Hvar got news for you.

When did you get your first mobile phone? 1999? 2000? Only 12 years ago! And your first email address, I got mine in ’98 I think.  

When I was travelling in South East Asia in 1997 we had to book a call home with the post office in some countries and communication was via Post Office addresses.  Not a groundbreaking observation but as I sat on the balcony fiddling with the Short Wave radio looking for the world service sports programme, I was contemplating the rapid expansion of technology.  The sun was gently drifting below a far off island; the World Service was drifting in and out, almost in time with the slow beat of a fishing boat’s motor and some how it felt better listening on a little transistor, than live streaming off the internet.  More in tune with the low tech feel of our Adriatic island.

We are on Hvar, a two hour ferry ride from mainland Croatia and the sunniest spot on the Adriatic.  The owner of the apartment, Sandra, met us off the ferry as she was concerned that the van would, she meant us, struggle with the 1.4 km tunnel that links the North to South of the island, being that it was dug out of the mountain in 1960 (it was by mule before then) with a tea spoon and is 2700 mm high and about the same width.  Gwen (the van) is 2625 and I have never done any pot holing before but I’m sure it would be similar. Oh and they turn the traffic lights off in the winter.  There are passing places but I’ll have to get used to them. 

We borrowed their car today and I nudged forward to see if there were any headlights approaching. There were, so we waited and waited.  I thought the oncoming car must be in a passing place, so I went forward and quickly realised that the oncoming lights was in fact the light at the end of the tunnel!  We would have had to wait for sunset before they went out.

It is the children’s carnival on Tuesday and Sandra is taking us along, what a lovely lady!

On the road again..I can't wait to get back ....

Things have I have learnt on our drive today:

It is not advisable to sneeze when eating a banana; it makes a mess of the steering wheel.

I need to gen up on my Dermatology as Hazel was not happy with, “it keeps things in” to the question “why skin”

I can no longer hit the erhh herrr (s) in Billie Jean

Croatian Motorways are the best in Europe, as long as they sort the deep sub zero temperatures out.

Monster by the Automatic is pipping the Kings of Leon as best driving song.

You know when you have just watched a scary film and you are slightly twitchy, then you remember you had to get something from the car? Its 11pm, dark and cold. That feeling you get when you open the front door of the house and all your senses are heightened.  That was our senses on our drive on Tuesday, full on for 3 hours.

We made our break after 6 days in Rijeka, the forecast was much better, the wind was down but the motorway was shut as it crosses some BIG ravines. So we had to wind our way up the mountains the old way.  Keeping with the film analogy, imagine just as you bent inside the car, you heard a noise and then really bricked it. Senses on overload.  That was our washers freezing.  The washer tank was a slab of ice, despite the anti freeze in it! 

The land was a few metres deep in snow, the outside temps hovering around -12, before the wind chill, but 2 litres of antifreeze later, we kept stopping to splash the windscreen, (that tank was not going to thaw) we began to descend to Zadar where the outside temp was now a credible -5.  The van looks like an extra from ice road truckers but we are back on the coast. The locals in the bar we visited were memorised by the muted snooker on Eurosport and the Searchers played Needles and Pins, on the Hi FI. Great stuff.

Fueling the trip.

Buying petrol is generally considered to be a simple task, you fill your tank, you pay, you drive off; yes?  Not all the time.

First of all what is 95 and 98?  You are at the petrol bit then faced with 95 or 98 and sometimes 100, or 90.  95 correct.

Sans plomb? Or plomb?  Yes the French still sell a lot of leaded!

Then at some “fully serviced” garages the attendant shakes his head when I say no as he picks up the diesel pump. He gets nearer to the un covered tank with the diesel, I shout louder, he inwardly sighs, “de English, hah” and puts the nozzle very close to the tank.  Put the pump down.  Stand clear of the tank.  Its petrol. 

The paying.  In Euro currency countries you pay before you pump, in other countries after.  Maybe it’s because other currencies are not likely to devalue in the time it takes to fill up.

Some pre pay are of an amount, say 30 euros, or it deducts however much you have used.  It sounds simple but I’m sure we have paid for a tank of fuel for a smug looking Italian van driver. I argued with the machine for 5 minutes.

And no one sells charcoal out the front.

Battling the Bora

Did you know that no two weather websites say the same?  So what do you do?  Tempting as it is to find the one with the best outlook for the journey ahead, recent web action has been focusing on the wind speed, as driving takes on a whole new interesting art form when crossing high ravines.  Welcome to the Bora.

The Bora is a wind that blows in these here parts.  At the moment it is taking the form of the cold Siberian air that wants to go the warmer Italian air.  There is also a front sitting over Italy that makes it that bit more interesting.  It wants to get to Italy but there are mountains in the way so it channels down the valleys and pops out in the Northern Italian/ Slovenian border near Trieste, which is where we made its acquaintance.  

It was getting increasingly windy on the motorway in to Trieste and I was glad to park up.  But as I got out of the van, the wind, literally (I know it’s an overused word but) literally blew the wind out of me.  We bundled into the B and B, battening down the hatches to see it out.  When we thought it had died down, Cat ventured out try to find an ATM and had to hold on to street furniture! Hazel did her puzzles on the bed..

We had no WIFI and could not understand the wind forecast in Italian, or indeed the land lady, so after an informed phone call to our internet gurus, made the decision to make a next day break for Croatia, in a good weather window. (thank you Caz and Ed) After an amazingly cheap and tasty lunch in a Slovenian Casino we made for the second border.

Frozen formalities aside, we headed for a place we had booked just off the motorway, an hour into the mountains.  The wind had picked up, we were later than planned. (The Bora blows at its peak from 2 until 7, hindsight eh..) The van was feeling it but coping ok, we then turned a corner on the motorway and bang.

We hit the wind full on.  Mr Bora pummelled us; he battered, rocked and pounded the van (H stayed asleep!!) Hazard lights on, right down to 20 mph, the motorway was shut in front of us and all lorries had parked up off the road.  A decision was quickened to head back as the van was rocking on its wheels, and I made a tentative turn back to the coast.  The wind cast a victorious shrug as it had beaten another into submission and the drive back was surprisingly easy.  

So we decided to stay the night in a nice hotel, primarily as it was the only one we could find.  This was on Tuesday.  A detailed analysis of the weather, Croatian road reports and a friendly hostel owner (Wednesday night) lead us to the conclusion that Monday looks a whole lot better.  With 130 mph winds, a daytime temp of -20 in the mountains and 2 metres of snow, it’s a bit of a no brainer!

We are now sitting in a pleasant city apartment in Rijeka, enjoying the port city life and we found a veggie restaurant. And relax.

Matthew, in St Marks, look at John.

Having contemplated if and where Italian law draws the line between a class A substance and the incredibly strong coffee we had just rounded our lunch off with, we headed back into the crisp Venetian air.  

Places are always more joyous when you don’t get ripped off as much as you were expecting and last Sunday afternoon in Venice was just one of those days.  Having been covered in pigeons in St Marks Square, laughed at the couples who were trying to enjoy their expensive gondola freeze (the sea was frozen going over the bridge to Venice) and wandering off the main streets to find another enchanting turn, we had a three course lunch, in the shadow of the Rialto Bridge, for less than £30. Nice.

I realised that when you visit any city you visit monuments, with Venice the monument is Venice, so from the moment you get into the water taxi, every building, pole, canal and boat is why you are visiting.

Cat found a great hotel (too chilly for camp stops!) on the mainland in Mestre, which was 30 mins by bus into Venice.  What’s more the night before we found Mc O’Murphys Sullivan’s Irish bar, (or something) that turned the TV over to the England v Scotland Rugby. I love Venice!

P.S. (Currently safely holed up in the Croatian port of Rijeka)

I mentioned that it was Winter, right? And we knew it was going to be cold, right? But blimey!! When you see on the news that Ukrainians say it’s cold, local Croatian news reports the coldest winter for 25 years and the that sea has frozen off the coast, Brrr springs to mind.  Then there’s the Bora. More later.....

Lady Garda

When we embarked on our Winter tour of Europe, we knew it was Winter.  We knew it was going to be cold, and on occasion very cold.  (but really!) We have become experts on the metrology of the continent, how it is warmed by the Atlantic, cooled from the East etc.  We also learnt of the odd place that bucks the seasonal trend where we could head to.   

Lake Garda for instance, has a “reasonable climate all year round”.  We picked an apartment in a lovely looking village 500m from the North East shore called Tignale and as we drove on the winding road that hugs the lake, all was good.  After going through some ridiculous tunnels that look like they were hewn from the rock with stone picks, we turned off from the main road towards Tignale and went up, and up and up.

Tignale is indeed lovely, it is indeed 500 metre from the lake but it is also 500 metres above the lake! “A reasonable climate all year round” is quite different 500 metres up, as the foot of snow that fell testified. Bit chilly too....

The locals were all quite surprised to see some tourists trudging through the snow and the lady at the reception preceded most sentences with “if it was open it would be nice” But when the sun came out and the clouds dispersed it was absolutely gorgeous, with mountain backdrop views, down to the glistening lake.  We also had a 42 apartment resort to our selves which felt pretty cool when we locked the electronic gates for the night.

The village was closed apart from the high caffeine tinged cafe Roma, the supermarket and the bakers, which is all you need. Did I mention it was a bit chilly too...?

The delicacies of Tignale are Grappa, olive oil and Truffles.  What an interesting Ready, Steady, Cook.

The White Spider

So any way, we headed on down through Germany to Interlaken.  A city which seemed full of Chinese tourists buying watches, sold by Chinese sales people.  Strange.  It is also the gateway to the Jungfrau a 4,158 m peak that is viewed from the highest railway station in Europe. Which you reach by getting on a 7.5 km railway that goes inside mountains and everything. Its also £165 ish each.  We watched the web cam in the window of the ticket seller, saved £330 and didn't freeze our bits off. Result. But we did go to Grindlewald and thus the Eiger.

The attempts on the North Face of the Eiger are renowned and I have read most of the published accounts of them. All of them have captured my imagination.

Now I know most climbing books are generally detailing horrendous weather, lost comrades and heroic endeavour, probably because "It was sunny, we did the climb in two days and went to the pub" isn't riveting but the names of some of the spots and moves on the Eiger such as Traverse of the Gods, Death Bivouac and the Hinterstoisser Traverse are legendary.   The 65 deaths since 1935, although a lot less in recent decades, add a darker cloud to its history.

We got on the train at Interlaken and wove up the snowy valley towards Grindleward.  I was a cross between an expectant father walking towards the maternity unit and a kid on Christmas eve! I had seen so many pictures and had traced the routes of the climbers up so many photographs, I was a little embarrassed not to recognise it when we reached Grindlewald, because it was SO big and shrouded in cloud. On closer inspection, with the binoculars, my overriding emotion was "@#*$ that!!!  It  is cold and overpoweringly huge.  With giant ice fields, that I could see being whipped by the wind.  A multitude of weathered rock faces, and an eerie silence.  We bought a postcard detailing the routes and tried to match them to the rock face in front of us, but with most of the mountain in cloud, it was difficult.  So I stood on the platform and stared at it. Truly awesome.  

Switzerland led to Italy and Lake Garda where we now sit.

CHECK OUT THE SLIDESHOW

Some photos in the right hand margin.  Click on the picture and that will take you to flkr and you can peruse the album. Enjoy!