September 25th. As usual for me after a few days of relentless tourism, I felt the need for a day off, so when the rest of the group departed for other parts of Brač, I settled down to read the papers in peace and quiet. I experimented with trying to find local walks but abandoned the idea when it became clear that I would have to pay for getting the details of a local route. I also wanted to get a photo of Perla from the other side of the harbour, where the light would be good in the afternoon, so, at about 1230 I set off to walk round the harbour.
There was a stiff breeze and it was cool, but the sun was shining, and so I got other photos of Milna, such as this one
and carried on round to my selected vantage point for photographing the boat. Alas, I had been too keen, and realised that the sun wouldn’t be right for a while yet. The only thing for it was to find a spot of lunch, which I did in a restaurant called, engagingly, OmO; I have no idea why, but the burger was good and the chips were superb. So, by the time I returned to my selected site, the light was much better and I got this shot of Perla.
Whilst walking back to the boat, I realised that the breeze, while still occasionally gusty, had settled somewhat, and so thought it would be worth risking a foray with the drone. It was a bit scary, but I managed to get several aerial shots of Perla which look, I think, not bad.
and I took some video as well:
It was a satisfactory way of passing the time until I could decently get myself a G&T to await the return of the group to hear the story of their day, which may well appear in these pages courtesy of Jane’s good offices.
September 24th. As we breakfasted in the warm sunshine aboard Perla, it was difficult to believe that we were effectively pinned into the Milna marina by a coming storm – things were calm and all my weather apps were forecasting 25°, light showers and a moderate breeze. But Filip warned us, as we set out for our day visiting the highlights of Brač, that we might need rain jackets and warm clothing. As we left Perla the wind had risen a notch and there were clouds in the sky, but the sun still shone and it was hot.
Our first port of call was Vidova Gora, a place we had hiked up to in the previous week. It was windy at the top and the visibility was even poorer than it had been the first time we were up there. This made it slightly difficult for Filip, who was trying to point out various islands and other things that we could have seen had it been clearer. He did explain the derivation of the name Vidova Gora, which has the same root as that of Saint Vitus (best known in the UK for his dance). St. Vitus is patron of many things, including dance and the arts for the northern Slavs, and of seeing, or vision, for southern Slavs – hence the name for this, the highest peak (or “penk” as the sign has it) in the Adriatic islands.
Our next stop was in a small town called “Pučišca”. In Croatian, the č is pronounced “ch” as is “cheese”; the š as “sh” and the c as “ts”. So good luck with getting the pronunciation of this town right. Apparently many of the locals can’t.
Like so many Croatian places, Pučišca is a handsome place
and its claim to fame is that it has a stonemasonry school (“Klesarska škola” in Croatian). Since Brač is famous for its white limestone (to be found in Diocletian’s Palace in Split, bits of St. Mark’s square in Venice and other notable places, although not, probably, the White House), it’s good to see that investment is being made to maintain and develop the skills of working it.
Our time there was sadly short, as it is an interesting place to visit. We had an explanatory description and a bit of a technique demonstration from a professor at the school, Siniša Martinić, against a background of the students hammering and chiseling away. Here is a link to some video clips of the place.
Here’s the template for the item that Siniša was using as a demo:
and here’s how it’s coming on:
If reproducing a complex shape, a kind of 3D manual pantograph arrangement is used.
The shape to be reproduced is in the foreground, and the odd-looking frame in the background is used to measure specific dimensions to ensure correct reproduction.
Siniša also showed us different sorts of stone. Some, from near the surface, has fossils clearly visible in it
and some is from deeper and has fewer fossils visible.
(The lump of stone from which this piece is carved would set you back €3,000, and the work to complete it would cost you an extra €6,000. Just so you know.)
Everything done at the school is done by hand – no machinery or power tools. If polishing is needed, the process is done by hand, using eight successively finer diamond pads, like the ones shown here.
It would have been great to have spent more time there, but the scale and scope of the storm started to become apparent and so we left the stonemason school in a hurry… the harbour in Pučišca was being whipped by a strong wind (the other image in the set is the BBC Weather App’s forecast of moderate breeze!)
And, as we ran for a cafe, we realised that the gusts were really very strong – outside tables and chairs were going flying and awnings were in danger of being ripped apart. The cafe we got to had a really tough time with ladders and rope to secure their awning. I would have videoed it, but that seemed a bit ghoulish, so I just drank their coffee instead.
After our coffee break, the script called for us to visit a place called Škrip, where there was a historical and archeological museum and also an olive oil museum, which sounds a bit niche. On the way, we could clearly see from our minibus how the wind was whipping up the waves, and how sensible had been the decision of our gulet captain to stay put for the day, rather than strike out for a different destination.
The wind is my introduction to the word “katabatic”. The locals call it “bura” or “bora” and it is caused by the clash of continental and adriatic weather systems. A major characteristic is strong gusts rather than simple raw wind speed, and what we experienced was actually quite light – 200 kph gusts have been registered in the past, apparently.
In our first museum in Škrip, a delightful lady called Andrea took us through a rapid overview of the history and culture of the island over the centuries, since there have been people living here since at least 900BC. At various stages in the island’s history there have been three alphabets in use: latin, cyrillic and glagolitic. This is terrifically important as one characteristic which defines the change from prehistory to history is the development of written language. So one display in the museum formed my introduction to glagolitic script
while a second was a reproduction of one of the earliest recorded instances of the cyrillic script used on the island.
Andrea was a real story-teller and covered many of the aspects of society as it developed on the island, with too much detail to record here. And then it was time to go and meet another charming hostess, called Dora, who looked after us as we went to the olive oil museum round the corner.
An olive oil museum sounds rather niche, and it is in fact quite a small place – but they gave us a nice lunch (I have a photograph of the spread of tapenades, prosciutto, bread, local cheese, tomatoes from their garden, marinaded olives, locally baked bread and fig jam, but my religious principles forbid me from sharing it, of course). After lunch, Dora explained how the process of making olive oil used to work, with a huge old wooden mill to create a paste from the olives and an impressively large press to extract the oil from the paste (which was put in rope baskets to filter out much of the remaining bits). Cold water was used at first, but still there was oil in the paste, so a second pressing used to be done with hot water, resulting in oil which was edible but not very nice. To get the last knockings out of the paste, boiling water was used, and the result was inedible, but could be used in, for example, oil lamps. So “cold-pressed” was the good oil, and you’ll see that on many an olive oil label these days. But all the olive oil one buys today is electrically extracted and with cold water, so it’s all cold-pressed. If it says it on the label, it’s because the marketing department put it there, and is nothing to do with the basic quality of the oil – the key phrase is “virgin” which (according to Dora at least) refers to oil produced no more than 24 hours after picking.
One of the recurring themes of our travels in Croatia is the presence of locally-produced liqueur wherever we have gone. The olive oil museum was no exception, and produced a sour cherry liqueur for us to taste which was very nice but not significantly better than others we had tried. But they also produced an olive liqueur, which was strikingly different… in a good way… so we now have two bottles of Croatian liqueur to take home – cornelian cherry and olive. Our New Year celebrations will be considerably enriched, I think.
Despite unpropitious weather, we had an absorbing day, indeed quite an exciting one at times! And when we got back to Perla, we found that the crew had set things up so that we could still have dinner on the deck, protected from the wind by screens and warmed by blankets as needed. And once again, we had a great dinner with much conversation, great food and good local wine. Here we all are – our tour group, and Filip and the boat crew:
We will stay on Brač tomorrow, so stay tuned to see what we get up to. For now, good night!
September 23rd. At bang on 0600, the engines of the Perla roared into life and sleep thus became impossible. To be fair, we were warned in the information we got that there would be engine noise, and so had packed the recommended earplugs. But they were in my spongebag rather than my ears, and less effective therefore. I shall not hesitate to use them should we be moving at night.
The mission of the day was to get to Brač before the weather closed in – Filip was talking about northerly gales, and I trusted his information sources (Tom, our skipper) better than the BBC Weather App which was forecasting showers and a north-easterly stiff breeze. Anyhoo, Tom put the hammer down and we were off!
There was one break in the journey, to visit the island of Korčula, which is a couple of hours’ motoring from Slano. This gave us time to suss out the breakfast, which was nice but made me very glad about all those Twinings Earl Grey teabags we’d packed, and then we were being ushered off the boat to meet local guide Željka. If nothing else, at least week one had prepared me for being able to spell her name correctly. It became clear that much of the (perforce) short visit was going to be spent in the local museum, which Filip had arranged to be opened especially for our group, which was a nice touch. However, faced with a new and handsome town,
and with camera in hand, my thoughts tend not to turn to museum visits, but rather to pottering around looking for nice scenes. So we excused ourselves from the rest of our group and wandered about, trying to find parts of Korčula town which were not full of Asian tourists taking selfies. It’s a small town, so this wasn’t altogether straightforward. But we managed to find some scenes which I hope you agree are reasonably photogenic.
Very near the quay where Perla was moored is a handsome staircase which was part of the old city’s walls (much of which are still intact).
The top debouches on to the cathedral square, which would have made a lovely photo were it not for the hordes of people there. Adjoining this square there is a another, smaller one
which took several minutes to photograph, as I had to wait for the oriental tour party to move on.
Just off the cathedral square is an art shop, which has a captivating display on the outside walls.
We’re not sure whether they’re for display or for sale (though I’d hazard a guess at the latter), but it’s a lovely way to display items to get people’s attention.
We did pop into the cathedral, but only for a few seconds as someone scolded Jane for wearing shorts, so we apologised and beat a hasty retreat. I felt somewhat aggrieved on Jane’s behalf, as there were ladies inside with skirts far shorter and men in shorts, none of whom were being berated. I suppose that the modern thing to do, having taken offense on someone else’s behalf, is to stir things up via a social media shitstorm with a catchy hashtag – #handsoffmywifesshorts, or something.
Anyway, we wandered on and discovered, radiating out from the cathedral square, several narrow lanes along which you can clearly see evidence of the lives of ordinary people being lived, alongside the inevitable cafes and restaurants.
All in all, Korčula town is a very agreeable place to potter around for an hour or so and I could have spent longer getting some more imaginative shots. But I hope that these give you a flavour of how pleasant the place is.
Next stop – Brač. In our previous week, we visited Bol (the principal town on the island), but our target today was a different place, Milna, which we thought would be just this little place and a venue for a meal out on the town.
The reality was a little different, and the weather played quite a part in this.
As we approached Milna, an interesting landmark was a sunken boat which was being supported by salvage buoys.
and it became clear that (a) there is a significant marina here and (b) the sailing world and his dog were headed towards it, driven by reports of the gale that Filip had mentioned – the channel in was quite crowded. Our captain had a shouting match with another vessel which clearly didn’t understand about navigation priorities under these circumstances and, as we tied up at the quay in the marina, the guy in charge there was frantically challenging all arriving boats and turning away any that didn’t have a reservation, as the marina was full. All of the boat crew said that they’d never seen it so crowded.
The late afternoon and evening light in Milna made it a pretty place.
The moon was full
and the sunset colours were lovely.
We had a very tasty and fishy evening meal to round off the day. Walking back to Perla, it was very difficult to believe that there was a storm brewing. But there was – and you’ll have to read all about it in the next entry. See you there!
