Cycled Milna to Stari Grad
Ferry Stari Grad to Dubrovnik
3rd and 4th June 2008
The ride back to the ferry at Stari Grad was fun because once you get through the tunnel at the top of the island it's all downhill, and we knew the road well by now.
Again we shared the ferry with Pat and Ron, although they got off at Korčula and we had decided to go straight through to Dubrovnik. The view of Korčula old town from the ferry was almost enough to cause regret for not stopping off there. The rest of the island didn't look all that exciting as we travelled down it's coastline though, so I settled into reading Kafka's The Castle and drinking beer on deck.
Dubrovnik is a fantastic city. The old town is as beautiful as any I've seen (or more so), is large, and the walls are very well preserved. It also has hundreds of stray cats. The rest of the city outside of the old town has some character and a good vibe as well. The only problem is the hills and the lack of bike shops.
We are staying at Camping Solitudo, which is near the suburb of Lapad, a few kilometres from the city centre. It's a very comfortable place and ideal for settling down for a few days, which is exactly what we intend to do (apart from a day trip tomorrow). Particularly as there is a little market which sells our staple diet these days - bread, vegies, beer and wine.
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Distance: 66km
Cycled Trogir to Split
Ferry Split to Stari Grad
Cycled Stari Grad to Hvar
1st and 2nd June 2008
We got up early to ride to Split in an effort to beat traffic, but we needn't have worried as it was Sunday and even the multilane highway we entered Split on was pretty empty. It was an OK ride and our fastest average speed for any section of the trip. In Split we ran into a Dutch guy who was planning to reach Indonesia sometime before December, and had cycled 4400km in 6 weeks. He was wondering what the roads were like for cycling between Darwin and Sydney, so I told him a little about the difficulties with distances and water.
We met an English couple, Pat and Ron, on the ferry. They were a bit older and doing a similar thing to us. We went together for the ride to Milna where we camped, and they were much more our pace than Matt and Vanessa had been.
Hvar is a long thin island with a 77km road from Hvar at one end to Sucaraj at the other. Stari Grad is less than 20km from Hvar, on the other side of the island. The road to Hvar is good for cycling. You have to ride over a big hill (as with all Croatian islands), but there isn't much traffic. There is a kilometre or so long tunnel at the top which is well lit and worth it for skipping the worst of the hill. It's very steep getting out of Hvar, but only for a short distance.
The town of Hvar itself is very cool. It's very touristy but a nice and lively. There's also an awesome castle with fantastic views of the surrounding islands and of Hvar.
The Milna campground was about 5km from Hvar and wasn't great quality, but was cheap at 100 kune/night. It was in a nice place next to the sea, but the ground was rock hard, resulting in lots of bent pegs and a partially erected tent. There was a very good campground nearer Hvar, but it was more than twice the price.
We still didn't want to ride the mainland coast road, so we opted to ferry out of Stari Grad, leaving us a day to hire a scooter and travel to the other end of the island.
Hvar is probably the most scenic of the islands, with an excellent town and castle. Well worth the visit, but cycling the length of it would be fun.
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Distance: 15km
Bus Zadar to Trogir
Bus Trogir to Split and back
30th and 31st May 2008
We left the campground early as we were obliged to do, and spent a while riding around Zadar. It's a nice town with a bustling lifestyle, and seems to have a life of it's own apart from the tourism. We saw some roman columns and some markets before leaving. It seemed a nice enough town to stay in for a couple of days.
We caught a bus from Zadar to Trogir near Split as we wanted to avoid the coast road. Initially we planned to go to Plitvice National Park, but the bus wouldn't take us. It is up to the driver of each service to decide if they'll take a bike, and they seem generally reluctant to do so. There is a train but it takes a long time with multiple changes and the services are apparently not particularly reliable. The bus drivers are difficult to communicate with, making the process of getting a bike on a bus a pain in the arse, and it's also more expensive than trains. Avoid taking bikes on the bus in Croatia if you can, although I would also be reluctant to ride the coastal road.
Trogir is a lovely small town that we stayed in for two nights. It has a small walled old town with a small fortress, and many, many scooters. We camped a few kilometres away from the old town on an island you could access by bridge. The ground was ridiculously hard and I bent the pegs trying to put them in. There were a few beaches which were recommended to us by the tourist info, but they were uninspiring gravel beaches.
The next day we caught the bus to Split for a day trip. It has a beautiful roman palace in the centre, but apart from that felt like quite a soulless city.
We met an English man doing an England to New Zealand trip who looked set for life. His Burley Nomad trailer was heaped up and was quite colourful with flags from places he'd been to. He claimed to get quite a bit of attention when on the road. Not sure I'd want to pull that weight though. Also he used foot straps not cleats.
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Distance: 37km
Cycled Osor to Mali Lošinj
Ferry Mali Lošinj to Zadar
29th May 2008
We left Osor quite early and the ride was very easy to Mali Lošinj. We stayed in Mali Lošinj for around 6 hours until the ferry, which was a six hour trip to Zadar. It was dark once we started cycling from the ferry terminal to our campground, but it was well lit and not too hard to find our way.
The guy serving us at the campground offered us a 50 kuna deal instead of the normal 140 kuna if he could take our money under the table and we agreed to leave before the office opened in the morning.
In Mali Lošinj we dropped into an internet cafe and booked our plane tickets home. There is a new Estonian Air service from Dubrovnik to Tallinn, which we booked for the 7th. It cuts our trip short a little both in time and distance, but it was the best flight for us to take.
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It's very hard to find a good map from outside of a country. We had a map encompassing all of Slovenia, Croatian, Bosnia and most of the rest of the Balkans that we bought from Australia, but it was just too large to be particularly useful. The best thing is to go straight to the first servo you see and buy a local road map. The one from Slovenia's Petrol stations was handy, but didn't have quite a few minor roads. The one from the Croatian servo was even less detailed. They get us around, but a good topographic map would be so very useful. Finer detail on where campsites are would be very handy as well.
I'm sure you can get them from map shops, but we haven't had the good fortune to fall upon a map shop.
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