White Rocks and Clear Water

It may not be the same as beautiful sandy beaches back home, but it is still one of the most picturesque places on earth. Croatia is one of the cleanest and coolest places I am yet to visit. Currently ranked number three on Vanessa's Top-Spots-To-Go list.

Highway Bingo

Beware the low-flying-deer-riding-bicycles-in-high-winds.

Hiding from the hills

I am actually in this photo. Yep that is me hiding in the bin, so Matt doesn't find me and make me ride through the hills ahead. I think it was 45 minutes prior to this photo being taken that we were at the sea level below.

Home sweet home

Some people take their camping more serious than others, cute nonetheless.

Croatian villages are cool

As a backpacker, travel in Croatia seems to centre on little more than sailing tours around Split and Dubrovnik and so I had it in my head that these were the only places to go. However, having just cycled north from Split for the best part of a week I have been blown away by all the of the coastal villages and towns we've stayed in or visited. They all seem to have so much history and the waterfronts are simply stunning (and unsurprisingly full of yachts available for charter).


The above photo is the waterfront at Trogir - Vanessa says that's the sort of boat I'm meant to buy for her.


And here we have Primosten, where we dropped in for lunch. The place was absolutely spotless and with all the white stone, they look beautiful in the sunshine

Did I mention, we're loving Croatia??

Sandals, our ticket to free beer and food.

When we came across a corporate marquee I couldn't help but feeling a little like my favourite 'Kath & Kim' when they mingled with the celeb's at the races. After a long hot day of cycling and setting up our camp we walked down the beach to discover a corporate Yachting function. Perhaps we were both a little delirious, but for the very first time our travel attire and sandals actually allowed us to blend in to the corporate yachting crowd. So we wandered in, helped ourselves to numerous free pints of beer, lounged on a comfy couch and enjoyed the complementary nibbles.
Ahh we love this country!!

Four trains, a ferry, an ATM card and a squashed conductor

That's how to get from Sorrento, Italy to Split in Croatia without actually riding a bike across the middle of the country. Despite the Italians love of cycling, the trains aren't so bike friendly with only certain slow trains accepting bicycles. When they say they accept bikes all this means is that they slap a bike sticker on a random door that in most cases is 3 feet off the ground.

So it was an 11 hour journey to get from Sorrento via Naples and Rome to Ancona where the Croatian ferries depart. It was at about hour 5 in Rome when an ATM decided that it would prefer to hold on to my card (one card down, three to go) and the 11th hour when a conductor thought he'd help Vanessa get her bike from the train. He didn't quite realise that there was 20 kilos of weight on the back and promptly got stuck under it.

Alas, we finally made it onto the ferry in Ancona where I now write this (sadly no internet here) and in the morning we should be in Split. Another stamp in the passport.

Resting our Legs on the Amalfi coast...

When we arrived at the ferry terminal of Cagliari we found that the only ferry leaving was destined for Naples, so off to the rubbish dump we go. Unfortunately Naples is not quite as it once was, the rubbish tips have run out of space and it is not the place for two little Aussie cyclists looking for adventure. So after a few hours and a game of charades with the ticket lady, we managed to put our bikes on a boat to sunny Sorrento.

You may well think we are a little bit silly riding our bikes, however we are not quite brainless enough to pull our load around the enormous cliffs and hair-raising roads of the Amalfi coast. In fact, the coatal road was just like the Great Ocean Road, except a couple of hundred feet higher up, and a fair bit narrower. In hindsight the bus ride around the road was probably enough of an adrenalin rush, especially when it is near clock-off time for the driver.



We hung out with well dressed Italians and wealthy tourists in Sorrento. They stayed in glamourous hotels, whilst we happened to find ourselves a camp ground in the middle of town. It was perfect, so we stayed, enjoyed, rested our legs and visited fancy places.

The village of Positano was a favourite, and thankfully Mt. Vesuvius kept it's top on whilst we visited Pompeii.

What's in the bags?

So what exactly have we taken with us on our adventure across the Med? Let me start off by saying that nothing we're carrying is really specifically designed for cycle touring - most of it is just our normal camping/everyday gear that we've squeezed onto the back of a bike.

• Bikes: Revolution Courier Disc (We both had these as light and fast commuting bikes in London. They have 8 gears, but only 7 work)
• Workshop: Allen Keys, Adjustable spanner, chain breaker, chain lube, tyre patches, tyre levers
• Locks: 2 x Kryptonite Kryptolok Series 2 D-Locks with Kryptoflex cables
• Panniers: 4 x Generic waterproof panniers from Decathlon
• Tent: Salewa Sierra Leone Ultra
• Sleeping Bags: Sierra Designs Solar Flare (Ness) and Trade Wind (Matt)
• Sleeping Mats: Blue foam thingy (Ness) self-inflating from Decathlon (Matt)
• Towels: 2 x Mont travel towels
• Stove: MSR WhisperLite Internationale
• Pots: Snow Peak aluminium set (1.5 and 1.0L pots with lids) from Mont Bell Japan
• Drinking: 2 x 2L Water Bladders for the bikes plus 2 x 400Ml lexan bottles (including Aussie flag stubby-holders) for camp
• Lighting: Black Diamond (Ness) Petzl Tikka (Matt) plus 2 x Revolution Bike Headlights
• Laptop: Apple Macbook
• Laptop backup: Western Digital Passport 160GB
• GPS: Garmin eTrex Legend
• Camera: Olympus SW720 (shockproof and waterproof)
• Video: Oregon Scientific ATC2K helmet camera
• Rainwear: Gore-Tex XCR from Mont Bell Japan (Ness) and Drillium eVent from Rab (Matt)
• Cycling Footwear: Specialized shoes with SPD cleats (Ness) and Time cleats (Matt)
• Other Footwear: Asics Kayano and Keen Sandals (Ness) and Lizard Hydra Sandals (Matt)
• Medicinal: Pocket Pharmacy (thanks Mum!), soap, Betadine, deodorant, sunscreen, toothpaste, band-aids, lip gloss.
• Toys: Frisbee, Hacky, iPods, AM/FM/SW Radio, Books, Travel Scrabble, diary, waboba(ball)
• Misc: Kitchen Sink (really!), clothes line, rope, dry bags (1L, 3L & 15L), Battery Charger, AA & AAA NiMh batteries, universal travel adaptor with USB
• Clothes: Stinky lycra cycling gear, bikini (Ness), boardshorts (Matt) and not much else.

To the hills and back

It's somewhat unconventional to go touring with 8 speed bikes (or 7 speed if you factor in the lowest gear always throws the chain), but some would suggest to take said bikes over a 1000m mountain range would be pure stupidity. In fact, we had met some hardened cycle tourists (German of course) a day earlier who had warned us of the climb mentioning that they went as slow as 4kph on their 24 speed mountain bikes. They went somewhat silent when we mentioned our lack of gears.



Yet here we are having reached the 1017m pass on our way down the east coast of Sardinia. Sadly, there were no conveniently placed campsites at the top and it was only after a total of 85km that we arrived in Lotzorai back at sea level.

The views along this road were absolutely stunning, not to mention a football field perched on the side of a mountain.



Ahh, to be young and stupid! Thankfully we celebrated our dumb luck success with a bottle of Sardinian vino for dinner.

Couldn't afford a French Restaurant

So we went to France...and cooked our own.

Heading north we ran out of Italian soil so we hopped on a ferry and headed to Bonifacio, France. We were surprised to stumble across such a tourist 'hot-spot', and a town full of restaurants. Although we couldn't afford the tourist menu, we happily sat on the gutter outside and enjoyed french stick and Camembert, whilst I revised my schoolgirl french.



Sadly we did not do much cycling on the isle of Corsica, as we saw the sight of the huge white cliffs, and thought we would head back to Sardinia where it was supposedly flatter, and had an abundance of Nutella in every shop.

On the road again

After somehow making it 13km out of town with a wheel that moved 10cm from side to side, I then had to ride back in the following morning to try and purchase a new wheel for Ness.

First stop, the tourist office. Either EasyJet destroy a lot of bikes, or perhaps cycling is a popular pastime for visitors to Olbia but nevertheless the lady at the office had a complete list (there are two) of local bike shops at her fingertips. So after a brief discussion around the minor fact that New Zealand is not part of Australia and is actually it's own country I hunted down the shop Zema.

The bike mechanics at Zema didn't speak a word of english however after a short game of charades and 50 Euros later I did manage to walk away with a brand new wheel for Ness.



With two functioning bikes it was a reasonably short and blessedly uneventful meander up the coast to the port of Palau where the ocean was quite literally two metres from the tent door.

The journey begins...slightly more wobbly than expected

At the start of our cycling adventure both Matt and I were a little nervous, as we have not planned much further than thinking and convincing each other that it was a great idea. We felt a little comforted by the fact that through the windows of Gatwick terminal we saw our bikes being carefully loaded onto the plane, and we also watched from our seats as they were unpacked at Sardinia airport.

Unfortunatly for us, somewhere out of our watchful eye our prescious mode of transport received a battering. The "EasyWreck" airline we chose to fly with had mangled my front wheel. (If as a tourist you have felt everyone staring at you, then try walking through an airport with a broken bike). We thought that this should be easily fixed as the Italians like cycling...apparently they like God more. Well god bless them as they close every shop on a Sunday.



Matt's attempt to pick up a new wheel at a hypermarket failed, and he resorted to bashing it on the curb. He eventually fixed it to the point where it spun freely, yet very very wobbly. As a true gentleman ( or because he did not want to explain anything to my mother) he mounted the dodgy wheel on his bike and I got his good one.

Slowly and carefully we did make the 13km from the airport to the campsite, and eventually arrived about four hours later. As our thoughts had been so consumed with getting to our destination we had not realised that the closest food was in fact back in town. So Matt got back on his bike for another round trip, and picked up some well earned beers (which he truly deserved).

No really, this cycling trip was a great idea.