15. Apr, 2016

MONDAY 18-5-15

We left Camping Stoja this morning bound for the motorway, which turned out to be a toll road, heading north to Camping Porto Sole (GPS:N45.140981º E13.603910º) just outside the village of Vrsar, on the western coast of this Istrian Peninsula, a journey of only about 20 miles. We popped in to a local supermarket for some fresh provisions and some white wine before making base camp here.

There's no doubt about it, the southern part of Croatia knocks the north in to a cocked hat.

We were told that we could go off and pick our pitch and then come back to the office and tell them our chosen pitch number, which is normal practice. We could be up the top end by Reception, or down by the beach, it was up to us. If we left them our documentation we could actually drive around the campground to look. Given the heat we elected to do that.

We thought it would be nice to pick a spot 'down by the beach' and so we drove slowly past the cafeteria, restaurant and bar complex with customers sat there, probably thinking 'where are they going?

Up a narrow winding road we went until we arrived at a dead end, fenced off by large mesh gates (more of those later). Since there was nowhere to turn around I had to back up all the way down the road, and slowly past the restaurant, bar and cafeteria, with the punters probably thinking 'Another stupid sod'. In fact it's probably the highlight of their day, watching people like us drive up a dead end road, all because nobody thought to put a 'No Entry' sign at the bottom.

Having picked a pitch and set up shop we decided to have a wander down to the beach. For beach read sloping, crazy paving, laid on tons of concrete over jagged rocks. The temperature was over 30°C which is hot in whatever currency you use.

After about an hour I announced that my backside was getting numb sat on the concrete and wanted to go for a walk. Ahead of us I could see a small island with a bridge joining it to the mainland. As The Chef didn't fancy the walk I headed off on my own. Round the headland and up to those mesh gates I went. It seems they are an Emergency Exit for what turned out to be a separate holiday resort. I walked around the gates and in to a complex for .................' bollicky buffers'. I've never seen so much sagging, wrinkly meat in all my life. You never see a Pamela Anderson or a 'Hoff' strutting their stuff along such beaches, it's always these old, dried up prunes who really should keep in all covered up in the name of good taste. It must be some kind of subconscious desire they've harboured all of their lives to strip off and share 'it' with the rest of the world. We all get old if we're lucky enough, we all get a bit wrinkly, that's natural and normal but we don't all choose to share our plight with the rest of the world. This nudist resort not only had the headland past the gates, but also the island with the adjoining bridge we'd fancied walking to tomorrow. We could of course still go and join them, but although the world has had the 'Galloping Gourmet', beautiful though I think she is, the world is not quite ready for 'The Bollicky Chef'.

Back for lunch, after which we rolled out the awning to provide not only shade for ourselves but also the vehicle as, with the door open and the sun burning in, things inside were getting quite warm. Besides we needed to shade the fridge/freezer vents.

We'd both spotted the very nice swimming pool on our way back, it's discrete as it's built above the shopping/eating/drinking complex, and so we have decided to spend the day there tomorrow, chilling out reading a book.

This evening’s meal was a salad, The Chef had Salmon, I had ham and cheese as I don't do seafood. Nobody can convince me that eating something that's spent its life swimming around in radioactive or industrially polluted water or effluent is a healthy eating option. I'll eat cod and haddock but that's about my lot.

After dinner I made myself another dessert. It was to be half a tin of pineapple chunks which I'd smuggled aboard, plus another 'Angel Delight' this time banana flavour, mixed with most of the rest of that liquid yoghurt The Chef had inadvertently bought instead of milk.

In the kitchen we use 'Manual' when we're wild camping and 'Electrical' when we're hooked up. Tonight I was to again use the 'Electrical' liquidising wand or whatever you call them, anyway - a tip. If, having poured runny yoghurt in to a plastic measuring jug, added the 'Angel Delight' and turned the mixer on - hold on to the measuring jug handle, I didn't and as I mixed, so the measuring jug begun to spin round and round faster and faster until it was spitting Angel Delight and yoghurt everywhere. The Chef having returned from washing up most of the bits, cleared up behind me, she's good like that.

This evening is lovely; The Chef is outside relaxing in her comfy chair whilst I type this up. It's still fairly early and so I think we may yet squeeze in a couple of episodes of 'Doc Martin'.

15. Apr, 2016

SUNDAY 17-5-15

Neither of us slept well last night but the upside was we didn't get any new bites either. It was a lovely bright, warm, sunny morning.

The shower cubicles were modern and clean, with each unisex cubicle accessed individually from around the outside of the building. They were kept clean by a lady standing outside who would go in to the cubicle as you left and give it a good hosing down.

The latest amendment to the cunning plan is that we will now go in to Pula on the bus today, take the cameras and see if we can get all our bits done. If we can, then we'll look at what we can do between now and when the rain arrives on Wednesday evening.

Two tickets in to town on the bus was about £2 each way. As we couldn’t see the Amphitheatre from the bus as we'd expected to, we stayed on and had a lovely ride around the whole area until, some miles out of town, the bus driver asked us where we were trying to get to. When the bus eventually got back in to Pula he put us off at the right stop with some directions. He probably drove off thinking 'Old people - they really should be euthenised'.

After a while we came across the Amphitheatre, a very impressive building, the fifth largest in the world, so good that we decided to splash out on the entrance fee of £4 each (nobody can call us cheap!) and I'm glad we got to see it.

There were a few more Roman sites to visit in town before we agreed it was getting too hot to be out and about without good reason. Whilst down there we'd treated ourselves to some refreshment. Rosina had an iced coffee, and I had a large beer and rather than drink on an empty stomach had a toasted sandwich with it. Just like MacDonald's and Burger King, where the pictured product looks so big you'd never get your hands around it to pick it up, and when it arrives in a box it's just a damp, flat bun with some goo in it, my sandwich looked nothing like the picture. Never mind, the whole lot cost less than £6 which wasn't bad.

On our return to the campground The Chef made us a drink before sitting out for a bit of sunshine, I on the other hand took a deep breath and downloaded yesterday and today's pictures. Today's were fine, and yesterday? It's not her fault that some lovely panorama photobombed her picture of a crash barrier, an interesting building on a hill spoilt her shot of an electricity pylon, or those mountains behind got in the way of miles of toll road ahead of us. Oh well at least we have our memories.  I am though, rather hopeful that one of the pictures she took along the Dalmatian Coast is a potential Turner Prize winner. Never before have I seen such artistic interpretation, I'd share it with you, but there could be complications regarding copyright should she win.

The latest 'Plan B', having consulted the weather forecasts is that we will leave here tomorrow morning heading up the coast to Camping Porto Sole just south of Vrsar on the Istrian Peninsula which has been recommended to us by a very nice couple who were our neighbours at a campground we stayed at in Spain during the winter. We plan to spend three nights there enjoying the good weather before it rains overnight Wednesday , then leave Thursday morning for Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, which we'll travel to in the wet, visit in the wet, then travel to Lake Bled in the wet afterwards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq_-1Pr9CQY

15. Apr, 2016

15. Apr, 2016

15. Apr, 2016

SATURDAY 16-5-15

We awoke to a rather cloudy morning at Camping Adriatic at Sibenik. I hadn't been too keen on the site when we arrived yesterday but it has grown on me. There is a huge amount of shade thanks to the many large pine trees in the grounds. I bet the shade they give in the height of summer is most welcomed. The shower block is lovely and modern but for some reason I had no coat hook in my cubicle and so had to throw my towel and dressing gown over the door.

Whilst having breakfast we had numerous spots of rain, I think we had been expecting a bit of a wet day but had been keeping our fingers crossed. Our plan today was to start making our way northwest to Pula on the Istrian Peninsula for a look around the Roman Amphitheatre there.

We were pleasantly surprised to find that when it came to paying the bill we were not charged any supplements, something which we are only just finding is being added to the quoted fees in the ACSI discount book. Strange country this in that they'll quote in Euro's but won't take them, you have to pay in local currency.

I'm sure the local bugs will miss us as we've both been bitten quite a bit over the past couple of days and nights. We didn't get away very quickly as I was trying to attach pictures to an email, but it was taking ages. In the end I had to save what I'd done as a draft copy and pack up. I think we left about 10:30 in the end with the chef tapping her foot. 

Not too long after setting out it started to rain lightly, this coupled with the 'weekend motorists' penchant for just pulling out of side roads resulting in firm braking, persuaded me that it would be safer for us to make at least some of the journey on the A1 toll road further inland. We had already formed the opinion that the coastal road in this area was not nearly as nice as down south, and having done quite a lot of coastal miles already I didn't feel we'd be missing much. 

At the earliest opportunity we joined the toll road and by now the rain was quite heavy, I was pleased that we were now taking this route. The scenery I have to say was stunning. One minute it was like the Lake District, the next like Austria, very clean, very green, very mountainous. The one big disappointment was that the cloud base was quite low and whist up in the mountains we were also in the cloud, resulting in some pretty miserable photo opportunities, in fact there were times when I had my rear fog lights on. 

The Chef was once again the en-route photographer. It will be interesting to see if we are able to add to our collection of blurred trees and bushes. 

The toll road was quite an engineering achievement involving lots of viaducts and tunnels, some very long, and must have cost a fortune to build. Would that be EU money then? The road gave us the opportunity to eat up a lot of miles in greater safety. There were lots and lots of motorhomes coming the other way heading south, perhaps we were heading north at just the right time. Campgrounds are certainly getting busier, most of the motorhomers' are Germans but all of central Europe is represented. I really don't have an ear for languages, I can't tell the difference between the chocolate makers, the Edam makers, the cookoo clock makers or the Black Forest Gateau makers, from those who make music, wear a silly hat with a feather in it, leather shorts, and slap themselves. I shall have to refer to them collectively as 'The Makers' 

A nice lady in a toll booth took about £24 off us in fees as we left the toll road, but it was money well spent. We had seen another side to Croatia and it was lovely, but such a shame we hadn't been able to make this journey with blue skies and clear visibility. The vehicle enjoyed it too and will have repaid us with better fuel economy along the way. 

On leaving the toll road we made a wrong turn on the outskirts of Rijeka and were forced to go through it, not a pretty sight I have to say. We were then travelling along the coastal road en-route to Autocamp Medveja, it's in the ACSI book and charges €18 a night so we thought it would be good for an overnight stay. 

The driving along this road was pretty hairy because cars, coaches and lorries continually cut the corners because they either think they are Lewis Hamilton or are just too damn lazy to use their steering wheels properly. Either way we were often left having to brake firmly to avoid collisions between off-sides of vehicles or for us, trashing our nearside on the solid rock 'wall' on our other side, as the road was fairly narrow. Now if that wasn't enough we now have to throw in to the equation cyclists. Now to these cyclists it appears that wearing a safety helmet before setting out on these roads is all that is required to be 'responsible'. Nay, nay, I say, to be responsible would be to stay off the road with your bike altogether. These people must have suicidal tendencies; I think all along that stretch of road there should be direct phone lines to 'The Samaritans' attached to trees about every half a mile. Not necessarily to try and talk them out of killing themselves if they want to, but to advise them of an alternative way of doing it that won't inconvenience other road users. 

Back along the coastal road of Montenegro and Croatia, we and an HGV ahead of us came across a group of, I kid you  not, about 70 cyclists, mostly one behind the other but not all. Now imagine how far that many cyclists stretched along a narrow winding road with lots of blind bends. It was an absolute nightmare to get past them all, and when I finally got to the front of the queue and found the 'Group Leader' I pulled up alongside him, dropped the nearside window down and gave him a bollicking, telling him he needed to break such a large group in to smaller groups each with a long gap between them so that lorries and other vehicles can pull in between them safely when there is oncoming traffic. I think the vacant, stunned look on his face that I observed in my mirror left me wondering if he understood a word I'd said, but I felt better for it. 

On arrival at Autocamp Medveja we parked up, took a look at the long grass everywhere, concluded it was a ‘Long-Termer’s’ site, then drove around it - yup, it was scruffy, and then drove back out through the 'Entrance' as to go out of the 'Exit' would have involved a conversation with somebody who would need to raise the barrier. 

Onward we drove, with me feeling it had been a long day. We then selected Camping Stoja (GPS: N44.859649º E13.814656º) which is just a short bus ride out of Pula. Fortunately I had already pumped the co-ordinates it to the Satnav and we found it without a problem.  

The campground is all grass and the layout of the pitches was chaotic and very difficult to find something suitable. Never mind we found somewhere, went back to reception, did the paperwork, only to return to the vehicle and find that our electrical hook-up cable was not long enough. There were no more sockets available in the distribution board nearest to us and so we moved elsewhere and will sort the paperwork it out in the morning. 

We were both tired and decided to treat ourselves to a 'Takeaway' pizza for our evening meal to save the bother of cooking, and very nice it was to. Our complication now is that on Wednesday rain is due here and it is forecast to last one way or another, for about six days. Now that's annoying as I was hoping we would be able to find a campground and spent a good few days chilling by the seaside. I think we will now just stay here and on Wednesday travel to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia before going on to Lake Bled. 

Ah well, there's always tomorrow...........................