Hello All

We found a lovely campsite, right on a beach just outside Split in Croatia and had 2 days of lovely sunshine, shorts back on at last !

Split is a really nice city, with an unusual old town which is all within the walls of the Diocletians Palace, there were some great Roman ruins to wander around and we also went to Croatians great sculpter, Ivan Mestrovics, museum which was slightly hindered by a lot of school children doing a project there with singing and all their enthusiastic (?) parents watching on ! Last night the weather turned very windy and we just about managed a bbq in the gale before retiring inside the tent for the evening.

Today we drove across the border into Mostar, which was very heavily bombed in the fallout of Yugoslavia and the subsequent war 1992-95. The border crossing was interesting, reminicint of Asia as we didn't have a Green card and it looked like we weren't going to get in when suddenly for 20 euros we could buy one from the restaurant at the border ! On arrival in Mostar we managed to get lost down a very steep rough road and James had to reverse all the way back up (naturally, I had driven down it but since my reversing skills are poor, he got the job of getting the car back up to the main road !) Mid way we were accosted by a bilingual beggar - again just like Asia !

Mostar still has many bombed out buildings and generally feels quite sad and neglected still with loads of litter in the beautiful river that flows through it. We watched a film about the famous Stari Most bridge being bombed apart and it gave us a very different perspective on the town now and was quite emotional. The bridge was built in 1566 and had survived both the world wars only to be destroyed in 1993. It has now been rebuilt to the original specification, just the remainder of the town needs some more work.

We are staying tonight in a B&B and have minarets outside calling everyone to prayer at the moment - hmmmm have warned James that could be an early call tomorrow !!

xxx