May 20th, 2022
We enjoyed a bit of a lie in this morning as we only have 35km to our Dubrovnik apartment with a 3 pm check-in time.
We enjoyed a final chat with our German motor home neighbours before cycling along the coast road we had walked along last night into the town centre.
First stop of the day, just 2km along at the small supermarket to buy a milk and strawberry breakfast. The town was so busy we decided the roundabout in the centre of the main square would be an ideal spot to consume the first meal of the day.
Just as we sat down, a chap came over on a folding bike to ask about our cycle trip, which quickly turned into a chat about yachts, him being the owner of a Halberg Rassy just a couple of minutes cycle from where we were sitting.
With the first strawberry enjoyed and a quick swig of thirst-quenching milk, my phone rang. It was a student from one of our courses that wished to share her experiences with me. Twenty minutes later, I followed up with a call to Derek, our friend that is running our sailing school while we are away.
While I was on the phone with Derek, I wandered over to a small park adjacent to the square to get some shade, from where I noticed Deborah had been joined on the roundabout by a couple of ladies. I was in the process of wrapping up the call with Derek when a bee decided to fly up my t-shirt sleeve as I was holding the phone to my ear and sting me, so I ended the call quickly and headed over to Deborah for sympathy and to see if there were any strawberry left.
Deborah’s conversation with the two ladies had been about yachts, as they were in Croatia from the UK sailing one.
By the time we headed out of the town square and toward the road that would take us to our accommodation, almost one and a half hours had passed, so it was a good job we had a short day after all.
The kilometres seemed to fly by faster than on most days, even with the steep ups and lots of unnecessary stops, we found ourselves 6km from our accommodation by 1 pm, which coincided nicely with a beach at the side of the road.
We lay on the beach for a little over an hour, our eyes closed, wishing we were instead finished the day’s cycle and holed up in an air-conditioned apartment.
We set off to complete the final 6km at 2:30 pm, giving ourselves 30 mins to complete the final distance before check-in time, and we were immediately confronted by a big climb. We took the climb in our stride, stopping at the top to take photos of the bridge that would take us on into Dubrovnik.
Another steep climb after the bridge, and we pulled up in front of our apartment for the next two days at 3:15 pm.
We were greeted by our super friendly host and shown to our room, with a sun terrace in front overlooking the city.
We unloaded the bike, had a quick shower, then headed down the very steep steps and road to what we thought was a large supermarket at the bottom, passing three other supermarkets during the descent.
Realising the bottom supermarket was no bigger than the others and not wishing to carry anything up the hill further than necessary, we crawled back up the hill to the first supermarket we had passed. To get the idea of how steep this road was, if it were a ski slope, they would likely put a sign at the top of it with the words “Warning: Sheer Drop” on it!
As calories and carbs weren’t the priority due to our day off the saddle tomorrow, we went for a feta salad, with olives, bread, beer and wine. The meal was laid out on our terrace table to enjoy the sunset, but within ten minutes, we realized the innocent-looking flies were actually Scottish West Coast midges on holiday, so headed inside to finish our meal and tend to our wounds.
We had an early night in the knowledge that we would also be having a late morning, before heading down to the old town to be a Dubrovnik tourist for a day.