It isn't long before I come to the inevitable "Road closed" sign. The barriers make it quite clear that this way is not allowed and to make doubly certain there's a sign spelling out who isn't allowed to pass. A quick Google translate seems to show that people working on the road and those visiting prison are allowed. Is that right? I turn around.
There's no guidance as to where to go now so I take the first left, hoping to go up and around the closed section. This leads to the roughest 45-minute ride on 45 degrees of pitted, slippy, wet mud and shale I have ever ridden. The Honda's thin 2.50 X 17 tyres are skidding even though I'm on full brake. The wheels aren't turning but we're still moving at some speed, with me desperately kicking my legs out to the sides to keep upright. I'm glad that this bike is relatively light. On the less sloping sections I can stand on the pegs which also helps the suspension a little.
After a while in this manner, Satty reassuringly commands "Continue on this road for 30 miles." Thirty miles!
I eventually make it back down to the 'closed' road at some point the other side of the roadworks to be met by three fluorescent orange dressed workmen. They wave their arms over their heads yelling "Hai, Hai!" I don't stop and weave around their lorry. They probably think that I must have driven through their roadworks or maybe I'm one of those prisoners the sign seemed to mention. Whatever, I'm back on the right road and I'm not stopping for anyone.
I ride up into a high forest where the low cloud leaves a veil of water droplets on my visor. There are signs portraying bears and one odd red sign showing a biker falling off. Is this a warning? An instruction?
I stop for tea in the woods, keeping an eye out for bears, before the long descent into Croatia. Grey mud from the many very heavy timber lorries sprays up and over me and the bike. The windscreen is coated.
I see a black crow-size bird with a bright cherry-red head.
I stop for tea in the woods, keeping an eye out for bears, before the long descent into Croatia. Grey mud from the many very heavy timber lorries sprays up and over me and the bike. The windscreen is coated.
I see a black crow-size bird with a bright cherry-red head.
I pull up at Croatian border control. They take my passport and they inspect my bike closely. One waves a fellow guard from his office and points at the bike. He laughs.
"Where are you going?" I describe my route to him.
"On that?" He grins, shakes his head and waves me on.
"Where are you going?" I describe my route to him.
"On that?" He grins, shakes his head and waves me on.
My hip is playing up again. It's a an old problem but it's returned suddenly after all the legwork on the rough track this morning.
I get my first view of sea on the long ride down into Rijeka.
I am to stay in a large, faded town house. Once grand, it was converted into smaller units during the communist era. Now the enthusiastic owners, a musician and his wife, want to restore it, but it is a massive job. Dividing walls have been partly ripped down. Messages and pop art graffiti is all over the walls. Musical instruments are everywhere. It's a happy bohemian enclave in a post-communist, bourgeois house. What a confused place this is. The woman who lives here says that she is in some way pleased that war came to Croatia. It removed the heavy industries that had settled here after the fall of communism. She can breath better; her allergies have gone. Silver linings.
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