“Down” in Dalmatia…

At the Hotel Riviera, spell check was not an option...

Back at the hotel, I collected my “laguage”, paid my bill and prepared to ride out of Pula…

It was already 11.00am, and I do not enjoy making such a late start to the day… I decided to skip riding along the coast, and headed for the highway instead…

The A8 ran up the centre of the Istra Peninsula, and then turned east towards Rijeka, where it hooked onto the A6 that leads to Zagreb… The skies were grey and although it did not rain, it was nevertheless cold and gloomy…

The A6 is one of the best stretches of highway I have ever ridden on... The Ucka Tunnel measures over 5 km in length...

Although taking the highway meant an additional 120 km of riding, I preferred the idea of traveling at high speed down an open highway, than having to slow down every ten minutes when entering a village…

This proved to be a very good choice on my part, as the A6 highway was one of the best I have ever ridden on… It blasts its way through mountains, over deep valleys and around long and sweeping bends…Built with bikers in mind I am sure…!!

The section I rode on, all the way to the turnoff to Split, must have passed through at least two dozen tunnels, some of them only a few hundred metres long, but one, the Ucka Tunnel was a little over 5 km long… And it not just a straight tunnel either…!! It has four or five bends in it…!! It’s like riding in the belly of a giant snake…!!

Some of the tunnels are so close together that I wondered why they had not bothered to link them together… On one particular section I exited one tunnel and then 100 metres on, plunged into the darkness of another…!!

I stopped in Ravna Gora to refuel, and then headed further east, looking for the turnoff to Split, that would take me down the centre of Croatia… The clouds had begun to lift somewhat, so I decided to take the road to Senj, to see what the coast looked like…

On the twisting road down to Senj...

I stopped in the seaside town of Senj for a short break...

This was another lucky decision, because this stretch or road, the D23, is another one that was well worth riding… It is a bit narrow for any high speed antics, and gets your blood pumping with its amazing series of hairpin bends and switchbacks…

Down in Senj, I stopped in the little harbour area, and took a short break, consulting my map of the Balkans to see how far I could expect to go before the sun went down… I was a full day ahead of schedule, and could afford to take it easy, but I still had a lot of riding in me, and decided to move on…

A short while later, the weather began to chnage for the worse, and those amazing scenes of the Croatian Coast that you see in all the travel brochures, were nowhere in sight… The Med was flat and grey… Mist covered the mountain tops, and for my money, I could have been on any stretch of coastline anywhere in Europe…

I got onto the bike and rode hard down the coast, enjoying the bends that took us all the way to Starigrad… I cannot understand why the builders of this road did not allow for more places where you could pull over and admire the view…

There was only a half metre strip of tar between the edge of the road and the steel barrier… The Big Fella is a little more than 1, 5 metres wide, so stopping on this narrow road with all its hidden corners and curves, was not an option…

In place where they have allowed space to park, trees have been planted, and have now grown so thick, that you cannot see the sea beyond them… I took a few photos “on the fly”, keeping one eye on the road and the other on the view… Not an easy thing at 80 km/h around sharpish bends…

High up above a little village with its natural harbour...

The Hotel Vicko in Starigrad...

At Starigrad, I stopped at the Vicko Hotel, and decided to spend two days there… But despite being told that I would have a wireless internet connection in my room, this proved to be a little “porky pie” on the part of the manager…

Although the room was comfortable and the service at dinner that night was very good, I was annoyed that I had to walk down four flights of stairs, and then sit in the reception to get a signal…!! Had I known there was no signal, I would have moved on the previous day and looked for another spot with a wireless signal…

Despite having booked in for a two days stay, I checked out after breakfast, and headed on down the coast… Within half an hour, I had to pull over and get my rain gear out…

Three other bikers from Hungary where there doing the self same thing… We chatted for a while, and then roared off as it began drizzling harder…

Along with these riders, I stopped to don my rain gear...

I rode around the peninsula and into Zadar, all the while squinting through the driving rain… In some places the clouds were so low above me, that I felt I could reach up and touch them… I pressed on to Sukosan, Pakostane, Provac and Vodice and still it rained…. I stopped in Sibenik to refuel, and then rode on, wishing that the weather would cut me some slack…just for a change…!!

There is always someone bucking the trend...!!

I stopped in Trogir, and thought about calling it quits for the day… The road was slick with water and slippery in places, and riding too quickly around one particular bend, got the Big Fella out of shape, resulting in a little slide that got my heart into my mouth…

Dark clouds moved in and minutes later it began raining...hard...!!

Villa Amigo in Podstrana... I stopped to get out of the rain, and decided to stay...

Split is supposed to be the playground of Croatia, but in this weather, it looked no more interesting than other large seaside town that I had seen… I skirted its northern edge, seeing huge apartment blocks that reminded me of the ones I had seen in Budapest…

This was definitely not a place I was keen to stop at… I had been told that a cup of coffee here cost three times as much as anywhere else along the coast, and I was not in the mood to be ripped off… Europe is expensive enough without having your money squeezed out of you by people trading on a name…!!

Just a dozen kilometres down the road, I rode into Podstrana and stooped at the Villa Amigo… The owner met me at the door, and invited me in to see the room… A gang of workmen were using a jackhammer on the floor above my room, and I began to have visions of moving further on down the coast… The noise was unbearable… It seemed that they were demolishing the place…!!

Some apartments in Podstrana are not as upmarket as others...

In the dining area downstairs, I saw that the edge of the building was barely a few metres from the sea… The place seemed perfect to spend a few days relaxing in… I was told that the guys would stop working in a few hours, and decided to get my kit off the bike and have some lunch as far away from the noise as possible…

I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to sort through my plans for the next week, and later that night was able to Skype with my good friend Khalid Kaab in Morocco… It was wonderful to see and chat with Marie-Helene and Sami again and I realised how much I had missed them since last we said goodbye in Castels…

While we were on line, Khalid very patiently helped me upload maps for Turkey onto my GPS and MapSource programs, which would be of enormous help to me in the weeks to come, considering how much mileage I planned to do traveling in and out of Turkey…

We spoke about his plans to ship his Landrover (“The Green Mamba”) back to South Africa, to sell it there, as he had discovered that it would cost too much to have it registered in Morocco… I could hear the regret in his voice, as this vehicle had been as much a part of the family, as the Big Fella was to me…

View down the coast from Villa Amigo...

We signed off, promising to stay in touch, and I went back to my planning… My “rest day” was spent updating the website and staying out of the rain, which lashed the coast all night and for most of this morning… The weather report for the next few days makes for unhappy reading… Heavy rain for Bosnia and Montenegro…!!

Europe seemed intent on bidding me a “wet” goodbye…!!

©GBWT 2010