Exeter to Croatia and back by van 27/07/17 - 13/08/17
This isn't a railway report I'm afraid folks although I did see the odd train related thing while we were away. I know that there's some people on here that might be interested though which is why (as well as for my own record) I'm posting this.
We took the van down to Italy about five years ago for a bit of a tour when the kids were younger and I probably attempted to fit a bit too much into the two and a half weeks that we were away for, we stayed in the van and one tent for the entire holiday and with there being seven of us it was quite hard work at times.
This time we did things differently. We booked two places to stay through Airbnb, one for the first week in Pula which is on the Istrian peninsula and one for the second week in a place called Kraljevica which is near a bridge that takes you onto the island of Krk. We payed for these earlier in the year and also put money aside for fuel so that we'd only have our daily living expenses to pay while we were there.
The plan being to take turns driving and doing the drive over two days each way stopping off at places we knew where we could park up for free in the van and be able to stick our tent up so that we had our own sleeping space (being stuck in a van with five teenagers is not the most romantic of situations).
So off we went on a Thursday afternoon enduring a fairly god awful journey where we had to divert off the A303 via Salisbury due to an accident. It took over six hours to get up to the tunnel (the tunnel works out cheap for all of us plus our fairly large van at £300 return).
We were on our booked crossing soon enough which deposited us in France with the clock adjustment meaning it was half twelve at night.
We then drove for an hour or so, stopped for fuel and made the kids a sort of sleeping nest in the back which involved filling the gap between the facing seats with suitcases so that they could put their feet up.
Mrs C drove for a fair chunk of the night before I took over in the morning, and eventually we arrived at Fussen in Bavaria on the Monday afternoon.
Fussen is somewhere we had stayed before in the van, there's a huge lake (called a 'see' over there) and we stayed next to a connecting lake with a view of the Alps in the background. It's very near the border to Austria which was where we headed the next day.
The following day we drove from Fussen to Pula in Croatia via Austria and Slovenia. It was a long drive but through some stunning scenery. While driving through Slovenia we passed a procession of vans just like ours which was quite surreal. We also drove up the motorway with the back doors open after stopping at the services and couldn't work out why everyone kept beeping at us, somewhat embarrassing to be honest.
The apartment at Pula was nice and so were the owners although we all struggled to understand each other at times.
Pula is a very nice small city with a fantastic Roman amphitheater and we had an enjoyable week there, especially after we'd found a beautiful beach with rocks to jump off and a bar next door.
It was hot though, damn hot actually, over 35 degrees every day and we found it a bit of a struggle at times. A couple of the days we just stayed in until the evening when it had cooled down a bit.
In the first week we:
Explored the town and some of the coast.
Visited a place called Rovinj which had something of the Venice feel about it.
Got sunburnt but learnt from it.
Went out for a romantic dinner with Mrs C and no kids.
Saw (cheekily from the outside) Tom Jones performing in the amphitheater.
Went swimming a lot and the kids went snorkelling in the sea (which was clear and warm).
Befriended some kittens that seemed to be living wild near our apartment.
Having a midnight swim.
Drank many wines and beers.
Near the end of the week the guy that was meant to be supplying us with the second weeks apartment cancelled on us out of the blue. This was not good.
Mrs C got on the case and somehow managed to find a new place in a city called Rijeka not far from where we would've been staying anyway. So off we headed after a tidy up and cheery goodbye to the older couple that had been our hosts (they lived in the downstairs apartment of where we'd been staying).
It's worth mentioning that the area around Pula is although pretty, not particularly spectacular. Rijeka on the other hand was much more scenic and as we popped out of a five kilometre long tunnel above the city it was quite breathtaking actually.
I must mention at this point that the Croatian motorways are amazing. They're all pretty new, they are toll motorways but are not too expensive - I think a hundred miles in the van worked out at about £10. They've been built by Hot Wheels though I reckon. All swooping corners, soaring viaducts and tunnels through the mountains. Amazing.
The apartment was unbelievable, it had five bedrooms over two floors, a balcony with a magnificent view, shower room, huge lounge, enormous bath and YES! Air conditioning! Pretty valuable now that the temperature was just under 40 degrees.
All this for £71 per night, well done Mrs C, what an absolute result and actually way better (and slightly cheaper) than the one I'd originally booked.
So the second week involved:
Having a look around the city which had dockyards and ship repair yards, some very nice old buildings in the centre and the odd secluded (but fairly busy) beach.
Driving to Plitvice National Park and walking around the famous lakes and waterfalls - pretty incredible actually, I'd not seen anything quite like it before.
Not getting sunburnt (I told you we'd learnt).
Driving 150 miles south to Zadar to drop our 18 year old off at the airport as she was flying back earlier than us. We drove much of this along the coast which was stunning and found an amazing beach near Zadar that had a tidal lagoon behind it where people where covering themselves in mud, sitting in the sun while it dried and then washing it off in the sea. We joined in too and it was lovely.
Watched an enormous thunderstorm roll over the mountains opposite the apartment and pummel us for about an hour. Truly spectacular.
Drinking lots of beer and wine.
The Wednesday of the second week was our youngest 14th birthday and we'd wanted to visit the turtle rescue centre on Mali Losinj (recommended to us by 70014IronDuke) which involved a ferry trip and four hours of travelling, unfortunately it would have been just one trip too many in a very hot van for them, so instead we took them to a water park and dumped them off for the day while we headed for the nearest town which turned out to be an absolute delight. It was called Novagrad and the old town had walls and walkways surrounding it next to the sea and harbour. It was lovely and after lunch and a beer we had a swim and a walk around before collecting the kids. There were (unusually that week) waves in the sea. A few days later we were informed that there had been a small earthquake in the area (3.8 I think), I wonder if this was the cause?
Anyway we picked the kids up from the water park (only four of them now after the eldest had headed home the day before, two 14 year olds and two 16 year olds) and headed back to the town for another swim and dinner sitting outside a restaurant.
There were a group of singers busking in the street and my other half and my daughter went over to listen to them. They then came back and sat down just as the group burst into a rendition of Happy Birthday aimed at the birthday girl who sat next to me looking mortified, Mrs C unfortunately laughed too much while she was taking a gulp of her beer causing it to froth up and explode out of her mouth. I'm not sure what the surrounding diners made of us at this point.
On the last evening we drove onto Krk island and had an evening swim in a pretty village by the sea, we also stocked up on cheap wine to take home and got the apartment tidied up. The owners came round in the morning and they were really nice, they said that if we want to go back sometime that they'll do us an even cheaper deal too. We're hoping to go back next year if we can but perhaps in late September instead of August.
We left Croatia on the Friday morning and instead of going back the way we came, which had been quite hard going with traffic, we headed into Italy and up to Lake Garda as we knew somewhere near there that we could park up for the night for free.
It's called Lago di Ledro, it's about ten miles from the top of Lake Garda but much higher up so therefore much cooler too. It involves climbing in a tunnel through a mountain for about three miles and then zig zagging your way up a pass.
We hadn't been there for five years but it looked more beautiful than ever, we had a very nice dinner in the pub and spent some time looking at photos from previous visits, hard to believe how young the kids looked when we were there last, we of course haven't aged at all.
The next day we chatted to a few other van owners that we'd met from Germany and did the usual camper van note swapping of good places, packed up and headed north through the Brenner Pass. It was a long journey, we took turns at driving and while I was driving in Germany we were followed and pulled over by the police. I still don't know why though, they went off and sat in their van with our passports for a bit (I was starting to fret about the time by now as we still had hundreds of miles to go), after a while they came back and told us that everything was fine but also told me I shouldn't have been driving with no shoes on (oops), I said sorry and told him that it was because they were making my feet smell. I was old enough to be his dad. He said you have to wear shoes and I said that I would but when I got to France could I take them off and throw them out of the window? He said I could do what I want once I'd got to France.
On we drove and as it got dark I woke up and realised that the fuel situation was starting to become worrying. It's not so easy getting fuel at night on foreign motorways as it is here, the automated ones never seem to take my card and we were really up against the clock by now as we'd been diverted off the motorway due to roadworks for some distance. In the end after the same thing again at a services I turned off at a junction in the middle of nowhere and rang Green Flag for advice. The lady on the phone couldn't work out where we were (somewhere in Belgium) and eventually directed us to a garage in a village a couple of miles away. No chance I thought, if I can't find an open one on a motorway what chance have I got of one being open in a village? Squeaky bum time now though, do or die as it were. I took the road to the village and it was an absolute ghost town, nothing open and nobody around. In a corner next to a house though was a fuel pump with a card machine next to it (no actual garage though) I tentatively put my card in it and it worked! I could have cried.
Tank filled and now running very late there was nothing else for it but to hit the motorway (250 miles to the tunnel) and not spare the horses. Unfortunately I think I was flashed by a speed camera somewhere near Calais and upon checking it turns out that you now get a fine and points in this country even if you get caught over there. Disappointing to say the least.
We made the tunnel by the skin of our teeth, in fact we were the second to last vehicles on the train, we literally drove on, the doors were shut and we left. Pretty hairy.
Some railway notes:
Not many actually. We didn't get a chance to go on any but I took a couple of photos of the very graffitied trains at Pula and also admired the quay branch that ran along the sea front to the docks. I met a couple of Swiss enthusiasts at Pula and had a chat to them, they were taking photos of a train which unusually didn't have any graffiti on it. They had a stepladder with them.
In Rijeka I had a look around the station and it was very interesting, lots of sidings and again lots of graffiti. There was a loco hauled train being prepared and also a shunter that looked a bit like a class 17 pottering about.
Outside the station was an old plinthed steam locomotive.
From the station a line ran along the waterfront to a massive container depot and we saw a train being hauled probably by that same shunter through the streets among all the buses and cars, I overtook it and Mrs C managed to grab a passing photo of it.
We saw other stuff and of course had a bit of LeShuttle loco haulage (I did record the numbers somewhere).
I'll post this and then sort a few photos out. Sorry about the lack of trains and thanks for reading folks.