May 19th, 2022
Deborah washed a few clothes out last night before bed and hung them on a drier on one of our two balconies. While the bed was comfortable and the room quiet, at some point in the middle of the night, we were both woken by a howling wind. While I stayed in place to keep the bed warm, Deborah went out on the balcony to recover the washing, which luckily had fallen on the floor rather than taken to the skies.
When it was time to crawl out of bed, the wind was still howling down the mountainside. Peering through the blinds to the front of the property, the palm trees looked like an afro at a Iron Maiden concert. After yesterday’s challenges with the wind, this wasn’t a great start.
We consulted Windy, the app we trust for sailing. It reported 4 knots of winds all day, so we put the hurricane outside as a localised squall and continued to get ready for a day in the saddle.
We were on the road by 8 am after a breakfast of yoghurt, lion bar cereal and milk. While there was a headwind for most of the day, the wind wasn’t as near the strength of the day before.
Today was another day of mainly road cycling, with big ascents and equally big descents, but for much of the day, the route took us away from the coast.
Being away from the coast, we seemed to be cycling through a more agricultural area, with countless roadside stalls selling their produce, which consisted primarily of oranges and orange juice. There was, however, a notable lack of any other shops, so no ice lollies or any other frozen or chilled produce to momentarily chill our core.
In the early afternoon, we rounded a corner to see what looked like a checkpoint in the distance. We pulled over at an abandoned orange and orange juice stall to figure out where we were. Upon interrogation of Google Maps, we realized this was the Bosnia and Herzegovina border, the start of the 10km of a new country that we would cycle through before re-entering Croatia.
There was a small queue of cars at the border kiosk, so we dismounted and walked the bike through. When we reached the front of the line, a Croatian border guard took our passports, looked at them, then handed them back. We were in a new country without a stamp or sign of a border guard from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
We cycled to the only Bosnian town on this stretch of road, Neum, in the knowledge that it did have a supermarket with a very good chance of a freezer full of ice lollies. Our liquid supply was starting to run low, and the liquid we did have was warm and less than refreshing.
I looked after the bike while Deborah headed over to the first supermarket we came to, returning two minutes later with the news that they didn’t accept any of the currency we had with us. Not wishing to start messing about with a new currency, we reluctantly decided we would risk dehydration and possible death, and make do with what supplies we had until we were back in Croatia.
We climbed out of Neum to a few friendly honks of the horn, followed by a descent, halfway down of which was the border post. Following the same routine as an hour before, we were back in Croatia, but this time with a second stamp in our passports.
We were aiming for a campsite a further 20km down the road from the border, so we were a little disheartened when we reached it, still without a sign of a lolly freezer, to a sign with red sticky tape making it clear the campsite is no more.
Plan B was a campsite a further 3km along the road, so we pushed as hard as we could without the benefit of ice lolly power.
The campsite was about 1km off the main road, down a steep bank, so we agreed that we would illegally wild camp if this one was also closed. It wasn’t.
We were greeted at the campsite, which appeared to be occupied by half the campervan owners of Germany. The owner wasn’t around, but clearly our new German friends were familiar with the site, so we were shown where I was to pitch up, in a small corner of the site under a tree. I wouldn’t normally pitch up under a tree, but this was the deal.
We chatted to our new roomies for a while while setting up camp, during which time the owner turned up to take our passports for registration. Once the tent was set up and ready for the evening, apart from the flysheet, which we generally leave off until we are ready to go to bed in such warm weather, we headed off in the direction of the town centre.
It was a lovely 2km walk along the coast road, a single lane adjacent to the beach of a large bay.
We eventually found a small supermarket, which sold cold bottles of milk and family packs of ice lollies, so we bought one of each and headed to the beach to consume them.
Next on the evening’s agenda was food. With only salted peanuts and jelly sweets in our panniers, we decided a treat was in order, so we headed back to a small restaurant near the campsite.
The choice for veggies wasn’t great, but they did have pizza on the menu, so we ordered one each together with a portion of fries. The food was excellent, and the view from our table, overlooking the bay as the sun set, was spectacular.
Over our meal, we examined our options for the next few days and decided that Dubrovnik deserved more than a passthrough, plus a day out of the saddle would be nice, so we booked a cheap apartment on the outskirts of the city for the next couple of nights.
While I had a couple of beers and Deborah her mandatory hot chocolate, we were still thirsty after our meal, so we headed back to the supermarket for a milk and Coke nightcap.
By 9:15 pm, we were lying in our sleeping bags and drifting off to sleep, with the noise of our neighbours enjoying their evenings slowly fading into the background.