Tag Archives: Croatia

Day 3 (II) – Down, Down

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After all the borderline excitement, it was time to get down to the serious business of getting hot, sweaty and tired the day’s walk. I was relieved when the tour bus drove quite considerably up into the hills, as this meant that it had done much of the uphill work and thus I wouldn’t have to. We turned off the coast road at a village called Tučepi, and I was a little surprised to arrive at Gornje Tučepi as the start point. Željko explained that most villages had an upper (older) part and a lower part by the coast, set up as people migrated downwards to serve the tourist industry. “Gornje” means “upper” in Croatian.

Željko decided that our group needed waking up after a sleepy bus journey, so he took us to visit an older couple he knows who produce wine and spirits from locally-grown produce. So we all had a slug of liqueur to help us on our way.

(the husband is the chap standing in the corner watching Željko explaining to us what we could sample – cherry, walnut, prožek or herby grappa. The cherry liqueur was the flavour that was favoured, largely. We also took a peek into the room where the couple produced other things as well – wine, dried fruit and more.

And then we were off! The walk went up for a little way (boo!) before starting a long descent. I prefer going down to going up, but I have to say that my knees, ankles and feet were fed up with the downhill by the time we reached our final destination, Makarska. Here’s a video showing the profile of the walk.

We were in the shadow of Biokovo, the region’s tallest mountain, which stretches for many miles and which towers over the scenery as you walk along. The landscape was largely typical of this area of Croatia – rocky and scrubby, with Aleppo pine as the dominant tree (planted originally by the coast to support tourism, but now aggressively invading up the mountainsides). We eventually reached an area where there had been a major forest fire the previous June. This, in and of itself, was unremarkable, as summer forest fires are common here. But by laying waste to the pines, this one revealed something that many people had forgotten, which is the extent to which the area had historically been farmed using terraces. In this photo, you can see the burnt remains of the pine trees, and also the terracing thus revealed, which went a lot higher than had been prevously recognised.

Later on, we passed through an area of terracing showing how the pines had taken over.

On and down we toiled, passing some old fortifications which had been created by rock hacked from the mountainside

until we caught sight of Makarska, our destination for the day. The group was clearly awe-struck by the view

as well as, one surmises, taking a bit of a breather from scrambling along and down the scree which you can see our path led through. It really was quite hard going, requiring concentration to keep one’s footing as well as taking its toll on knees, ankles and feet.

So we stumbled and slid our way down into Makarska, and I have to say that two large beers disappeared really quite swiftly before we had to board a ferry in the rather attractive Makarska harbour.

An hour on the ferry took us to the island of Brač, where we would be for the next couple of days. We arrived in Saumartin, which, like so many Croatian places, is very handsome.

And then we boarded a couple of taxis to take us to Bol and our hotel for our stay on the Island, the Villa Daniela. As ever, there was good and bad news. The good news is that we had a room with a balcony. The bad news? We had to climb to the third floor (four stories higher than street level, actually) to get to it. The exertion needed to get us and the suitcases up the narrow stairs to the room justified the swift gin-and-tonic we necked before Željko took us to a very unusual restaurant, one that isn’t in the normal tourist directories. It’s called Kito, and is actually the catering facility attached to a camping site. But we benefitted from Željko’s contacts as he was able to get us a table for 13 in order to eat a traditional local meal called “Peka”, a baked, mixed-meat dish prepared under coals in a barbecue.

(the peka is being prepared in the cooking pots under the coals on the left).

First, of course, we had to try a few more of the local home-made liqueurs, again with Željko as host.

(lemon getting the thumbs-up this time), following which the group obviously appreciated the chance to sample this local dish

and the surroundings there are very nice in the dark of the evening.

So that wrapped up activities at the end of a long, eventful day. Once again, we stumbled wearily back to bed, to hope that a few hours’ sleep would repair our bodies to face the rigours of the following day. Stay tuned to find out whether this was the case (spoiler: not really!)

Day 3 – Borderline exciting

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17th September meant a prompt start for us, as we had to leave Dubrovnik and head up the coast. To make the journey more pleasant, we took the coast road (slower than the main road, but much more scenic). The view over the Adriatic was lovely, and included some interesting sights, such as an old wall which was a fortification to seal off an area to protect the extraction of salt.

Then we encountered something which is typical of the complexities and conflicts in the region – a border! We had to enter Bosnia Hercegovina, a country created by the Balkan wars of the 1990s. A commonly-held idea is that a break in Croatia was created in order to give Bosnia access to the sea, but Željko disabused us of this notion, saying that the real reason is that Dubrovnik, which used to be a self-contained city state, insisted on retaining its separation (whilst still being part of Croatia, which was, of course, also a country created by the Balkan wars). So, now there’s a border, not only into a different country, but, of course, going out of the EU, which makes it a much bigger deal altogether.

Fortunately, the border guards were not on work-to-rule, as can happen sometimes, and so waved us through with just a few words with driver and guide.

We also saw another consequence of the aftermath of the Balkan wars, on local signposts. This part of the Balkan region has three languages and two alphabets; political correctness demands that these appear on signposts but local bitterness means that the alphabet not relevant to a part of the country tends to get unofficially painted over. Here’s a minor example, where someone objected to the Cyrillic script:

but whose stepladder didn’t seem to be tall enough to reach the top name! We saw other, more extreme examples of blacking out the Cyrillic script, as that is the Serbian alphabet, and this was southern Bosnia.

After a while, we reversed the border process and re-entered Croatia, whereupon the landscape changed dramatically as we entered a fertile plain, where many varieties of produce are grown.

Grapevines, watermelons and tangerines figure highly among what’s grown, and there are many roadside kiosks where one can stop and buy fresh samples.

We passed Ploče, of which you’ll have seen an aerial photo earlier, because you were paying attention, weren’t you? Anyway, here’s what it looked like from the ground.

Shortly after this, we swung off the coast road and up into the hills, to Gornji Tučepi, which was the start of the day’s (hot and sweaty) walk. You’ll have to wait for the next entry to read all about that. Stay tuned!

Day 2 – Browned Off

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16th September 2018

Today was the first of the daily walks that form the first week of our vacation. The good news was that it was a short walk, around 6km. The bad news was twofold: both the gradient and the temperature were going to be high. I don’t do uphill very well even in cool temperatures, so the prospect of scaling a peak in 30° heat made me quail. I really, really didn’t want to be the balding, overweight, sweaty bloke at the back.

As part of a relatively frugal breakfast (already in the holiday mode of simultaneously feeling stuffed full of yesterday’s dinner and yet somehow starving hungry) we did the English thing of stealing a couple of apples from the breakfast buffet to help fuel us on the walk, went to get extra water from the local supermarket (engagingly called Tommy) and got on our tour bus to go to the starting point, a village called Gornje Obod.

My fears about the gradient were immediately confirmed, as we started off up a very steep slope. Fortunately, after a while that wasn’t nearly short enough, it gave way to a path that wound its way up somewhat less steeply.

On the way up we got several lovely views over a peninsula village called Cavtat (pronounced Tsavtat, by the way).

(if you look carefully above you can see an aeroplane on its way into Dubrovnik airport).

We ground our way up this path, which was actually a military path created during the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire quite some time ago, for a couple of hours, pausing now and then to listen to some nuggets about local history, geography and culture from Željko (not a rest, of course; oh, no, not at all) until we reached a village called Velji Do, which was good and bad news. The good news was that there was some shade, a commodity notable on the route so far for its absence. The bad news? The restaurant, which might have served us beer, was shut. On balance bad, then.

Things got a lot worse after that, as we headed up the “Ronald Brown Pathway” towards the summit, which is called Straazisce. Below is a picture of the village. The Ronald Brown Pathway goes up the hill on the right and if you peer very closely and use your imagination a bit, you can see a cross at the top of the hill, more of which later.

This climb recalled the worst times of our recent walking holiday in Slovenia, which involved some 40 minutes slogging up a 1-in-1 slope in 30° heat. The main difference with this path was that it was in Croatia, not Slovenia.

This photo doesn’t really convey the hideous gradient of the path. It does, however, give an inkling of how far I had fallen behind the rest of the group, all of whom were better at uphill and heat than I. So, yes, I had become the bald, overweight, sweaty bloke at the back. I disguised as much of this as I could by wearing a hat.

Some 45 minutes later I finally caught up with the rest of the group, mainly because they’d stopped, having reached the summit. There is a memorial there to United States Secretary of Commerce Ronald Brown, who was one of 35 people killed in 1996 when a US military aeroplane carrying a trade mission crashed into the hill instead of landing at the airport. The memorial takes the form of a huge metal cross. I’d love to share a photo with you, but the picture I took was out of focus and I was so knackered I didn’t notice until later. I did, however, get a picture of the inscription on the base

(the other three faces carry the names of the people killed in the crash) and I also got a picture of the view from the top, which is pretty good.

Having ground our way up to Straazisce, there was nothing for it but to grind our way down again. It may not be physically as hard or unpleasant as going up, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy, as it takes its toll on knees, ankles and feet. But we made it down OK (in half the time of getting up). Here’s a Relive summary of the walk: https://www.relive.cc/view/e1198905892. Note to self – take more photos with the phone next time; but it shows an engagingly wiggly path up to the peak.

Whilst we waited in Velji Do for our tour bus, Željko gave us a summary of the geopolitics of this troubled region.

The history of Yugoslavia and today’s relationships between Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Hercegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia are bewildering, and far too complicated to cover here (particularly when you throw in the bugger factors of Albania and Kosovo). But it was interesting to get some insight into the complexities and it agreeably passed the time until the bus came to take us back to our hotel.

Once there, most of the rest of the group elected to go into Dubrovnik Old Town, but Jane and I cried off this option, as we’ve been there before, preferring instead to find a nice quiet lunch near our hotel at the restaurant attached to the Hotel Dubrovnik, which might have been called Nono (as it said on the menus) or Uvala (as it said on the sandwich boards outside). We will probably go to our graves not knowing which was the right name. But we got an adequate lunch and a mightily needed beer for me, before walking down to look at the beach which is one of the attractions of the Lapad area.

before heading back to our hotel for a bit of a kip, followed by some domestic admin from Jane using the marvels of modern technology to extract some vital information from home via a video call, some deathless prose from me (these blogs don’t write themselves, you know) and finally cup of tea (Jane) and G&T (me) in the scented dusk of a Dubrovnik evening in the hotel garden. Tomorrow may be hot and sweaty, but for now, we’re cool.