My travels have continued southwards into the Croatian part of Istria and now down onto the Adriatic islands.
I’ve been hampered a bit this week by bad weather, breakdowns, detours, and giant pigs and am very much looking forward to the good weather forecast for the next week or so of island hopping…
From Kozina, I continued on towards Piran until I encountered some mechanical problems as I approached Izola.
While my bike was being fixed, I bused to Piran where I spent the afternoon hanging out and talking with a family of cyclists that I met at the Skocjan caves.
Having been with the kids almost 24/7 for the past six months, it’s been a bit tough not having them around. However, with a guitar and good internet in Izola, I could play the kids their night time ‘daddy songs’ via Skype. I also got favourable reviews by the hostel’s neighbours apparently
From Izola, I followed the Parenzana trail, which was an old railway line which operated until 1935 between Trieste and Porec, but has since been converted into a biking and hiking trail. Most of it was unsealed making it a pretty rough and slow ride with the panniers on.
The first of many tunnels…
Just past the border into Croatia were the Secovlje saltpans where salt is still harvested in the traditional manner.
At the border crossing, this trouble making kiwi held up the queue of cars behind me for around 5 mins while the immigration official searched through the stamps in my passport for my EU entry stamp. Patience doesn’t seem much of a virtue in these parts as she swore repeatedly (well, it sounded like swearing) at the cars as the impatient drivers blasted their horns.
“Land ahoy!… still…”
Istria is a pretty amazing place to cycle. Lots of hills, with many of them graced with beautiful old walled villages. This one is Groznjan.
Each one has lots of cobbled alleys to explore
I was lucky enough to stay with Michael and Marijana in a gorgeous little town called Momjan for a couple of days. I met Michael and Marijana through warmshowers.org which is kind of like couchsurfing, except specifically for tour cyclists. They were excellent hosts and introduced me to truffles, a local specialty and were a great help with my route planning.
I enjoyed a great day exploring the hilltop villages in the region
And then it was onwards towards the east coast, but a rally meant I couldn’t go where I wanted and forced me onto a road with heavy traffic, trucks and campers.
This says ‘after you have performed emergency please press water’
After a beer and a couple of hours cycling, it was actually quite apt.
I didn’t count on a rally being on, forcing a bit of a re-think of my planned route.
Motuvun, yet another gorgeous hilltop village
Due to some pretty awful weather, I took unplanned refuge in a private room in Pazin for a couple of days waiting for the rain to let up. With no hostel in town, and no couch surfers around, my time was productively spent watching hours of Breaking Bad and House of Cards on Netflix. It wasn’t a bad ‘Plan B’ at all.
This is the chasm in front of the Pazin castle, which apparently inspired Jules Verne in some of his writing.
A few hours with no rain enabled me to push on further to Labin, where it started lashing down again
The residents of this town probably often get mistaken for having tourette syndrome when they are asked where they are from…
More running repairs. Youtube instructional videos and mobile broadband helped preserve my sanity by enabling me to fix the constantly screeching of the break pads against the calipers.
Clear skies at last! Time to get to the islands…
I jumped on a ferry to Porozina on Cres Island
and then down to Cres town
Arianne, Colin, Jane; this one is for you…
After three weeks of lugging all my camping equipment around, I thought I’d finally better make use of it. This was the view from my campsite of Cres town.
But freedom camping has its drawbacks… At 2am I was woken up by a wild boar bargeing into my tent, scaring the cr*p out of me with his big head the only thing I could see behind the mesh when I opened my eyes.
They say that revenge is a dish best served cold, but when I eat pork every meal for the rest of this week, I think I will prefer it fried or roasted, and steaming hot.
