Our European Cycling Adventure 2019

By Johan - After our side trip to Bosnia and Serbia we returned to the Croatian Coast via the Neretva River Valley - a beautiful flat way to return to the coast; it was an easy enjoyable ride.  We backtracked from Mostar along the Ciro Trail for the first half to Čapljina and then just followed the river out to the border and the coast.    The Croatian Coast is beautiful; mountains dropping into the ocean, crystal clear oceans to swim in and to top it off a myriad of old towns with a mixture of Roman, Venetian and Hungarian architecture.  European summer is in full swing here with calm blue sky’s and 30 to 34 degrees Celsius in the afternoon. Too hot to bike really so we stuck to a regime of biking from 7am to 1pm. By that time steam started coming out of our ears and we both got to rage stage so time to set up the tent and dive into the ocean for the afternoon. Not a bad lifestyle at all. Mostly rocky beaches though so don’t forget to bring your beach/sand shoes.  We are not really ci

By Deborah and Johan - After spending a few days in Mostar and Sarajevo we were keen to visit some of the other sites in Bosnia and Serbia that Vahida (our host on Mostar) and Jelena had suggested. Not keen to bike the Balkan mountains though so we opted to leave our bikes in Mostar for three days and rented a car to do drive a loop from Mostar up along the Drina river into Serbia and then loop back via Montenegro to see some of the lakes in northern Montenegro.  A great choice although it’s probably the most intense mountain driving I have done. Three days of windy mountain roads with hardly a flat straight road in sight. On top of that I made the mistake of not switching my offline road mapping app from Bike to Car mode so unfortunately we ended up on some very rough four wheel drive tracks with our Hyundai I20. Well as they say, rental cars are the best and the Hyundai lives up to its WRC pedigree. Thank God though we got it back in one piece. Deborah didn’t always like the Co-drive

By Deborah and Johan - We left Croatia just after Dubrovnik. The road was busy and the days hot. There was apparently an old rail trail from Dubrovnik to Mostar and you only had to be careful for the odd landmines that the tank sweepers didn’t catch. We read a few blogs to find more about it. The track is called the Ciro Trail and it was developed to get some more tourism back to the region after the war. -we thought it would be a great alternative to leave the busy coastal road so we headed the bikes up the hill for Bosnia. By the look of it Croatia claimed much of the coast from former Yugoslavia (fat cats). We found that old rail trail and thankfully I never needed to pee so stayed on the track 😃. I’m not really a war tourist but riding into Mostar throws you into that space. It’s shocking!! How can this happen in modern day? It set me trawling the internet to found out why, who’s responsible, wtf? It’s easy to say it was the Serbs against the Bosnians but that’s not it. It’s freak

By Deborah - What can you say about Croatia??? It’s very pretty 😍.  It was a downhill bike ride from the border patrol which is always a beautiful way to start a country. It was even more downhill to the small coastal town we chose to have lunch -ok that part scared me a little - it was getting into 35 degrees so biking back up after lunch was maybe an occasion I might have sworn about. Cavtat, a little coastal town is pretty stunning and filled with busloads of ‘Brits on Tour’! I have never seen so many people with lemonade ice block coloured legs in my life. So yep sunglasses on.  The good news was the brilliant little path along the coast that after a wee steep climb joined back to that ‘main road’.  The ‘ main road’ was becoming an entity in our life - something you had to face before you could carry on with the next part of your day. It’s not bikefriendly, there’s no shoulders on the road - so you can’t move anywhere if they’re too close and it’s a lotto draw as to whether the ca