There were a few more beers in Zadar, and a couple of G&T's (and some.rakija too), before nother sad goodbye with friends.from home. Then after my first look at a professional basketball match and a return to a longlost chocolate cake recipe, it was time to get back on the road. It was just a short stint to Split which involved; more beautiful croatian coast, swimming at Krka waterfalls in the national park, meeting some beat-style hitch-hikers from Canada a...

So shorlty after posting my last blog, I crossed the border again into my 4th country - Croatia. In a beautiful piece of timing it was also exactly 7 months to the day I had left Falmouth, I celebrated by queuing up with the early morning traffic to cross the border (hoping for my first passport stamp but sadly dissapppointed). Two grumpy-looking, unimpressed border check points later and I was strolling along a hot and run down Croatian road towards the city of ...

So I have crossed into my 3rd country and I am in Slovenia! In my rough-route estimation this is pretty much half-way to Istanbul, which is nuts when I think about it, so as much as possible, I haven't! All the english tourist info about Slovenia states that it is a country the size of Wales - and my first impression of it was that it shares the weather too! After months of rainless roads I was hiding under a tree from a down pour within 500m of the border. Every...

Good news - last week one of my little toe-nails (which has been absent for the last 2 or 3 months since it came off the 2nd time) grew back! Unfortunately I was completely unaware of its' return until I felt a nasty pain in the toe next to it and removed my sock at the end of the day to find it had dug a bloody hole into it. But obviously, I am very happy to welcome back a toe-nail after all this time. In other news - I am in Padua, a city 45km from Venice and ...

After adding up my kms a few days ago my calculations said about 2000km. My body said 'a break please?' and i said 'sounds good to me'. So with warning signs of a painful hip and knee, a general weariness all the time and 42°C heat at lunch times I have come to the lakes for a well earned rest. I had a little taster of lakeside life when took the train upto Lake Como to meet up with Idl again. Along with a few hundred swing dancers in town for the weekend! It wa...