Peelies travels

Thu -Sat 21st - 23rd Sept We headed for a site on the coast, all the while looking around at what is clearly a ‘different country’. For a start the driving standards are more like I remember from the 1970s. A ‘faster’ car catches up with the general traffic ahead but needs to get there sooner. So it does that in and out overtaking, trying to progress up the ‘queue’. Sometimes it’s worth it and sometimes not. The risk can be increased and often is, by overtaking as a blind bend is approached. By just ‘going for it’ vast numbers of seconds can be saved. The site was set behind a large bay with another, ‘rougher’ one formed on the beach road along the back. That one hadn’t been on the ‘list’. Ours was good, full of Northern Europeans and us. The price was less than expensive Austria and Croatia, plus we went to the local restaurant and ate very well (nice fish dish), as did many other campers. It wasn’t cheap but seemed more reasonable. The site had a few pomegranate trees and others with...

Wednesday 20th September  It was a wrench to leave the beauty of Slano and continue to motor down the coast. Maybe we should have stayed. It was perfect (except the biting things that almost turned Dawn’s legs into a measles exhibit). If the weather is ok when we turn around, we could come back. Actually we have no idea what route we will take, not even an idea of the direction. That will come later. The Green Card insurance cover we have will allow us to travel back through any country except Kosovo (I did ask), so even a speed north from Greece through North Macedonia and Serbia is a possibility. The coastline improves dramatically as you approach Dubrovnik, as the cliffs and mountains are once again dramatic and the soil supports vegetation. So the barren rock of earlier days is replaced with dense growth, including cypress trees and it all looks beautiful. We were soon gasping at the two cruise ships docked at the port and we were able to stop and look from above. It was hot, a...

   Mon - Wed 18 th - 20th  Sept Usually we avoid paying for toll motorways, making the observation that the journey is all part of the experience. There are sometimes when you just want to ‘get there’ and the next part of the coastal trip is going to be on the motorway with a 2-3 hour journey on it, that will save another 2 hours if we stay off. So at kilometre marker 245 we settled down until km 490 and enjoyed the open road with few lorries and not so many cars either. The overdrive was engaged confidently, knowing that it wasn’t leaking and we sat at about 65mph which is roughly 110kph in decimal. The minutes ticked by into 10 mins and then thirty but as it was hot, the windows and front flaps were open, so there was no chance to catchup with The Archers or take advantage of the Spotify premium, bought on offer, especially for this trip. We played a game of spot the unusual car registration plate. By this I mean that we ignored the common HR (Croatia), SLO (Slovenia), ...

  Sat - Mon 16 th - 18th  Sept Travelling by Google Maps with ‘avoid motorways’ selected, is a nice un-hurried way and we were happy to do just that. From Tolmin we made our way towards Rijeka at the coast, with the route taking us through small vineyards, mixed farming and pine forests. In some parts it was similar to the heathlands of southern England. We saw the sea soon after crossing into Croatia at another lonely border. For us Brits this is an important border because whilst Croatia has been a member of the European Union since 2013, it has only been in the Schengen zone since January 2023. We had been expecting to show our passports but they weren’t required. In fact the surprise continued because the border currency kiosks were unmanned - a victim of the move to the Euro, which happened at the same time. So our travelling life stayed simple. Shortly after that we got to Rijeka where Google Maps took us right through the middle, onto the docks and then somehow out of t...

  Fri 15 th Sept In a way it’s a shame to almost rush through Austria but a plan is a plan, as much as we have one and so today we drove uphill again to go to Slovenia.  This isn’t the quickest route through there either, as we wanted to drive over the Vršič pass, again one that we first experienced in 2015. In Spittal I happened to glance across to a building amongst the shops and saw the unmistakable racks of car parts alongside the windows. This is unusual as motor factors in the Uk tend to be hidden away and certainly their wares aren’t easy to see. We stopped and I went in and having done my research I confidently asked in my best German for “wischblätter”. A young woman behind a monitor confidently replied, in English, “ which vehicle”? Rumbled again! Happily, not only did they have a set of Bosch wiper blades (made in China) but they only cost €12.60 so I handed over my Visa card. Hopefully I can manage to fit these without any subsequent issues. There was a surprise i...