Slovenia - Small but perfectly formed - Day 406 (29,130 miles)

The Republic of Slovenia is pretty tiny (population just over 2 million, size 7,800 square miles) but a lovely country. Our first impression when we crossed the border was how alpine and like Austria the countryside was, not surprising really as it borders Italy, Austria and Hungary so is close to the Alps proper.

What we'd read about Ljubljana suggested it was a small enough capital city not to increase John's blood pressure too much. There is a limited supply of budget rooms and the only hostel available that had good reviews was a 10 minute bus ride from the city. This turned out to be perfect, as time has gone by we are always happy to stay a bit out of the centre of things and spend some of our time in a quieter area. Having said that Ljubljana is a very laid back city, all of the centre is designated for pedestrians and cyclists only so has a nice relaxed atmosphere.

We only had 1 day to see the city so headed into in by the great bus service early in the morning and joined a free walking tour at Preseren Square, our guide was a local lady with a lot of passion and knowledge about the city and Slovenia in general.





Dragons feature heavily in the history of the city, they are depicted on a bridge, the castle and a the flag.

St. Nicholas Cathedral.




There was an open air exhibition in Tivoli Gardens of stunning photographs by Dragoljub Zamurovic a Serbian photographer. Tivoli is a lovely park beautifully kept and well used, as seemed to be the norm in this city there was no litter and not much graffiti.


There was an art and music festival the weekend we were there so tons to see and do, as we only had the one day we were on the go for 14 hours. Well, I say on the go but that included a fair amount of sitting outside cafes and watch the beautiful and well dressed people.

This is a city we would both like to come back to at some point, it has several museums and galleries that we didn't get time to explore. A winter visit when they've had some snow would be nice.

We left Ljublana and headed west, towards Lake Bled it's a pretty, scenic area and like all of this region the roads are great on the bike. Although Bled was pretty it was quite a big town so we travelled another 30km or so to Lake Bohinj, still popular with holidaymakers but not in such big numbers.

We found a nice little apartment in the village of Stara Fuzina a couple of km from the lake. This was the view from our apartment, not bad we thought.

John having a Basil Fawlty moment? No, although it may look like he is headbutting this post he is actually looking at a mountain! This clever idea is a post drilled and labelled so by looking through the appropriate hole you can identify the mountian you are looking at. There were great walking trails all around the area, as you can see from John's footwear we were just out for a gently stroll on this occasion.

We met Scott who is a Scot and had a good chat, he had travelled from Aberdeen and was heading for Croatia on his Triumph Speed Triple (so John informs me I am afraid I only noticed it was a Triumph and red!) We were the first Brits on a bike that he had met in this part of Europe and we had found the same, not many Brits on bikes in these parts. I suppose this is a part of Europe that would be a bit of a rush to get to and back home on a 2 week touring holiday and for those heading further east the Italy/Greece or Austria/Hungary/Romania/Bulgaria routes seem to be more popular.


My birthday, yes my 49th as John so thoughtfully posted on the blog comments. When driving through Bled I had spotted this Picasso exhibition so we took a ride back there as a treat.

It turned out to be a display of ceramics (we didn't even know Picasso did any), I quite liked this owl jug. Some items looked pretty ordinary so I will now be scouring car boot sales and junk shops for limited edition Picasso ceramics, obviously the plan (probably flawed) is to pay a couple of quid and sell on for thousands.


Lake Bohinj.

Croatia-Along the Dalmation Coast-Day 401(28,880 miles)

From Montenegro we took the quickest route possible which meant a quick trip into Bosnia, not sure we can really claim this as a country visited as we were in and out within an hour!

Croatia is the bit of the former Yugoslavia that contains the resorts and towns that were the most popular tourist destinations before the war and subsequent split. We headed for Dubrovnik, it's beautiful, historical and the Lonely Planet says not to miss it! Having now been we would agree it was nice, but for us August was probably not the time of year to do it. If you cope well with temperatures above 35c temperatures and thousands of tourists (many arriving in large groups off coaches or cruise ships) you may be fine, it coincides with the Summer Festival so the plus is that there are loads of art and music events. We lasted about 5 hours before having to go and lay down in a darkened room!

It's strange, when compared to Delhi, Bangkok, Kathmandu or Phnom Penh it was nowhere as intense in Dubrovnik but perhaps it is because in these other cities people are using the city to go about their daily lives, living and working on the streets whereas here it is pedestrianised and full of tourists wandering about without purpose which just seemed to make it more oppressive.

We stayed about 10km out of the city in a nice little cove called Zaton and travelled into the city by boat and bus.







Close to the bus stop was this armoured vehicle and a small plaque explaining that it was used by the Dubrovnik Defenders which was the name given to the local people who took up arms to defend the city when it was attacked by Serbia and Montenegro in 1991. For 7 months Dubrovnik was cut off from the rest of Croatia and without electricity, 200 of the Defenders and 100 civilians were killed and something like 50% of the buildings in the old city sustained some damaged. It's a UNESCO world heritage site and there is little sign of the damage now, there was an exhibition showing photos of the city under siege, some buildings really were badly effected.






Sunset back in our nice quiet little cove.

We headed up the coast to a place called Trogir which turned out to be a very similar to Dubrovnik only much smaller and quieter.

The harbour wasn't big enough for cruise ships (luckily) but there were some pretty flashy super yachts.


Don't upset the kids but it looks like Santa's retired to the sun.





We headed over to Rab one of the many islands along the coast, unfortunately so had half the population of Italy (lots of them come here in August) and we could only find accommodation for one night.

They loaded so many cars onto the ferry that they couldn't close the tail gate properly (perhaps they never heard about the Herald of Free Enterprise!)




On to Slovenia.........

Montenegro - As pretty as we'd heard - Day 395 (28,348 miles)

We had met a few travellers along the way who said Montenegro had been their favourite part of the former Yugoslavia. As we are only visiting bits of each country it's hard to say whether we agree but it certainly has some stunning scenery and is a great motorbiking country.

We had an overnight stop at Virpazar on Lake Skadar, the lake is half in Montenegro and half in Albania.

Dinner that night was carp from the lake, a first for both of us and better than we thought it would be (lots of garlic). The above isn't some kind of weird ventriloquist act! This is the head of a carp caught by the owner of our hotel in the lake a few years ago, it weighed in at around 70kg.

Our next stop was the very pretty walled city of Kotor which was first settled in by the ancient Romans. Very quaint and although it's August it wasn't horrendeously busy.









The city fortification wall to St John's castle is about 300m high and the path up is a couple of km long, not exactly a mountain but the day I chose to walk up was possibly the most humid during our whole trip. Honestly, it was sweatier than anytime in Asia. This combined with the 35c plus temperature meant that by the time I got down I was a bright red, sweaty, wet haired mess. Before meeting John (who had sensibly decided to not bother and took photos of the town instead) I found a hairdresser and booked a haircut appointment. The receptionist commented that they usually took a deposit but he could see I was desperate and was happy I would turn up! How awful did I feel.



While stopped in a lay-by taking these photos we were chatting to a German biker who had come via the Dolomites which he raved about. Mmmm, we hadn't planned on Italy but perhaps we can fit it in.


We had a couple of nights in the mountain town of Zablijak, this was the view from our apartment. Found a huge apartment for 35 euro a night with a full kitchen so we could cook all our meals and a lounge with a huge sofa, oh the luxury! We've stayed in lots of apartments all through Europe and they've been good but this was the first with a sofa to stretch out on.

Until we came here we were completely unaware that the 2nd deepest canyon in the world, the Tara Canyon is in Montenegro. We splashed out on a white water rafting trip (bad pun, sorry about that) to get a look at the canyon from the inside. It was beautifully lush and green, completely different but lacking the drama of the bare red rock of the Grand Canyon.

John complete with helmet cam ready to capture the rafting action (and any fit young ladies in bikinis) on film.

Although it wasn't cold I wore a wet suit, bouyancy jacket and if they had offered pink armbands and a rubber ring with a ducks head on I'd have taken those too, such is my confidence level in fast flowing water!

I really didn't need to worry, it was basically a couple of hours of gently paddling down the river with a few whooshy bits. At no point was there any chance of falling out or turning over in fact even I (the biggest coward in the world) would have liked it to be a bit more lively. On reflection the fact that helmets were optional, we were not asked if we had done it before and we were given absolutely no instruction should have given us a clue to the difficulty level.

We will probably get about 3 minutes worth of slightly interesting footage out of the hour and a half that John took with the GoPro!




The canyon from above.











A couple of weeks ago we had heard from Mike and Caroline who are riding an Enfield in India, they had recounted how their bike had fallen over the edge of a cliff! Luckily they were not on it and they were able to get it retrieved, how had that happened we had wondered? Well, probably like many others we nearly found out when taking this photo, the ground under the sidestand was softer than we had thought, luckily it wasn't fully loaded and John caught it just in time.

Next stop Croatia.