Saturday 3rd November 2007

Well, I spoke too early – at some time after 02:00 we were both wide awake and listening to rock music. Annoyingly, I didn't recognise any of the numbers but at 03:00 they finished the final encore and all was quiet.
Time to say goodbye to Croatia after more than three weeks. We would definitely like to return during the early or late summer season but not in July or August.
Just one last Croatian site to visit – Nesactium. It was better signposted than Asseria in that the signs took you to the site and there was no danger of land mines! The site was in very good condition and had a custodian who was based in a small building that also housed a small exhibition about the site and included a very small number of finds. Excavations are still being carried out and there was a pile of pillars, blocks and carved stone that had been unearthed this year. The site is huge and, despite the huge number of finds already unearthed, there must still be much left to be discovered. It was possible to see both both remains of the prehistoric hill fort (occupied throughout the Bronze Age and possibly before) and the Roman fortified town. The guide to the site that we had bought in Pula was invaluable – it would have been very difficult to understand the layout without it as there were no explanatory signs.
The Romans lay siege to the Histrian hill fort and conquered it in 117 BC. The Histrian king Epulon killed himself as the Romans entered the city in order not to be taken alive. The Romans then simply used the Histrian defensive walls as the basis of their own, following exactly the same line around the edge of the hill. The Romans chose a different place for their entrance and both entrances can still be seen. The remains of two Roman baths (a small one for women and a large one for men) can be seen together with two early Christian churches, three temple sites, the forum and a number of residential houses. The Romans left the Histrian necropolis (just inside the walls) virtually untouched and its mounds rise above the Roman remains. It was from here and the Roman necropolis just outside the entrance that many of the finest artifacts were found.
On then to Slovenia. We took the slow but beautiful coast road to the outskirts of Rijeka and then the minor road north into Slovenia at Rupa. The journey through Slovenia to Postojna was delightful with deep brown, red and golden colours of the autumnal trees. We could see that dusk was rapidly approaching by this time, so we chose the motorway for the last part of the journey to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia.
Our campsite ('Ljubljana Resort') was on the northern side of Ljubljana and had easy access into the city centre by bus. We spent the evening reading our guidebook and the very helpful 'Ljubljana Tourist Guide' provided by the campsite. Tomorrow was to be the city visit.
Photos: Nesactium – Foundations of 3 Roman Temples with Histrian necropolis in the background; Jane leaving Nesactium church – she was the only member of the congregation and the priest didn't turn up; And for all of you Roman aficionados, a Roman stone drain cover!

Friday 2nd November 2007

The day dawned bright and calm. The wind dropped late yesterday evening and did not return, which was good news for us but not for the windsurfers. Windsurfing would not be as exciting today as it was yesterday.
The campsite did not have a bus timetable and there was not one at the bus stop in the village, so I asked the lady in the bakers about the buses when I bought the bread yesterday. She thought that the buses for Pula were every half an hour, starting at 07:15 or 07:30. We arrived at 08:40 this morning but no bus had appeared by 09:00, so I enquired at the kiosk on the square. The next bus was at 10:00 – so much for “every half an hour”! We spent the intervening time exploring the village and the bus turned up as predicted. Less than half an hour later we were in the centre of Pula, carefully noting the times of the buses for the return journey!
Pula has been an important settlement since prehistoric times and the centre of the town is a hill that was originally a neolithic hill fort. None of this remains as a large Venetian fort now occupies the area and this was preceded by a Roman fort. As with many Roman towns, Roman remains are uncovered anywhere where a hole is dug and we saw three areas in Pula where roadworks had uncovered Roman walls. Whilst walking around the town we came across exposed Roman finds left where they had been found – in the car park, children's playground (obviously a Roman cemetery judging from the sarcophagi) and a park. The cathedral had used Roman stone in its construction and its bell tower and the Venetian fort were built from stones taken from the amphitheatre.
The amphitheatre was very impressive, rising to three stories on the sea side and two stories on the land side. Most of the interior stone had been removed to be used in the construction of buildings in Pula. It must have been very tempting as an extremely convenient source of ready-prepared and high-quality building stone. Up to the 15th century it had been intact – lasting nearly 1,400 years after it was built in 79 AD by Vespasian.
The archaeological museum had some excellent finds but was not well documented. We were surprised and dismayed to find that the ground floor (lapidary – inscribed, decorated stones and statues) had no descriptions in any language. We had no idea of the age of these articles on where they had been found. I decided to invest 30 kn (£3) in a guidebook so that we knew what we were looking at. Having done that, we found that the other floors did have some English narration but it was still quite poor. One site, Nesactium, stood out in the museum both in the prehistoric and Roman sections. There were beautiful finds from both periods on display. I had already noticed that this site was not far from our campsite, so we decided to plan a visit to it for the next day.
The Temple of Romae and Augustus (1st century AD) was still standing in a square that used to be the Roman Forum and it appeared that the Town Hall next to it had used part of a similar Roman building.
The Arch of the Sergii (1st century BC) looked very impressive when lit in the early evening.
So after a day of archaeology, it was back to Henrietta for a Greco-Roman meal of Stifado and pasta!
As we left the bus in the village square, 10 minutes walk from the campsite we heard drums. It turned out that this was a sound check for the band that was entertaining the windsurfers that evening. By the time that we got to the sea, just across the very small bay from the peninsular where the band marquee was situated, it was very loud. If we had been at home and I was listening to music at that volume, Jane would have said “do you think that we could have the volume down a bit?”. When we got back inside the van, the volume was just right and we enjoyed the snatches of 'Another Brick in the Wall'. We thought that we would be listening to it all evening but as I write this as 22:30, we haven't heard any more music.
Photos: Amphitheatre exterior; Amphitheatre interior; Arch of the Sergii at night.

Thursday 1st November 2007

We both decided that we wanted to take it easy today. We had arrived at Pula two days earlier than anticipated, so there was no rush.
We were surprised to find the camp site was very busy. Stupice is rather a confusing site, huge but difficult to find flat pitches with convenient electric points. Given the number of vans on the site last night, it took quite a long time to find a good spot. As it turned out, we picked a very good one being one of the few that was reasonably protected from the vicious wind. We had arrived during the 8th Hallowind Premantura Windsurfing Weekend competition at Stupice and today was the first day. The event is always held around Halloween because they can almost guarantee windy conditions and it had certainly worked this year! It was truly international with a very large number of vehicles from Slovenia, Austria, Germany and Italy and we also spotted two from Hungary and one from Serbia .Cars, campervans and motorhomes continued to arrive all day and the sea was full of windsurfers racing along at breakneck speed. Meanwhile, other would-be windsurfers were holding their wind speed meters in the air and looking at the readings. I didn't need a meter, given that I was struggling to walk upright, I knew that it was b****y strong. All of the spectators were wrapped up in layers of clothes, thick coats, hats and gloves. Meanwhile the windsurfers were wearing dry suits with bare arms and feet and zooming around for hours over, and often in, the sea. It looked exhilarating, but rather them than me! I watched a slalom race but it was difficult enough trying to work out who had started the race and it was impossible to see who was winning given the large number of windsurfers travelling in every direction.
My excitement for the day was going shopping in the village and taking photographs of the windsurfers. The latter was preferable!
Photos: 18th Century bakery at Premantura; A close slalom race.

Wednesday 31st October 2007

The day dawned reasonably brightly but the white horses in view on the sea indicated the strength of the wind. Today was to be another easy travelling day as we were heading for Paklenica National Park a little more than an hour away. The park sounded interesting with good walking (we desperately wanted to do some walking) and, most importantly, had two campsites that should be open. We had decided not to visit Zadar on the way but I had spotted a Roman site called Asseria near Benkovac. I had found some information on the Internet and it sounded interesting. I had also read in Misha Glenny's book 'The Fall of Yugoslavia' that this area had been badly affected during the war. We passed the lake of Vransko and an 'inn' (a massive fort-like structure) built during the Turkish occupation before we started climbing on to the karst upland. The scenery changed dramatically, with the fertile plain giving way to desolate scrub. We started to come across many abandoned buildings, some exhibiting signs of fire whilst others had obviously been hit by shells. As we drove through one particularly desolate area we noticed signs all along the side of the road warning of mines. Once we arrived in Benkovac, we walked into the town and the effect of the war on its economy was obvious. Even the Benkovac Tourist Association website says “Today, what is most painfully obvious to see is that this is a town which has suffered both war damage and economic problems. From its present appearance you would hardly guess the leading role the town once played in the region.”. We were greeted by abandoned, boarded-up or derelict buildings and many closed shops in the high street. The inhabitants looked weary and the whole town was lacking in vitality. We went to find the museum by the castle on the hill overlooking the town and found something that was probably the museum as there were archaeological finds outside but there were no signs on the building and it was closed.
We has seen signs to the site of Asseria when we turned off for the town centre, so we returned to Henrietta and set off. Everything went well at first and we followed two more signs to the site but then there were no more. We were driving towards Knin and the landscape became even more forbidding with many more war damaged, abandoned houses. We decided to turn back and look out for the village of Podgrade that Asseria was near. We found the village but could not find the site and there were definitely no signs. Given that if we found the site, we would have been reluctant to investigate it given the possibility of land mines, we gave up the search and set off for Paklenica National Park.
We had lunch by the river at Obrovac – a pretty location in a gorge with a large river running through it. The town however was typically Eastern Block with many multi-storey flats and derelict industrial buildings. We chose this spot as it was relatively sheltered. I didn't want to stop on the road before this as the wind speed has increased and, with the karst landscape offering no shelter, the van was being heavily buffeted to the point that gusts were tugging at the steering. Paklenica was only 20 minutes away when we joined the main road. We had covered only a few miles with me battling with the steering when a police car approached in the middle of the road and blue lights flashing. Now, I knew that I wasn't speeding and I had my lights on, so I suspected the worst and I was correct. The road ahead was closed – high winds meant that we could not cross the bridge. The policeman indicated that we would have to go 'round'. Generally, in England, this would not be a problem and would not involve a major diversion. However with both our bridge and the motorway bridge closed, we were faced with a diversion of some 150 km. Given that we were not even sure that the sites would be open when we got there, we had a difficult decision to take. We knew that there was a site at Karlovac that was open but we didn't know exactly where it was and it was a long way away. Our next stop after Paklenica was Pula and we knew that it would be open but it was even further. We plugged it into the Garmin satellite navigation and she (it has a female voice) said that we would arrive at Pula at 20:30. We decided to go for it.
The first part of the journey was in daylight and was very interesting – steep mountain roads (trying not to be blown off them), fantastic views and mountain passes. In the pass just before Ondic there was a large derelict hotel with 'UN' written in very large letters all over it. Ondic itself was interesting – marked on the map and with signs on the roadside, we could see no evidence of houses, only a cemetery. I will have to try to find out more about Ondic. Shortly afterwards we joined the A1 motorway and the kilometers passed much faster. It was then that the Garmin let us down. It directed past the junction that we expected to leave at and tried to take us off some 16 km later at a non-existent junction. I suspect that it didn't known about the motorway tunnel that had been opened. Once we passed the non-existent junction, the Garmin locked up with 'Navigation Error' on the screen. The result was that we had to continue on the motorway, a much longer route. However once we had emerged from the tunnel and I had rest the Garmin, she was much happier and said that we would arrive at 08:10 – a full 20 minutes earlier than the other route! In retrospect, we were much better off on the motorway as it was much easier driving, especially in the dark. We arrived within 3 minutes of the estimated time and, thankfully, found Camping Stupice open and welcoming. By this stage I was somewhat shattered and slept very well that night!
Photos: Warning of mines on the way to Benkovac; The supposed museum at Benkovac; Roman circular gravestone from Asseria outside the museum; The only three contented inhabitants of Benkovac?

Tuesday 30th October 2007

It was a very brief stop at Split, arriving early evening yesterday and leaving early this morning. The journey to the next site at Pakostane was a short one but we wanted to visit yet another UNESCO World Heritage town – Trogir, just north of Split. As normal, the problem was trying somewhere to park and after many more-than-three-point turns, we found a car park 100m beyond where we had turned off the main road!
Trogir was settled in Greek times (380 BC) when it was known as Tragyrion (island of goats). It is a very small island between the mainland and the island of Ciovo and is linked to both by short bridges. A fort and some of the walls are still standing but Trogir's jewel is its main square with the Cathedral of St. Lawrence. The Cathedral has a beautiful Romanesque door with intricate stone carvings dating from 1240 (see photos) and the bell tower was built in three stages, growing from the first floor in the early 15th century (a rebuild of the 14th century tower) to the third in the 16th Century. The town itself is very small but we spent a very pleasant couple of hours exploring it.
Trogir market was in full swing next to the car park so we topped up on supplies buying some of the famous (in Croatia) sheep cheese from the island of Pag, local smoked cheese, dried figs and local grapefruit, complete with leaves and branch – they must be fresh!
A gentle drive followed, stopping at the lay-by with the view over Primosten (see 15th October) for lunch and then on to Pakostane. This part of the Dalmatian coast is particularly pretty, with views over the nearby islands and inlets with many small fishing boats.
When we arrived at the strangely named Camping Nordsee at Pakostane we were greeted by the owner with an enthusiastic handshake and the exclamation “British!!!” whilst he pointed at Henrietta. He was German and every van on the site except one Croatian caravan (probably a chance visit like us) was German or Austrian. The prices were in Euros and the menu was in German – it was a little part of Germany in Croatia! He told us in Germenglish that the restaurant was open that night but was then closed and we discovered later that the whole site closed the following day – we were just in time! We walked into the village centre and were surprised to find that at least 5 cafés and 3 restaurants were still open. This had not been the case in the resorts that we had visited up to now and indicated that Pakostane was probably an important centre for the surrounding area. Even though the weather was not ideal, it was good enough for us to appreciate the fine views from the campsite. This would be a very good place to stop for a few days during the main season.
Photos: The Island of Goats - Trogir; Trogir's Roman Sea Gate and fish market; St. Lawrence Cathedral; Stone carving on the doorway of the cathedral; Clock tower and loggia in Trogir square.

Monday 29th October 2007

The BBC website said that today would be fine and it was quite correct, it was a glorious morning. We needed to make the most of it as the forecast for the next two days was poor.
We were travelling back to Split and the weather allowed us to enjoy the views along the coast and the islands. The town of Ston looked really good from the mainland and the extent of the walls was much clearer than from the peninsular.
We had spotted signs to the archaeological site of Narona (Vid) on the journey down to Dubrovnik and were determined to visit it on the way up. This area of Croatia is very narrow and Vid, being very close to the Bosnia border, suffered badly in the war. We realised that, being a Monday, it was highly likely that the museum would be closed and we were quite right. The very impressive, modern museum definitely deserves a visit in the future – a good reason to come back again. Given that we couldn't visit the museum, we decided to investigate the village and it proved to be very interesting. Vid is on a hill on the edge of the extremely fertile Neretva delta and it is an ideal place for a Roman site. A river runs at the bottom of the hill and the delta (marshes, wildlife etc.) stretches off into the distance South. The locals still fish in the river much as the Roman would have – nets strung between posts in the fast running parts of the river. The river was full of ducks and we wondered whether duck was on the menu at the local restaurants. Given that we haven't seen duck on any menus in Croatia, it was unlikely.
The buildings of the older part of Vid were interesting, but it was only when we looked at them closely, that we realised how interesting they were. One building in particular caught our attention – it had chucks of Roman stone in it including a number of carved and inscribed stones. After that discovery, we started to check other buildings and found many with Roman stones incorporated into their structure. There were obviously many poor households in Vid and the contrast between their lifestyle and the richness of the architectural heritage was difficult to assimilate.
On then to Split and Camping Stobrec.
Photos: Mali Ston and its walls; The house in Vid with many reused Roman Narona stones; collage showing just some of the Roman blocks; Shallow-draught boat with poles for fishing nets in the river behind.

Sunday 28th October 2007

The clocks went back last night, so we all had a very leisurely start. The weather was very poor – lots of rain over night and more in the morning. Ann and Nick arrived just after 10:00 and, given the weather and the fact that they had to leave for the airport just after 12:00, we decided just to sit in Henrietta and chat. Twelve o'clock came far too quickly and it was time to say goodbye. It had been an excellent week and it was over far too soon. Still, not too long before we return at Christmas to see all of our village friends.
After lunch in the van, we went into Dubrovnik for a final look and a visit to the Internet Centre in Pile. They advertised a card for 50 kn (£5) that gave use of WiFi hotspots in Dubrovnik for 24 hours. This was a very good deal given some of the other charges that I had paid. However, there was a doubt that WiFi was working and they didn't have any of the 24 hr cards. Still, it was a very good idea in theory.
Three and a half hours later, we finished on the Internet and went into the old town. Dubrovnik is lovely at night, especially when all of the cruise ships have left. It was really quiet and we spent a very pleasant time wandering around and taking photographs.
Photos: St. Blaise church; Arches in Dubrovnik street; Placa Street Dubrovnik.