If only the weather had held. But we began to hear that all too familiar pitter patter; of course I'm sure there are worse places than swimming out of a cove in the Adriatic when it's raining, however after a day and night of it we took it as our prompt to pack up and move onwards. After we had dug ourselves out from underneath the pile of Finnish campers that had descended upon us the night before that is (if anyone remembers that game where you have re-arrange tiles across a board with only one empty space...well anyway it was complicated). So after much 'to me, to you' we finally managed to extract ourselves from Camp Ujca and we were on our way again.
Along the Adriatic Highway we drove. We had intended to stop before, but found ourselves on a campsite on the suburbs of Split where we had two plans; firstly to have ourselves another day of city life wandering the streets of Split, and then secondly to return back up the coast to the stunning coastline we had passed along our way.
I'm sure many of you will already know this, but Split is absolutely gorgeous. And very old; some of the buildings in the old town dating back to Roman times. But what makes the city so attractive and buzzy is that the new city, the cafe's, bars and shops all exist within the fabric of the old town, rather than leaving these crumbling buildings as a memorial to the Roman Emperor Diocletian. We had missed the fish market, but took in a free exhibition of photo's taken in the market itself of wonderfully gruesome looking fish, and we happily stumbled our way through the fruit and veg market, where locals had obviously cleared their gardens and laid their goods on stalls that seemed to go on for miles. Amongst other things we found some wild asparagus to cook up later that night. We were quite gutted when we left not to be staying in the city itself, as Split is the kind of place that looks like it comes alive in the evenings...the perfect place to blow a weeks budget, so actually perhaps not! But no, not us, we even decided to save the money for the bus fare back to the campsite; 'let's walk' says Michael 'there's a coastal path, much nicer than the bus'. Hmmmm. Thing is it looked a lot closer on the map, but 9 thirsty kilometres in the searing heat through the far less beautiful city suburbs (I swear we heard gunshots coming from the rather worryingly named 'white boys' football club). Many blisters later we returned, never happier to see rows and rows of campervans.
So back up the coast we drove, to Jasenova, and finally we found it...the small, chilled kind of campsite that we actually want to stay on. A small place, a beach and a small bar (that plays the footie so Hooper's happy) and even free wifi...perfect. The guy that owns the site has got to be the most chilled-out guy we've ever met, although there is something of the 'don' about him; it's all very Soprano's when him and his mates are down at the bar huddled around drinking. It was at this point that we received a timely reminder - in the form of a lovely email from our good friend Pat - which made us realise we had been perhaps over-thinking the purpose of our trip. We are very lucky, and actually sometimes it's ok just to relax and, well....be...
So we are having a holiday of sorts while we are here, lots of beach action. And we've met a lovely Japanese/Swiss couple, Rie and Roland from Australia, and their lovely kids Natasha and Fabian. In the time we've spent with Natasha she has developed a perfect cockney accent and a love of English tea. She also broke one of our deck chairs, but let's face it, it saves Michael the job! The family have been perfect company for watching the Euro 2012 games, particularly as Fabian is an aspiring right back.
Amongst all the relaxation, we headed off on our bikes to search out the local delicacy, a red wine called babic. Not too far away we came across a hand painted sign that led us to a local house where a guy in dungarees (and not many teeth) beckoned us in and creaked open the door to his shed, revealing a huge vat of his home brew. I was pretty daunted as he thrust a glass into my hand to taste. Thankfully it was lovely, and we took away 2 litres for literally a few pounds. He did however give us said wine in a tattered old sprite bottle so no expense spared there..
Anyway, apologies but there is a beach towel with my name on it...the sun is baking at last and set to stick around as far as my weather skills can determine. So here we shall stay, until we fancy ambling further down this beautiful coast...
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