The frogs must have stopped at sometime in the night as we wake up to beautiful birdsong. Ali has another swim in the lake then we programme Snoopy to take us to the border.

Our drive starts with more spectacular views of the lake, but then a group of police motorbikes comes towards us indicating the traffic to pull in to the nearside. About 25 pass us until we see the reason; a huge peleton of cyclists goes by, tyres and chains fizzing as they pass. More groups come by over the next 30 miles but these stragglers don't get an escort.

We continue to be impressed by Hungarian scenery; today lots of woodland and grassland, and in the town lots of roses. The temperature is 29C and the smell of grass and hay, which is still gathered in small bales here, are wonderfully rural as we drive with windows open a bit. Our lunch stop is taken overlooking a field of horses then when we set off it's not far before we see the old border post. We slow as the signs instruct us to do, bt as usual no one is there and we enter Croatia. Now we are back in a country with standard tolls rather than vignettes so we plan to use them. Approaching what we thought was the toll station we are stopped and asked for passports by Croatian border control. Seeing we have honest faces we are waved through only to be stopped again 10 yards later for police to check them.

We get to the tolls and join a virtually empty road. Our new country stretches out as a big basin with high, jagged peaks in the distance. Houses and farmbuildings are all maroon or brick red. Trees and woodland pepper the land, which appears to operate with strip farming; a large field may have say 10 rows of onion, 10 rows of maize, 10 rows of something else turning large areas into striped symetry.

We pay our first toll and press on towards Zagreb. Traffic gets much busier on the free motorway but apart from a short drink stop and a wrong exit we arrive at Autocamp Zagreb without trouble.

We pitch right at the end, just our two vans and sit outside for the evening and to enjoy Grete's chicken salad.

It's lovely and warm but not oppressively hot, the only downside is the noise from the nearby motorway which we expect will subside later. Oh and the mozzies are out in force shielding their presence under the traffic noise. We are in bed soon after 10:00 and the traffic noise has been augmented by a nearby, bass-heavy music festival. Although tired, our first sleep in Croatia does not come easy