I must recommend my new toy and the beaches and inlets round this spot are perfect for it. It is a 500m walk from my pitch which doesn’t seem far, but it is quite a load to carry. The model I selected is great – it has a kayak seat, paddle holders, bottle holder and waterproof bag for the mobile, and also a shoulder strap, and I have used all of these. In fact will be taking some ibuprofen shortly for overuse of my shoulders and arms. The only negative was the oar which came with the board, with a plastic joining piece snapping on the first use back in the UK. So got an easy refund from the supplier, and bought another, which is holding up so far, but will need some electrical taping for the standup handle to fit more tightly. The reviews indicated that this would be the case, but it seemed the best one for the price, so at least no surprise, and I think I will end up using it in kayaking mode more anyway which is fine. The board is fantastic for kayaking on these calm sea waters, and today I tried the stand-up bit, which will take abit more practice, but I did manage to get from kneeling to standing and paddle back to shore without falling in.
Two kayakers came paddling by today, and in our on-the-water conversation I found out that they were young British women, one of whom had cycled from the UK to Croatia with her boyfriend – took them 4 months – gauntlet there for my Folkestone to Rome cycling buddies – being visited by her friend, as the boyfriend had flown back to the UK for a wedding. They were doing a 4-day kayaking tour of the coasts and islands from Split, using the company ‘Red Adventures’, wild-camping along the way. I love such meetings. 🙂
There they go into the distance, on their 17km day’s sailing
Tomorrow is back to work Monday, following the lovely beach day I’ve had today. It’s a very laid-back relaxed place here – only the campsite + some lovely beach bars and restaurant or two. Mostly German holiday-makers, but other nationalities and their languages come and go, including Belgian, Dutch, Slovenian, Polish, Italian, French. A variety of ages, with still a few German school-age children. Apologies if my subject intermingling annoys. I am aware I’m doing it, but quite like recording other bits and pieces through minor meanderings back to the main paragraph topic ……… The internet connection via the campsite’s wifi is enabling me to stream stuff to my firestick, and I’ve done a test with a Messenger video call, so fingers crossed and tonight’s activity is setting up my work desk with my large monitor etc.
But I must include my hunted-down dessert which it’s now time for – the Croatian equivalent of a custard slice/bienenstick/milles-feuilles, with a layer of marshmallow underneath the pastry. I found one in a Zagreb cafe, then saw 2-days worth in Lidl. It’s called a ‘KremÅ¡nite’.
The weather forecast is warm all week, with rain from Thursday, so after work activities will be paddling, and a cycle ride to Trogir which is about 7 kms – hilly, but not a problem on my e-bike.
This is my second night at a campsite which was not my target, and I’m very glad that my target did not have a spare pitch. It is on the main drag of Okrug Gornji which even on a second drive (or cycle) by seems somewhat reminiscent of what I remember of Ipsos in Corfu, when I was there at age 27! Definitely more a club 18-30 vibe than the silver surfer’s peace, tranquility and beautiful location I’m after. Actually I don’t think I was ever interested in club 18-30s anyway, let’s not load this onto silver surfdom. To be fair, the recommendations from two of my favourite motorhome bloggers, come from April/May, when there would be just far less people.
So my first night found me on a significant sloping pitch downwards to the electrical point hub, without any other way of positioning, next to a toilet block, where the washing up sinks had a balcony view of my side door and sitting area. Even putting the awning out ‘low’ and pegging one or two towels strategically to it didn’t quite afford me the visual privacy I was seeking, never mind the aural assault from showers, fans, dishes, cleaning, and constant electrical humming. But look at the beaches at sunset, a stone’s throw away:
and not to mention the very good wifi that enabled me to watch british stuff for the first time in a week. My mobile data solution is not quite resolved yet. And while I’m on practical subjects, in addition to language difficulties, am also currency challenged, with roughly 11 Kuna to the pound, or 7K to the euro. It’s bad enough needing my glasses to recognise Euro coins in my purse, never mind now Kuna/Lipa.
Today one moved as lots of people vacated their much more suitable pitches. And the SUP board and new oar came out. SUCCESS. Tried to post real video evidence taken at great risk to my phone, altho I was in kayak mode, not standing. Video playback seems too slow, so have removed for now.
Based on recommendations, I decided to stay for two nights at a campsite on this lovely river in the north of Croatia near the tourist town of Duga Resa, and the larger town of Karlovac.
The water is so clear and although there are reeds in certain areas, the rest of it isn’t dark and murky. People were swimming, paddle-boarding and generally enjoying the river, with the campsite on its bank beyond this restaurant.
I was still determined to take the train from the local middle-of nowhere station, ‘Bellavici’ to the capital, and spend 5 hours there until I could catch the first return train which stopped at the same. I have really felt very exposed re having zero knowledge of the language, particularly given my tremendous difficulty in storing to memory and then recalling commonplace Ukrainian words. This linguist is not as good as she thought she was, if she ever was! At least I have a better understanding for others attempting to travel even in France, Spain and the like.
The pictures below show that the train did duly arrive, I enjoyed traipsing all round the city and felt it to be a ‘friendly place with a Germanic ‘look’. Determining which return train I should get, giving myself plenty of time in advance, was less than straightforward, as Bellavici did not appear on any timetables, and one station guard I asked didn’t ‘know’ of it. I obviously got back ok not without planning various contingencies, given the train journey was approx 1.25 hours, so it was a good way from the capital.
A quick conversation with 2 german women brought a recommendation for Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia which I might visit on the way back, and then we unexpectedly came upon some characters from the 1920s, who were in the midst of filming season two of Hotel Portofino. I thought I fit in very well with their outfits, having my ‘city visiting in the heat’ uniform on.
Day 3 of Croatia, and I forgot to record the lovely high hill countryside the A1 direction Split went through despite the drizzle then heavy rain taking the temperature down to 14deg. Again going across impressive viaducts, gorges and straight through mountain tunnels. And then we popped out of a very high, long tunnel into what seemed like a different climate zone – more now like Almeria in Spain – scrub and those mediterranean forest-type trees. Very little evidence of significant towns, or commerce/industry. I decided to make an attempt to get LPG (only one of my nemeses, and the subject of previous posts) given that at one service station I had observed that self-service wasn’t allowed. Result. All I now had to do was engage an attendant with enough patience and English to find which of my adaptors would do the job. I did find one such young man, and hurrah – the French adaptor works in Croatia – so full gas was restored. In conversation with him, he said that Croatia was not a good place to live, as salaries were too low and prices too high. From my limited checking, it would seem that prices are very similar to in the UK, so if their salaries are well down, then they must find things very difficult. I recollect reading an article recently about rising nostalgia for the former communist rule in Eastern European countries, due to similar perceptions.
As far as I’m aware, this must be my first ever time in Austria, and admittedly the weather has shown it in a late summer sunshine light, but it only brings forth emotion which I want to record. I do wish everyone had the privilege that I have had to be able to drink in ‘in real life’ such parts of planet Earth. The mountains are majestic, the Eidelweiss, Heidi upland meadows are gorgeous, and the villages and houses are chocolate-box stuff.
The motorways are amazing – tunnels, side barriers which blend in aesthetically with the landscape, and protect the alpine villages they pass from some of the noise; they also have signs requiring vehicles to drive at lower speeds at nightime for the same reasons.
And I was really fortunate to choose an overnight stop in a place which was just off the A10 motorway from Salzburg to Villach called Flachau, based on the distance I would have driven and the fact of overnight recommendations from my Park4Night app. I had expected the village to be in a deep valley, which would be in the shadows of the mountains, and I would have been glad enough of a safe place to stop. but in effect I came out of a tunnel into a wide valley, with this beautiful summer cycling and walking, and winter ski destination in front of me.
Parking behind a restaurant alongside the crystal-clear turquoise river worked, and even though the motorway was just nearby, the river and noise protection barriers did the job, which for fusspot me re road noise was an achievement.
It was so lovely, that despite the fact I was just stopping over, and needed to do my recovery zombie hibernation, I decided to get the bike out from under my bed and explore the village and surroundings in the friendly, warm(!) mountain breeze.
This post was typed mostly at a lunch break, having gone through the stress of being informed, when expecting the purchasing of a Slovenian motorway ‘vignette’ (toll) to be as straightforward as with Austria, that I needed to produce my car ownership docs. My rabbit-caught-in-the-headlight act as my brain was put on the spot was able to move sufficiently quickly to the conclusion that I did not have said document with me on these travels, but aha remembered that I had at the last minute decided I’d better take a photo of it. The officious men with the power behind the booths accepted the photo. I had managed the navigation of the Llubjlana ring road and was enjoying the countryside from the A2 and anticipating the last half day of my journeying to reach Croatia.
I was just looking at changing my route from sticking to the motorways and going past Zagreb, to risking the cross-country (didn’t want to end up doing a hare and tortoise thing or raise my anxiety levels again unnecessarily), when a young hitch-hiker guy asked if I was heading for Zagreb. Having ascertained that he didn’t have an axe in his backpack, and that he would be happy for his mother to be in my place giving someone like him a lift, I returned to my original plan, and he joined me for a 70km stretch of my journey. Maximillian was his name, from Tubingen in Germany, studying Sport Science and before going back to uni, hitchhiking + ‘couch surfing’ over to Romania and possibly as far as the Black Sea, to check out some distant heritage from over there. He spent last year in Western Canada, then got a van, semi-converted it and drove it down the west coast to Mexico. It was a lovely conversation, and reminded me of a lift I gave in similar circumstances to a young man several years ago in the UK. In actual fact, Maximillian was useful for paying a toll and handing my passport over with his, to a surly Croatian border guard. I know it’s not really a joking matter, but the guard failed in his duty to test whether I was possibly trafficking this young guy 🙂 He was distinctly uninterested, and in fact communicated all of a sudden and in no uncertain terms, in Croatian but we got the drift 😂 that we had spent enough time in front of his booth and should GET A MOVE ON as Max was saying he wanted a stamp in his passport, as I had been thankful to get in mine. I was surprised at the border being patrolled, as with the UK, then I remembered that Croatia is not part of the Schengen area, presenting travel duration extension possibilities for countries ‘third’ to the EU. Don’t get me started. Cutting slack, I would not want to be working in a booth processing thousands of passports/people all day every day.
Long story short, I have actually managed to arrive in Croatia at the campsite I targeted, which is near the tourist town of Duga Resa, on the beautiful Mreznica river. I’ve got a lovely spot, but it’s too far away from the campsite’s wifi and the mobile signal is only just good enough to do something like complete this post, which I’ve now had enough of. I want to get the train tomorrow into Zagreb which has been recommended as being worth a visit.
Photos to be added tomorrow, in the presence of proper wifi connection. This requirement needed to meet my digital nomad ambitions will have to be as high a priority as the most perfect seaside pitch I can find when I move to the coast. Goodnight.
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.
I spent 3 nights with my old friend Carole and her constant companion Ted on a lovely site ‘L’Olivier in Junas, near the historic small town of Sommieres between Nimes & Montpellier. The good is of course the company and the location, and the fantastic 3m-wide voie verte which runs on an old railway line from Nimes. Sommieres is well worth a visit, and it was fun to happen upon market day on Saturday, 3 km brisk ride on the flat from Junas
However after a 3rd night being dive-bombed by mozzies, this after spending 2 hours before bed with lights on, zapping them, with the essential piece of kit to the left, desperately keeping all net screens in place, hardly wanting to risk opening the back doors to pack stuff up to my garage, enough was enough, time to move on.
I was feeling confident driving. I had this time decided on the route from the map in the old-fashioned way, and it worked a treat, going anti-clockwise on what seemed like a ring-road round Montpellier, to end up on the best road heading to a familiar destination. So on I mused about all the miles and routes I’d covered over the years with very few mishaps. In fact the only damage I caused to Monte 1 or 2 was causing the back door bike rack to be slightly bent on the latter as I reversed onto a pitch and against a tree very momentarily, no reversing camera, at Lake Como, Camping Lazy Sheep – I do like to recall the site’s name :). Actually just checked as I do like to be accurate – it’s ‘Golden Sheep’, only slightly less amusing to me., but lovely campsite.
Despite these driving feats, I had decided to downsize by 1 metre to Blue at 6m for the obvious benefits, not least the maneouvering, so it is with annoyance and a wry smile as I record here that I have caused damage to a wing-mirror and bodywork trying to get the van onto a campsite with very narrow approach road, the side wall of which I unfortunately caught by accident.
The glass of the essential (driving on the right) passenger wing mirror is holding together under sellotape, and the electronic movement controls are still working. The outside housing though has also been affected so this is being held in position with duct tape. I am determined to get it back to the UK for a spare part/fix, having failed to id the required mirror in a Halfords equivalent, and then being subjected to unbelievable sexist service which belongs out of the ark at Poitiers Citroen main dealer, to order the mirror for the sum of 105eu!!
Well-earned cup of tea later, read of my thriller, I beheld what I’ve driven down here for:
Yes it’s Marseillan Plage again – mediterranean sea at 23-24deg – just to make a certain individual very jealous. Good weather forecast until the end of the week, when I’ll start making my way north.
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