A brief flirt with Croatia 🇭🇷

Yet another hot day predicted so we wasted no time getting going. We left and just down the road started seeing great fields of sunflowers 🌻 stretching across the land, absolutely stunning 🤩
The countryside in this part of Slovenia 🇸🇮 is full of summertime crops right now and it looks so smartly dressed in its multicoloured patchwork coat of emerald green sweetcorn and golden wheat fields, stitched together at the seams by hedges and verges full of blue cornflowers and blood red poppies. Almost too perfect.
The single tracked roads led us through various small villages, with neat little houses within lovingly tended gardens of flowers and fruit trees. Not a single one left uncared for. Each village of sufficient size had a proper traditional church, but more often tucked on the side of the road would be the cutest little chapel, barely large enough to take a congregation of four worshippers at a time.
We found ourselves wondering where all the people were as we hardly saw any cars or people as we drove onwards at a tortoise speed toward the border with Croatia 🇭🇷. I glanced across to Darren to see him smiling like a kid with a toffee apple, I assumed for no other reason than the enjoyment of travelling with nowhere in particular to be.
The border into Croatia 🇭🇷 was a simple affair, just an abandoned concrete shelter on the side of the road quite literally in the middle of a corn field. Strange as all the borders we’ve crossed so far have been logically placed along some sort of geographical feature such a mountain range or a river.
We are just touching the corner of Croatia today, only because it’s so near to us to be within touching distance, and to claim another flag for Ivy.
What we saw was very much a continuation of the quaint and civilised vibe Slovenia conjures up. During our brief couple of hour dip into the country we’d have been hard pressed to tell the difference. Tiny but well maintained roads, and lush flowery hedge rows making out crop fields and vineyards.
We stopped for a break near some ponds and a river. It turned out to be a lovely well maintained park/ picnic area. There were fish in the ponds and some almond trees which we hadn’t seen since Spain. But boy was it hot. The river was much too fast flowing, and steep sided to let Bliss go in to cool off, but Darren found a tap and held Bliss in place whilst he drenched her in cold water. She appeared to appreciate that.
In need of aircon we set off again pleased with what little we’d seen. It was enough to fill us with confidence that Croatia is somewhere well worth exploration in far greater detail than we’ve time for right now. So as we turned Northward to re-enter Slovenia Darren commented in full terminator fashion... “I’ll be back!”.Læs mere