Day 1: From Opatja to Njivive (Croatia)

Hello there, I will try to document my biking trip this way but not sure how often I will be able to update this, I guess it depends on my phone battery, the wifi, or if I just prefer being lazy at the beach instead. ;D

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Starting close to Opatja, the tour took me up and down along the Croatian coastline, with steeper hills than expected. I had to get off and push my bike quite a few times, and almost even failed at pushing in some parts. Guess I'm not (yet?) trained for steepnesses above 8% with all the extra weight due to my bags. Things I realized at Day 1 already:

- 30°C + degrees is way too hot to cycle uphills in the sun!

- I may have a little too much stuff with me.. at least it's obvious that the weight is pretty hard on the tyres of the bike..

- The bike is shaky with this much weight on due to my bags, which can be dangerous when sharing the road with vehicles. The vehicles on the main roads mostly ignored me and the campervans only kept little distance when driving past me, also it was hard to keep the bike straight due to the wind.

- Don't trust komoot, not even if you paid for a premium account. :D Just because kommot tells you there's a connection between roads doesn't mean there is one or thar it's even suitable for biking. (And yes, the app was set to road biking. :D) At some point I found myself in the middle of nowhere on a dead end road blocked by concrete blocks. Standing on the edge I could see the main road 20m below me. The only way to get down there was to take off my bags and carry the bike down the steep hill first and go up again to grab the bags. From there on I tried to stick to main roads..

- If your destination is on the way to a bigger city, "Lidl"-wallpapers every 3km are a great indicator for your progress on the road. :D

I initially planned to get all the way to Krk city that day, but around 7pm I decided to stop in a little village called Njivice and search for a camp ground. They said they were full but they will squeeze me in after I told them I really don't want to ride any further today. :D So I set up my tent and went for a swim during a colourful sunset at a pretty prebble beach with amazing clear water, showered and cooked pasta after. :) Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of the beach and sunset since my phone was charging during this time in a locker.
I had a little chat with Marcello, my Brasilian/German tent neighbor and went to bed after. :)Read more