Croatia

We left Zadar later than we had hoped and did a quick tour of the town. It had an amazing sea organ which used waves to force sea water into cleverly engineered steps at the waters edge, this generated a mixture of organ sounding notes. The bigger the wave, the bigger the noise that came out.

We then picked up the coast road south, enjoying the scenery as we had done the day before. Stunning views of some of the 1000 islands within close proximity of the shore line. The weather was a bit overcast and we then hit a number of small towns which delayed our progress somewhat.

Lunch was at an odd restaurant we found on the side of the road which had an eccentric Croatian guy serving us. The food was not great and as we were the only customers in there we sort of got the idea most of the rest of the local community avoid it for that reason also! We stepped back outside into the pouring rain which unfortunately then followed us for a good few hours, it was 4pm by this stage and the rain only delayed our progress further!

As it started to get dark we still had a daunting 100miles of twisting mountain roads left before getting to the cheap off season holiday apartment we had booked!

We eventually arrived at the apartment at around 10pm and were greeted by an extremely helpful guy called Mario. He showed us around and then booked us a taxi (as we were a bit out of town) to take us to see the end of the Champions League matches be played that evening. We managed to get a lovely pizza and catch the last 20mins plus extra time and penalties in the Arsenal/Roma game.

Then it was back to the apartment for a well earned sleep!

255miles covered today.

The Chief made us a great breakfast and now that the sun was shining we set off for the coast. We called past Damir for another cuppa on our way through and thanked him for all his help yesterday evening. There were still piles of snow everywhere and plenty in the surrounding fields and hills, but the roads were clear and salted.

Right after leaving Damir's coffee stop we entered a 6 km tunnel through the mountainside. After that we left the main road and made for the coast through some beautiful sweeping mountain roads. We were descending for about half an hour, so must have been quite high yesterday!

We hit the coast at Serj and the sea was stunning - flat as anything with the road running just a couple of feet away from the waters edge.

This road continued for almost exactly 100 miles to Zadar, our stop for the night. We've been looking forward to the Croatian coast (it looks stunning from the air and is definitely in our top 5 most looked forward to areas) and it didn't disappoint.

We stopped for lunch at Jablenka, a picturesque town with a ferry service to a nearby island. The waitress didn't speak a word of English, but didn't appear to speak a word of anything else either and was highly amused by us for some reason!

We continued on in the sun with a great road surface, hardly any traffic and stunning views of the sea to the right and the mountains to the left. Definitely our best road yet.

Made it to Zadar today and found our apartment okay which is backing on to the lapping shoreline. Anyone want to go quids-in on a little Croatian place?!?

155 miles today..

We rose from our from beds early and headed in different directions, James to a Yamaha shop to look for new clothes and me to a hardware store to look for the right sized allen key!

The oil was changed on Roger fairly quickly and James returned back with lots of lovely new kit to keep him warm.

We had a quick bite of lunch in the breakfast room of our hotel, then got packed up and headed for the A1 south towards Zadar, where we were booked in for the night.

It was lashing down with rain so we were in full wet weather gear and we then noticed the temperature dropping as we motored further on! All of a sudden we noticed sleet falling and then James came in over the radio saying "Mate is it snowing?" The more we drove on the larger and heavier the flakes became and our speed dropped from 70mph down to 50mph. We then decided to pull off and wait as it was getting a tad hairy!

We found a small service stop and a very helpful guy who offered to call us a van that we could put our bikes into and take us to non-slippy roads! This chap turned up and we loaded, with some difficulty, the bikes into his VW Transporter! We went back to his village where he'd booked us a Motel for the night, run by The Chief! We had a lovely meal and talked about our strategy for tomorrow.

Look at the size of that shot glass!

Only 75miles knocked out today.

Easy day today, relaxing a bit. We took a drive around to a few motorbike accessory places we had researched and actually managed to locate 5, but all of the closed, it being Sunday. So I'll have to call past a couple of those in the morning to see if I can kit up with some cold-weather gear for when we head inland again.

After that we had lunch in the beautiful sunshine, before getting some oil to give our bikes an oil change. Ed needs a bigger allen key for his sump nut, so he's got a job in the morning too!

40 miles today.

After breakfast we took a meander around Venice. It was cool but lovely and sunny so perfect for wandering around the canals.

After a relaxing morning we carted all of our stuff to the nearest boat point - not too far, but very sweaty work - where we took a very relaxing boat ride round to pick up the boys.

We took the motorway towards Triese, right in the top-right corner of Italy, stopping just before for fuel and a snack. Roger leaked fuel everywhere at one point as we were looking at our route! Trieste is the boundary of the map coverage that we have on our sat-nav at the moment, so it was good old fashioned orientiering this afternoon. Couldn't have been an easier first day for it though really - we had to take the A1, then the A2, then the A3. Excellent.

We entered Slovenia for a transit ride, but we had to pay for a 6 month vignette to use the motorway for the afternoon (my map has shown itself to be out of date already!).

At the Croatian border we had to show our passport for the first time since the UK, first to leave Slovenia and then to enter Croatia. I got asked a few questions and had to remove my helmet for the police girl at the border, then as I waited nearby for Ed to come through she put her hat on and came out of the booth to ask me why I was still there, moving me on. If that's as bad as the border crossings get then I'll be happy!

Entering Zagreb and finding our feet we pulled over to check the map and out of nowhere an extremely helpful and extremely attractive local woman (there are lots of those) pointed us in the right direction. We found a hotel and it was like stepping back in time for me as it was exactly the same one I stayed in around 8 years ago with John and Ollie, but this time with a crazy doorman who laughed all the time and had a bit of a twitch.

We went out for food and drink and found a place with an extremely polite waiter. We're hoping to sort a few things out on the bike tomorrow and change the oil, so fingers crossed we can find a motorbike shop!

244 miles today takes us up to exactly 6300.