20s to 30 degrees outside. I have taken the suggestion of a friend to do some paddle-boarding before! work given that we are an hour ahead of the UK, the sea is beautiful and calm and the beaches empty, so no-one needs to see my unsteady attempts to do the stand-up thing rather than reverting to kayak mode.
I have also taken the opportunity of cooling off at lunchtime by diving off the rocks at the beach, spending 20 minutes or so there, before returning back to my desk.
After work yesterday I cycled to Trogir and the medieval walled centre was worth the visit. Full of restaurants and cafes in amongst the narrow little streets, and very slippy, shiny paving stones, worn down by so many feet over the years.
It is a beautiful spot, and the weather is perfect for being outside, but working?…. As this same friend commented about possible difficulties with focussing on work from such a holiday setting, tbh I am finding combining the two abit of a challenge. I can focus on the work, it’s more the fact that I can’t enjoy this location in the way I thought I would be able to. Consequently I am now contemplating heading home sooner than I had intended. My next task will be to decide on the route back, whether I will stay somewhere halfway for a few days, and to not combine work with driving slowly but surely north. Fortunately the project I am contracted to is in a bit of a waiting for decisions from elsewhere phase, so deadlines are not in place. From the employer’s perspective, if I don’t work, they don’t pay me, so given these two factors, I have flexibility.
Life in new lanes found me today at a complete parkup on a motorway, still despite my advancing years a rare event, with a helicopter having landed further up so we were there for a duration. I was once again sitting pretty, not quite ‘on’ 😊, but due to the toilet on board, and the fact that the sun was shining, I had a coffee in my mug and was finally heading to where I have wanted to go for a long time. Lots of German, Belgian, Dutch holiday traffic, so everyone was outside of their cars, walking dogs, sharing conversation… Without the sun, it would have been perhaps a different atmosphere.
Given that it’s cost a few hundred pounds to renew my blog site domain name for the next 3 years, and what better could I be doing, I decided to type my first post for almost a year since my last trip over the channel – as I was happily waiting. That was just south of Cologne, heading for this journey’s 3rd stage destination of beyond Stuttgart.
I have had to re-assess my capacity for hours driving, as my original aims were to drive after work on Friday the 5 hours down to Canterbury, board ferry at 6am in Dover, then drive from Dunkirk across Belgium, Germany, Austria, Slovenia arriving in northern Croatia by Monday, including a shortish diversion to meet my son and girlfriend near Cologne on my birthday!!! Notwithstanding the only 2 hours sleep I had after the Stage 1 drive, prior to which I had had to put my trust in the satnav at 11:45pm leading me through dark roads, up what seemed like steep climbs in the middle of nowhere, to arrive at the council-provided official motorhome parking area. To boot, a warning light suddenly appearing and I didn’t want to find my glasses and process it whilst driving until setting off the following morning. Fantastic though Canterbury, and thanks from me, Blue and the 20 or so other vans there for the provision. The following morning, or 4:30am middle of the night, engine ignition revealed the warning to be that Adblue was needed. Thankfully after initially going through the plan to have to buy a 10-litre container of it somewhere in Dunkirk and buy another funnel to get it into the inlet on the van, my brain came up trumps with the memory of the fact that there are Adblue pumps on service stations. Sure enough, the first one I passed on the way to the ferry port had the very thing, easy peezy, stress alleviated, and better still removal off the problem list henceforth.
Notwithstanding also (1st notwithstanding was para 3 and sentence number 2) my determination to be almost the slowest vehicle on the autobahn, cruise-controlling at 58mph, resisting the all nationality and non-lorry vehicles dash to the southern coasts, by constantly reminding myself that I am time-rich and cash-poor. Because it is exciting being part of the throng of like-minded movement, seeking the mirage? of a paradise beach.
The contract I started last December is still continuing and I am delighted to be remote working, doing the most enjoyable and rewarding work of my life, so it’s coming with me on this trip as I give digital nomadery a shot, and join my new tribe – the primarily young, cool, north american vanlife vloggers.
I had originally booked a ferry from Venice to Patras for May, but cancelled this due to the amazing achievement more than 3 months ago of a Ukrainian family actually getting their visas through the shambolic British Homes4Ukraine scheme. They duly arrived to my house 11 May, and continue to establish, as best they can, a life of sorts in the UK given what Putin and his cabal have done to their country and the lives of its you and me equivalents.
Who would have predicted that 2022 would have followed a 2-year pandemic which completely upturned the world (at least my one); bringing a repeat of a Nazi dictatorship, but with the addition of nuclear power plants and the red button, even if it hasn’t gone for another holocaust of ‘others’ as a rallying, unifying, justified and worthwhile cause which recent history shows any population can be sufficiently brainwashed or rendered fearful enough for their own lives to buy into. The threat is there for us all with the slippery slope of the rise of governments appealing to usually right-wing populist simplistic tropes to maintain their ‘world-beating’ position, the gradual, imperceptible watering down, or actual removal of opposition or balancing structures of state, and the re-definition of patriotism as allegiance to the government because it is one and the same as one’s country.
Well, stepping off the soap box again ……, so there I was 2 weeks ago, contemplating going to theTwinwood vintage music festival – see my post about it from last year – when the thought suddenly presented itself that instead of paying for that over the Sat-Mon bank holiday weekend, the money and time could instead go towards crossing the channel and heading for Croatia to finally achieve some of my planned 2019 career break eastern leg.
I am delighted, and aware as ever of my life’s fortunate time, place and, still there just opportunities and days for the seizing, to be driving once again on these roads through beautiful countryside, marvelling at the engineering and infrastructure investment, this time of Germany. The A61 and A8 motorways I’m on are to be recommended – the great viaducts across wide/high vineyard-covered valleys, a volcano-area, lots of forest and just space! And in addition, my 2nd night spent on a motorhome stellplatz (small dedicated motorhome car park) provided by the town/village council – this one for 6 euros at Weilheim an Teck, last night was free. Onwards and will presumably be upwards tomorrow as I aim for a stellplatz behind an inn in Austria south of Salzburg. So that would be day 3, meaning day 4 brings me to northern Croatia to a small town called Duga Resa and a campsite stop for the luxury of two nights, with hopefully a train visit to Zagreb.
I can certainly recommend the radio station SDW giving fantastic driving companionship right up my street with mostly American/British classics from the 60s onwards all day. Belting out the below with a shoulder shimmy for you Dad …….’ interspersed with listening to stuff like an interview (of course in German) with someone who’d just been to the Robbie Williams concert in Munich, and the station playing him singing Angels with the crowd. Loving the exercise my brain at least is getting, and thinking as I drive and sing about the parts of my life spent with things German.
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