More of Croatia

After a gorgeous evening with my hoooge bruschetta and cornetto (!!), we were again up with the larks, I mean fishermen, to catch the little car ferry across from Tpanj to Ploce.

The road that climbed across the island to the port was rather pulse racing for Jules, being seated on the sheer drop side of Mabel's cabin! This time, I uploaded the video to Facebook, as the app doesn't seem to want to take videos. It was like a roller coaster, climbing to the top and not seeing the road - was this a big dipper?!
We were aiming for the 11h00 ferry but when we arrived, the 9h30 had not started loading yet, so Jules trotted into the ticket office and result! We managed to get on that one. There wasn't a lot to see and do in Tpanj so we were happy to be 90 minutes ahead of schedule. The scenery from the boat was so beautiful, we took a little video but for the last few days our roaming internet has been so poor. Will try to upload it soon when we find wifi that actually has a strong enough signal.

Colin had his heart set on staying on a proper island (not a peninsular as we did before), so we pootled off up towards the north coast, retracing our wheels a little bit. We travelled along a coast road that - for Croatia - was quite dull and boring (we have been spoilt!) whilst looking for an overnight spot. The first campsite we drove into looked to be more of a holiday park type place but we parked up Mabel anyway to take a look around and stretch our legs but when we noticed that there were all sorts of flags flying at reception except the Union Jack, we turned on our heels and headed back to Mabel for plan B!

We found another site right at the tippy toppy end of a little jutty-out bit (technical, I know) and after A LOT, and I mean A LOT A LOT of faffing, we eventually agreed to just pitch up in the "rough" side where there wasn't any lecky, deciding to "slum it" for the night and making do without the fan (the only thing for which we would have needed the electricity). The site was pleasant enough, right on a little marina, but the pitches were not numbered and it was a bit of a free for all and this also meant that wherever we tried to park Mabel, we could not find an electric post with a free socket and we could see that some vans had taken two plugs. Naughty blighters.
Our rental hose pipe also had a funny connector that we couldn't remove in order to enable it to fit on to their water taps (everywhere else has massive hoses at the motorhome service area, so we hadn't needed to unpack the hire company one to date) so we couldn't fill Mabel up with water either, so, as "set-ups" go, this was the least fun of our trip so far; we were also doing all this faffing in the sweltering heat and it was close to 17h00. By this time, all we wanted to do was strip off and swim!
As it turns out, our spot in the "rough" was actually quite lovely - right on the water's edge with very few neighbours, so we really had made the best decision. We sat with our drinky poos, watched the sun go down whilst planning our next route and finding our campsite for the island of Krk.

The following day, we moved on up the motorway to Krk. The landscapes are just amazing. We drove right through a national park on a new motorway that was practically empty and not even on the sat nav! We had a little chat about this road being the perfect road on which I should try driving but really, I have no pang to drive Mabel - she is a beast - and Colin is enjoying driving while I fill his head with all sorts of facts from the multitude of books.

Today, for example, I had calculated the expenses so far, after converting all the spend into one currency. Food, ferries, tolls, fuel, campsites etc! So much fun! And it's not even in a spreadsheet. Bet you wish you were with us for this riveting information!

So, on to our last Croatian stopover. We arrived at the campsite highly recommended in the book to be informed they were full. It was also a big family fun place, so we were fine to call ahead to the next one and head on over.
Colin did some amaZING manoeuvres to park Mabel in between trees (where I honestly thought that we were going to lose our damage deposit!).
It was a far less faffy set up than the night prior! Even a great on site service area so Mabel was emptied, filled, cleaned and topped up in all the right places. We even did an "illegal" windscreen clean at the service point! Colin seems to be so so SO happy when Mabel has had all this attention.

We spent the evening planning our route and stopover for Lake Bled. Realising that schools have now broken up and there didn't seem to be a lot of campsites around lake Bled, we called ahead to the campsites we liked the sound of to see who had space. With the address programmed in to the sat nav, we went to bed excited for our next country and happy - oh so happy - to be leaving the land of speedos behind! I have seen enough strutting speedo clad men in Italy and Croatia to last me all summer!!!