When I graduated from college in the year nineteen hundred and eighty seven I didn’t really decide to “take a gap year” as it seems so popular to do these days, but I didn’t want to go to work and I did want to gallivant about, so in essence I “took a gap year.” The biggest component of that was a big bike tour in the UK and Europe; a good chunk of the UK tour was with my old pal Eric Fahlman (who is currently on a long-sought trans-America tour himself) and the rest was generally solo riding from Amsterdam down to Athens (where I met brother Paul). At some point in that trip I met some other dood-on-a-bike who asked if I wanted to join him on a tour of Yugoslavia, specifically down the coast. Sure! I didn’t know anything about Yugoslavia, but it was no doubt different than the other countries I’d visited en route, was on the way to Greece, and why not?
We made plans to connect; maybe in Florence where another high school pal was doing an exchange, maybe somewhere else, but being that there was no way to communicate like we can now and I didn’t bring my personal carrier pigeon he didn’t show and I never knew why. But indeed, the reasons to go to Yugoslavia were still there (“why not?”) so off I went to the Adriatic coast of Italy for the ferry across to the city of Split, where I jumped on the bike and headed for the iconic town of Dubrovnik; famous for its walled-in city. It was great, I had a nice time, carried on down the coast, had plenty of adventures (some of which are worth blogging about, even lo these many years hence!), and indeed ended up with Paul in Athens.
While I was there I didn’t really notice any tension, but how could I? I was just riding my bike, most “Yugoslavs” didn’t speak English, and I barely understood at the time that “Yugoslavia” was kind of a disjointed amalgamation of countries/cultures, with the only evidence to me was the street signs went from unintelligible words tat at least had letters I recognized to unintelligible words with letters I didn’t recognize: Cyrillic (the name for what we consider to be “Russian” with lots of C’s and R’s and such). So I was as surprised as anyone when the Balkans exploded in chaos and violence in 1991, and I wondered in vain how some of the nice folks who had befriended me on that lonely journey fared. Then I heard that Dubrovnik had been bombed; I couldn’t believe it. One of the most iconic living examples of a Middle-Age city on the planet, the pride of the country (at least, Croatia; maybe that was the point?) and it was bombed by assholes and idiots in the fog of war.
And not only bombed; the city was under siege by the Yugoslav forces for seven months! This finally ended in a public relations disaster and turned international opinion towards the Croats defending the city and ultimately helped end the war.
But of course the Balkan conflict went on way too long; all told nearly 10 years and killed at least140,000 people and displaced over four million (!!!!), but ultimately Yugoslavia was no more and the countries that came out of it were independent: Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Slovenia, and Bosnia and Herzogovina (the “and” is part of the name) and generally all is good. The countries seem to be thriving and I had heard that Dubrovnik had been rebuilt to the amazing level of ancientness-to-modernnity that I had seen:
and since we were in the neighborhood (Europe) we wanted to go and check it out!
In the fall we had traveled for a few days with our new French cycling pal Livio, who told us about touring the Dalmatian islands off the north coast of Croatia and how great it was, then in leaving Marrakesh we met a Belgian guy in the van ride to the airport who said “You have to go ride the Dalmatian Islands off the coast of Croatia! A couple of back-to-back recommendations like that seemed serendipitous, and thus it became our mission.
So after wintering in Austria, we contacted brother Paul and our friend Chris Coachella from Salt Lake who were both keen for a bike tour, and we said “how about the Dalmatian Islands in Croatia?” Sorta like me 40 years ago, they didn’t know anything about it but said “Sure!” Perfect; just the guys we were looking for. We made plans to meet in Dubrovnik and we’d figger it out from there.
Connecting generally went well, though Paul has had a streak of bad luck with planes and such and was delayed for a day, and though his cardboard bike box was literally in tatters and flayed open, it was indeed there and not much gear was lost.
We took a day to wander Dubrovnik, and were amazed; it’s indeed a pretty special place:
I only had vague recollections of the city, but I was amazed that it had been bombed yet was restored to its original splendor; it was clear that Croatian pride and UNESCO funds utilizing modern techniques to regain old-world architectural cool (there was also a devastating earthquake in 1979 that had gotten them going on rebuilding already) resulted in an amazing restoration to its original grandeur (some really interesting info at https://dubrovnik.hr). In the meantime, Ash and I had some routine bike maintenance to be done, and found Igor at Dubronik Bike and Adventure:
like all the great bike shop folks we’ve met over here was willing to do all that we needed immediately; there’s never any of the American weeklong bike shop wait time.
Then we hit the road! When I was there back in the day I was using highway maps and just rode on the main coastal road, which was fine; some traffic, but not bad, and though I maybe knew that there were tiny roads above the main route into the mountains, I didn’t have enough detail to find them. But now….with the technological spread of information, Ash was able to figure out a great route to get up north to our first island ferry by heading into the mountains – and a bit of Bosnia and Herzogovina on roads that were so little and so remote we were kinda wondering if indeed they would go:
and we ended up in Ston, a mini versio of Dubrovnik, with its own great wall, this one to protect the medieval salt production zones (salt was more valuable than gold):
We caught a ferry to the island of Mljet (not sure how to pronounce that one), which has a cool national park on the north end:
and back to Ston that night before riding north on that peninsula (it feels like an island) to the north end, where we took a ferry to the island of Korcula:
And so it went. The Dalmatian Islands are generally long and skinny, paralleling the coast (which starts trending westward the farther up the coast you go), and while they are inhabited and have their share of cars, mostly it’s mellow riding on quiet roads with plenty of hills to keep your climbing legs in shape (for the Istria peninsula that looms ahead) with ferry rides most days. We love ferries; they are cheap, pretty efficient (overnight ferries are great; get a bunk room and it’s pretty much like being in a cheap hotel only you wake up in a totally new country!) and they connect you to land that makes people….mellow.
We were reminded of the San Juan Islands of Washington; once you get out to Whidby or Vashon or Orcas the pace seems to slow a lot, which is a great vibe on a bike tour. But the terrain is very much kinda sparse Mediterranean (okay, Adriatic!)
The only “problem” with ferries can be their schedules, especially in the off (ie non -high-summer) seasons. Some were simply too awkward to take (to early in the morning or getting us in too late in the evening) and we missed one by moments:
And these islands have a lot of history; given their convenience to mainland, people have inhabited the Dalmatian Islands since the beginning of time:
After Korcula our general trajectory was Cres Island, Brac Island (where they got much of the limestone for the Dubrovnik rebuild), to the mainland city of Split, another ferry up the coast to Marina then Skradin and Rab via two cool national parks:
We were able to get out for an afternoon hike up a peak adjacent to our camp for an unusual view of “the most photographed beach in Croatia”:
Split is a cool city where we spent a night, and there’s lots to see. However, Paul and I got a bit distracted by seeing a historic British car tour; our dad used to do that with his Triumphs and it was fun to chat with these old Triumph, MG, Morgan, Jaguar, etc owners out for a long tour:
Our Croatian didn’t improve much from zero on the trip; it’s not an easy language:
But fortunately some things translate easily:
Our last island of Krk, and then onto the Istrian peninsula.
It turns out that for many European road riders Istria is kinda the Mallorca of the East; a lot of kilometers of quiet roads with plenty of hills in the 1-2000 foot range, and milder weather than the likes of Austria or Germany, which are less than a day’s drive. So we started to see more traffic…..bike traffic! which was fun to see.
Despite the fact that Croatia has had to rebuild a coupla times, they have taken care to provide pretty good bike infrastructure:
At this point we were on the coast, where northern Italy kinda wraps weirdly down into Croatia (a WW II thing) and at one point we were in a village and we didn’t know if we were in Croatia, Italy, or Slovenia! Our lovely host at a house we stayed at clarified for us: we were still in Croatia, but Italy was close by and Slovenia was a stone’s throw the other direction, and they spoke a dialect of Italian that she said most Italians can’t understand!
Trieste is the Italian town there and it’s big and difficult to avoid by bike, and when funds were being allocated for Italian bike infrastructure they kinda forgot about that outpost, so it’s kinda grim riding. But Trieste does offer good train service to Venice, so it’s a reasonable access to the nice riding out of there. And that’s about where we were able to connect to tee Parenzana, a long rail-to-trail that goes through the tri-country zone:
We, however, chose to bust inland, heading for the iconic Soca (So-cha) river, famous not only for the epic battles there in WW I (over two years!) but also its beautiful aquamarine water and class 1-5 whitewater.
It was in Bovec, Slovenia that our Balkan trip kinda ended; Ash left us to ride north to Prague to meet her mom and after a little riding and paddling Paul and Chris headed home and I ultimately followed Ash up to Prague. The Soca valley is memorable and amazing enough that I’ll likely write up a post about that area itself.
My “gap year” ride was down the coast from Dubrovnik, and indeed while I remember it as being great, I am grateful to Livio and the Belgian guy for turning us onto the concept of ferry0 hopping and riding the Dalmatian Islands, which I didn’t even know existed). And after we decided to go we realized that our friends Vic and Anne and another friend Tom had all been there, and they provided good info for us as well. Thanks to Ash for taking the time beforehand and on=the-ground in route creation (made more difficult by the ferry routes and schedules) and to Paul and Chris for making the journey over to join us and being great pards. We hadn’t hung with Chris much ever and invitin
