Up the coast a bit, then some island hopping up to the very north of Croatia.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it?  After all, the road’s bound to be quite flat by the sea.  The islands have much lower hills than the mainland, too.  And there are ferries to cover the little blue bits between the lumps of land.  Definitely pretty simple.

Well, pretty is right.  Not so simple, though.

After just one clear, if slightly too warm, day on the coast (on Wednesday, pic below), the thunder started rolling.

If you live anywhere in Europe, you’re probably aware of the massive thunderstorms which have been sitting over the central areas of the continent for weeks, causing flooding and hitting people with lightning.  Well, they’ve left the middle of Europe in the last few days, and meandered south to Italy and the Balkans.

Just as I’ve been heading north into them.

Thankfully, while the inland areas appear to be getting absolutely pasted, the storms only occasionally make it across the last range to the islands.  But this makes trying to plan a day’s ride quite tricky.

As you can see in the picture above (from the very bottom of Pag island), the big clouds and heaviest downpours lurk behind the last range on the mainland.  Then, at a seemingly random point, and with very little warning, they rush out to either electrocute or drown you.  They don’t care which.

As you can also see from the picture, the islands are pretty rocky, and not exactly flush with shelter.  So there’s been quite a bit of ‘ride like mad, hide, check the sky, ride like mad’ etc, etc going on.

The biggest storms seem to be in the evening (it feels like there’s a cracking one waiting to get going this evening (Saturday), and even then, as you can see above, you can have bright sunshine in one place and the world’s blackest clouds a mile or so away.  It’s all been a bit unpredictable.

The roads and ferries probably haven’t helped that much, although that’s mainly my fault for pathetic levels of research.  I got to Novalja yesterday only to discover that the ferry I thought I was going to get from there doesn’t take bikes.  So today ended up being three ferries (from Pag to the mainland, from the mainland to Rab, and from Rab to Krk – got to love the names of these islands!).

It also cost me an extra 600 vertical metres of climbing, which will also teach me not to assume that coast roads are flat…

Still, at least a bit of climbing gets you some decent views (above).  And the scenery remains spectacular.  The hills might be a little smaller, but all the little islands are really pretty.

And a bit of time on ferries lets you have a proper look at the sea (below).  Crystal clear waters and millions of tiny fish sum it up.  The bike wanted a dip after all its hard work.  I had to assure it that if it jumped in, I wasn’t going to be the one to pull it back out; those fish looked like man-eaters…

But the Beastlet was right; it’s time for a little rest and relaxation.  I’m having my first full rest day tomorrow since Dubrovnik.  Partly because tomorrow’s supposed to be the worst day for storms.

Mainly because Euro 2016 kicked off last night, and England are playing Russia this evening.  A beer or two will probably seem appropriate, so there’s little point in trying to ride tomorrow.  From this point until England (almost inevitably) get knocked out, I’ll have to juggle the riding with both the weather and being near a TV at the appropriate time for the football.  Another complication thrown into that ‘simple’ ride up Croatia.

Still, I’m nearly there now.  I should be able to move back into the mountains, in Slovenia, at some point on Monday.  If the storms and roads play ball; I think I’m done with boats until Calais now…

…

As a ‘Stop Press’, and in case you’re not following the footy yet, Wales just beat Slovakia in their first game.  Fingers crossed for England this evening…