Mostar to Omiš… and on to Trogir

You are going to have to do without pics for a bit until I can lay my hands on a new card reader… so I shall do my best to make my prose sufficiently colourful in the meantime….

I left Mostar at about 8.30am on Saturday morning having been out early in the hunt for a decent breakfast. Weather was cool with a high overcast luckily… it is a stiff climb out of the valley. I had no idea which road to take out of town, all I knew is I wanted to cross the border back into Croatia at Imotski, but based on the few folk I asked for directions (only old folk up early on a Saturday… so I guess that makes me something of an old duffer right…?) Imotski is beyond the range of the local folks radar…. Široki Brijeg (pronounce shir-oki brie-yeg) however was on their mental map, and on my paper one, and in the right direction (west) so I decided I was going there first… (and the few folk I spoke to previously about the road to Imotski were co0nvinced it was well over 100km away… it wasn’t, just 70km..)

The riding through rural BiH was lovely, a mellow pastoral sort of landscape once through the barren limestone hills with quiet, well surfaced roads. The area seems noticeably more damaged and under reconstruction/new construction than rural Croatia… The next big climb came after about 50km, this one was about 10km long at a grade of 10-12%. I had wondered if I was being sensible bringing only a compact chainset with 34×25 bottom gear but it has not been a problem, the grades are pretty low everywhere. I stopped for coffee, and shelter from a passing rain shower at the top in a strange sort of nowhere place called Vranič… not a lot there… a new cafe, a couple of new houses and bugger all else bar some piles of building materials. Pink is a popular colour for new builds in BiH…

From Vranič the road crossed a large plain with a few farms and villages before things started getting a bit ugly and industrial in the border regions with Croatia. The border crossing was painless, the girl on customs duty seemed interested to have a look inside my panniers but thought better of it when I started faffing with the straps, just as well, the bag of fig rolls I brought from Mostar to munch on had disintegrated to a crumby pulpy mess and I could not possibly have offered her one in that state. From the border a long descent to the town of Imotski… just in time for an early lunch except not one of the cafes I stopped in had any food so ‘lunch’ was a coffee, bottle of orange juice and handfuls of fig roll crumbs… but it was OK, the small village at the bottom of the descent after Imotski had a fruit stall with bananas and oranges and so on. Being a saturday the kids were not in school and failed miserably to hide their amusement at the sight of this cyclist… :-)

This part of Croatia is lovely, very lush and heavily farmed with orange trees all over the place. The cloud had lifted to merely a haze over the sun so the next 10km or so of climbing was hot work.The road took me to a high plateau rich in wildflowers around the limestone outcrops… here I had a raging wind at my back and flew across the plateau at around 45km/hr before reaching an area of thick, fragrant pine forest near the tiny crossroads town of Cista Provo. From here the road descended in hairpins down the side of the limestone escarpment to the hot valley at Šestanovac… I was feeling it in my legs by the time I got here… coca cola and ice has never tasted so good… more dumbfounded looks from the locals at the cafe…I had a sort of plan to finish my day somewhere along the coast near Split, I had not made firm plans as I was taking small roads and had no real idea of distances either. I did however want to ride the road that winds around the Cetine gorge so headed off that way… the scenery was lovely as the road climbed it’s way around the upper reaches of the gorge.. the wind was not so lovely, a fresh force 6-7 right into my face… but I was loving just being there. While in the heart of the mountains the road turned a sharp left through a gap in the cliff and all of a sudden I was perched in a gale of wind about 3000 feet above the ocean with the mountainside plummeting straight down to the water below me… breathtaking, literally… The ‘drug’ rush from the adrenalin and endorphins as that happened was incredible, I love it when I’m fit.. I could not help yelling out loud into the wind. I cannot describe the feeling when something like that happens after hours of hard effort… the last time I experienced a high that high was at the point of cresting the road over Chimborazo volcano in Ecuador… the moment when you find yourself in the most incredible situation after hours of hard riding… nothing compares, it really doesn’t. Anyway, no point in me going on about it.. short of you shooting up on something illegal I can’t really share it…. an idea for the future perhaps, subscription only…

From there it was a glorious tailwind romp northwest along the coast to the pretty little village of Omiš.. which is where I decided to call it a day after 145km and about 5 1/2hrs riding, 6hrs on the road. Really pretty little place in a stunning location at the mouth of the Cetine gorge. I asked around a few places advertising rooms but the friendly ones were full, and the miserable ones were empty but could not be bothered to put up just one person for one night… miserable buggers… I did find a place though, a bit posh and pricey but I had a great view and a terrific breakfast, fit for a hungry cyclist, on the roof terrace :-) By 4pm I had an ice cold beer, fresh baked bread, pasta and chatty company in the form of a local engineering student (Split University)

So Sunday morning then it was just 50km along the coast to the lovely little town of Trogir, which is where I am now… Got here about 11am, it was a slightly ugly ride around the outskirts of Split but unavoidable and I wasn’t sure if I really should have been on the motorway for a few km but being sunday it was quiet and nobody seemed to mind…. ;-) I did duck off as soon as possible for the coastal strip of villages west of the city.. On arrival here I found (hard to miss really, a dirty great sign saying “Hostel Trogir” on the wall…) a place to stay just inside the old town on the island but it was a bit early to move in so I dumped my gear and cycled along the rather grand (in a white stone and terracotta flavour) looking waterfront to a pizza place… for pizza of course.. and cold beer (there is a pattern developing here do ya think..?). Much of the rest of the afternoon was spent kicking back in the amusing company of a couple of gloriously hungover Zagreb girls… wedding party last night apparently, lol! …