Croatia

Day 10 - Naked Lady

It was a really comfy sleep, despite both having to get up during the night and hike to the toilet. I got up at 6.30am & witnessed Germans doing what they do best - laying out towels on the beach.

At 7.30am Jackie & I walked up to the on-site bakery & bought a loaf of bread. Breakfast consisted of bread & jam & coffee, then discovered our first downside to this campsite - wasps. They had taken a liking to our jam & were very persistent.

We then walked down to the beach, which looks pretty but is actually man made from sharp shingle & rocks. The centre was pretty busy with kids & pets so we decided to go to one end where there was hardly anyone.

We chose our spot then realised that the only other person on our section of the beach was a woman who was stark b*****k naked. She was in her late 50s/early 60s, but had a reasonably fit body for her age, not that I was looking! Actually, neither of us could help it, because as it seems with most nudists, she liked to stand up & walk to the sea and back for maximum exposure without any hint of embarrassment.

After a couple of hours, she got dressed & left. It was very strange, because there was no indication the nudism was acceptable at the campsite beach & there were young kids around. I needed to know more about her, so that evening, using my detective skills, I tracked her down. I found her doing online stretching exercises in full Lycra, with her husband outside their Slovenian registered caravan.

During one of our many dips in the sea, my legs got painfully attacked by fish pecking at my scabs. Now that should be good reason to stop picking them!

The beach side bar was our lunchtime venue. It was very pleasant, but only served drinks, no food. We had to make do with a couple of large, very cheap beers.

At 5.00pm, we packed up at the beach & cycled the 3.5km gravel path along the waters edge to the nearby town of Novalja. Jackie likened it to Ibiza, lots of youngsters & not a nice beach in sight. We cycled up & down the busy promenade & bought a box of cheap white wine in a supermarket.

Later that evening we ate bread, crackers, crisps & biscuits with white wine. Despite having only spent one night under canvas, Jackie is already apparently dying of malnutrition & is craving meat!

She is also suffering from RV envy, particularly as most are cooking hot meals or having having barbecues.

Well that was more than I intended.

Song of the Day : The Nude by Catherine Wheel.

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Day 11 - German Inquisition

We had a good but hot sleep, but neither of us needed to march to the toilet during the night.

I got up early, fired up the stove & boiled some water for a coffee. I poured the milk into my cup & it hit the bottom with a plop. It had gone off & I even managed to get rid of it myself!

At 8.00am when Jackie finally got up, we went to the bakery, but horror of horrors they had already sold out of bread! We were forced to order a selection of pastries - one meat, one apple & one cheese. The meat pastry won hands down, a cross between a meat pasty & a sausage roll.

After a morning on the beach, we adjourned to the beach bar for our usual liquid lunch. The 3rd beer apparently took a long time to arrive at us, so the barman insisted we have it for free. We hadn’t even noticed, but generally we are not one to turn down a freebie. We had a 4th so we could still spend our money.

During our lunch, a German woman started to interrogates “Are you English?” “Yes”. “You don’t look it”. Apparently we look too dark to be English, but she saw our Citroen with it’s GB sticker. The woman & her entourage wanted to know how we got here, what we were doing & how could we afford so much time off etc etc. It was a proper interrogation.

Later that evening, we were minding our own selves with a wine, when the German Interrogator, I think she was drunk, bellowed across the campsite “Mr & Mrs from England. We are over here”. Most of the campsite looked round at the 2 foreigners in their little tent. Slightly embarrassed we waved back.

Jackie’s ‘malnutrition’ got the better of her, so against my better wishes we wandered up to the on-site restaurant for what turned out to be ‘Hamburgergate’.

We both ordered the not that cheap hamburger & chips with a carafe of red wine. When the meal arrived, the hamburger was a massive hamburger, but no bun in sight. The burgers were very dense in texture & tasted processed. Jackie took one mouthful of her hamburger & refused to eat anymore of it. The result of this catastrophe was I tried to eat both burgers & Jackie ate all her chips & most of mine. I would have been happy with crackers again.

At 1.00am we were awaken by thunder and lightning. Water was dripping into our tent. We made a couple of precautionary adjustments, then lay in our now soggy bed & listened until the worst of the storm had passed over around 4.00am.

Song of the Day : Where Were You Hiding When The Storm Broke? by The Alarm.

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Day 12 - Ant Trouble

Despite being awake most of the night, I still got up not long after 6.00am. Everything was moist & still dark clouds loomed overhead. I brewed up a coffee & watched the comings & goings. Most of the campsite guests seem to pack up & leave on a Friday or Saturday, presumably to get back to work on a Monday.

After getting all the wet clothes out of the tent & draping them over anything available, we had a meat pasty each & hit the beach. It took a while for the clouds to burn away, but they did. The beach was virtually child free which was a bonus.

Before lunch, I changed into my trainers & went for an approximate 3 mile run to Novalja Beach & back. It felt good.

Lunch consisted of local bottles of beer, because the draft beer had run out, then it was back to the beach.

We returned to our tent for the evening and discovered that we had been invaded by ants. We now know that it is not a good idea to leave food that’s been opened on the floor of the tent! The ants certainly had a penchant for citrus wafers, that I had opened & eaten half of following ‘Hamburgergate’. The other half meant for Jackie were riddled with ants. The crackers & other foods were also infected & the groundsheet was alive. We salvaged what we could, blowing ants off the crackers, because eating them for our tea.

By 9.00pm, we were knackered & called it a night. Unfortunately it was still warm & we made our 2nd camping howler.

Song of the Day : Ants Invasion by Adam & The Ants.

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Day 13 - A Road To Nowhere

Woke up in agony 2 hours after going to bed. I had been bitten by mossies on pretty much every part of my body & the bites were as itchy as hell.

Why? It was still very warm when we went to bed, so we left all the tent doors open including to the bedroom compartment. I then probably confounded the problem by reading my iPad, thus attracting them to the light.

In the morning, we made a list of the fruit we were going to buy for a healthy breakfast & dinner, but then discovered that the fruit lady didn’t come on Sunday. We made do with meat pasties, croissants & baguette again.

The day consisted of beach, run, lunch of beer & wine, then beach until 6.00pm. We then decided to go for a power walk along my run route, but Jackie decided we should take an inland route uphill.

That was fine & we were having a good work out until the road came to an end. There was however a rocky footpath that we decided to take to hopefully get us back to the campsite. Unfortunately the path clearly hadn’t been used in years & was overgrown with vicious gorse bushes & huge buzzing black insects that were very upset by our presence. Luckily, we were wearing our protective gear, Jackie in a flimsy vest, shorts & trainers, whilst I was wearing just shorts & trainers. We got ripped to shreds, then after at least 400 metres of this savage footpath we came to a dead end. I was so glad I hadn’t chosen the route!

We retraced our steps until we found an alternative route that took us a long way back round to the campsite. This should have been a short power walk, but ended up being a 90 minute trek.

We were battered, but nothing that a beer & a nice hot shower couldn’t sort out.

It was baguette, croissants & crackers for tea. We are looking forward to a hot meal!

Song of the Day : Wonderful Life by Black. (It was played in the bar at lunch & seemed appropriate - prior to our hike).Read more