Tuesday, June 4th, 2024

Distance ridden 176 kilometres

Our lives were being governed by the weather radar App !

After our “day off” from riding around, we wanted to explore at least a little bit of Istria on two wheels. For this reason, when we woke up, we anxiously scanned the weather radar charts on Lucie’s iPhone for signs of the dreaded orange blobs. There were a few but, ever the shrewd one, Lucie had pre-prepared a few route options and we jointly decided that one of them was, as they say, “doable”.

Of course, I wanted to set off straight after breakfast – but the App has a time sequence feature and, apparently, an early start would probably have meant wet boots !

We stooged around for a bit and then I got the all clear, so away we went. Our waterproofs were in the panniers, I wondered if we would need them.

The plan, such as it was, meant that we first headed south. We would ride down the Istrian peninsula to its most southerly point and then cut across to the east where Lucie had located some potentially “interesting” riding in the area of a deep river valley. She had also, quite naturally, spotted somewhere she thought we could get a nice lunch.

Off we went, stopping almost immediately to fill up with petrol and then out of Rovinj and into the green of the countryside.

Olive trees and vineyards abounded.

We needed to “ fool” the SatNav, which, no matter what options I choose, always seems determined to put us on motorways. To do this, Lucie had prepared a list of non-highway towns that were fairly close together in order to limit the device’s options. This meant she had a paper list in her pocket, with a series of town names all leading us, step-by-step, to where she wanted us to be. How many of you can remember the pre-SatNav days when that was how we used to navigate ? I can well remember taping lists of towns to my tank – just for a comparatively short jaunt across the UK.

It ended up working well. We headed south to a town called Bale and then, after a tiny false start (when we encountered what looked like a cart track that was marked as a road), we found ourselves riding along, just inland of the coast, on some very rural roads indeed. The narrower the road, the more I needed to concentrate, but, nonetheless, I was still able to catch glimpses of the blue sea to my right. Just offshore was the string of the emerald green Brijuni Islands that hug the coast. Apparently, these were once the country retreat of the Yugoslavian dictator, President Tito and many foreign dignitaries were entertained there. Nowadays, because of their ecological and archeological importance, the islands can only be visited by “organised” groups ….

In a series of gentle fits and starts we wended our way south. Pula appeared ahead of us, looking somewhat drab and uninteresting. That initial impression that did not alter when we actually got there and I was glad that, at least, it had a good ring-road that allowed a smooth and easy circumnavigation of the dull urban sprawl.

South of Pula, we headed for Premantura, which lies on a promontory and we soon had the sea on both sides.

Disappointingly, we could not go to the very end, that is limited to walkers and cyclists, Instead, we did enjoy a very pleasant chocolate milkshake and an espresso in the the Caffé VIP which lays, in the shadow of an impressive tower, in the town’s very pleasant central square.

After riding back up the promontory, we branched to the east and cut a bit across country towards some quite alarmingly dark skies. As we were nowhere near any motorway, I entered our lunch destination, the town of Trget, into the SatNav although it was, by the standards of the day, still quite a long way off.

The road twisted and turned along a pleasant rural route, but always seemed to adjust its heading back towards the darkest part of the sky. At one point, a quick flurry of raindrops did hit me, but they stopped again before I could even get my visor down.

Nothing ever goes quite to plan – or perhaps it does, just not to OUR plan.

We came to the start of the wide river valley shared by the river Krapan and the smaller river Raša. We descended into it via a long majestic serpentine along the side of a high hill.

At the bottom, we came to a river. Whether it was the Krapan or the Raša. I cannot say.

Next, we came to a small town where three bikers on “adventure” style bikes waited at a junction. Or, rather, did NOT wait, well two of them did not. They whipped out right in front of me, not dangerously, really, but it was a little unexpected and I did need to brake. The third one came out behind us. The first two sped rapidly off (perhaps they were embarrassed) and the third glued himself to my rear light. I hate it when someone does that, I like to know where things are and he managed to find that position where it was difficult for me to see him at all. All I could hear was his engine. I gave him several chances to overtake and he could easily have done it. He certainly had the speed, his companions were small dots a long way ahead by then, but he just sat there. Watching him and not the SatNav, led to me to speeding right past the turning to Trget !

We had our intercom on, the good old (as I call it) “Nag-O-Matic 500i” so when I grumbled at my mistake, Lucie quickly told me not to fret because the end part of our ride was a loop – and we could do it in the opposite direction. We began to climb a very steep and twisty road towards the hill top town of Labin.

Needless to say, my tail immediately overtook us, but we soon caught him up as a very long and very slow vehicle, carrying an earth-mover, was crawling up the incline in front of us. The old part of Labin, called Stari Grad, was perched cutely on the edge of what was practically a precipice, high above us and to our right. That was our new destination and, unfortunately, it was where the earth-mover was heading too.

There was no safe way past and we ended up following it up a steep, cobbled incline at walking speed until, like us, it pulled into the lovely square at the very top. Well, when I say lovely, I am sure it will be once they finish digging it all up !

We parked outside the nice café Velo and enjoyed a couple of alcohol-free beers and a shared slice of a local pastry called Krém Pitta for only 12 EUR in total. This pastry was a huge chunk of vanilla pudding and quite a thing in what were the eastern fringes of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Then, we walked to the edge of the drop and took some panoramic views over the green and picturesque Krapan valley. The road we had come on was clearly visible, far below.

Refreshed and re-energised, Krém Pitta WILL do that to you, we set off to find Trget. It was actually pretty easy, just a slow and careful roll downhill. As the bottom of the hill, in this case, was sea-level, it was quite a roll.

As some parts of the road were steep, narrow, twisty and poorly surfaced, it required more than a modicum of care.

At the bottom, we found Trget and it was a bit like looking at a stylised holiday poster. A calm blue bay, yachts of various types and sizes bobbing at their moorings and an overall air of tranquility.

Right at the point where we entered the bay, was where Lucie had been planning to eat. It was the Martin Pescadora (Trget 20, Trget). It actually looked more like a café than a restaurant, with a row of tables on a narrow strip of paving right over the gently lapping waves.

We tried Cuttlefish risotto, which was offered in plain and sepia variants – so, surprise, surprise, we had one of each – and swapped halfway through. Both were delicious and both were very tasty – but they were not, at all, the same.

Somehow, we resisted the temptation to sit there in the sunshine all afternoon.

Possibly, the darkening skies (now to the west of us) assisted us in our decision to move on. Lucie still said that she “thought” from the weather radar that we would get away with it – but my money would have been on the black clouds …..

We set off out of Trget in the direction that we had originally planned to come in from. To our considerable surprise, as soon as we turned the first corner, we left behind a picture postcard bay and entered an industrial area. Obviously, the Krapan ( or, possibly, the Raša) river must still have quite a depth at that point, because there were sites for the uploading of both timber and stone into waiting vessels that were not exactly small. A railway track ran beside the road and criss-crossed it in a few places, but it must have been years since a train ran there. In comparison with the bay around the corner, it was quite horrible. Had we made the loop in our originally planned direction, I would probably have wanted to turn around and go back, long before we came to the bay …

We rejoined our original route at the turning I had missed earlier and started to head back westward. For some unaccountable reason, the road was now quite busy and some clown in a small Renault thought it would be funny to hug my tail light all the way back up the steep serpentine. Unsurprisingly, he resisted several chances that I gave him to pass us, preferring to stay where he was in order to squash us, should we fall off. We did not – so he did not.

At the top of the hill, we turned off of the main road to make our way back to Rovinj across country.

To avoid fighting the SatNav, Lucie navigated me by watching her ‘phone and telling me where to go via the intercom. In the narrow, twisty, but surprisingly well surfaced back roads, this worked very well as I was able to give all my attention to the road ahead.

I was riding with my visor up, as I tend to do at moderate speeds when the first big blob of rain hit me in the face, followed by many more before I could pull the visor down. It immediately started to rain in earnest and we quickly got fairly damp. I waited for the command to stop and suit up, but it never came. On the rear seat Lucie could, apparently, see the edge of the shower on the radar App and simply waited for us to ride out from underneath it, which we soon did. We were damp, but we were moving in a dry breeze which soon became bright sunshine again. In the space of a few kilometres we were both bone dry.

We were in some truly rural countryside. The little villages, which had narrow, un-delineated roads winding through them, were like something from the 1930s. Only the occasional satellite dish, or parked car gave the game away. The only slight “problem” we encountered was the tendency for the local cars that we met to be driving on the crown of the road, even on blind corners, because it was, to them at least, statistically implausible that anybody would be coming the other way ! Off course, watching her ‘phone meant Lucie could not take many pictures, but there you are, you will have to take my word for it  !

Eventually, we emerged from the wilds and back through more cultivated and familiar countryside. We found Rovinj and our villa in that order. We took a little siesta on our terrace to prepare ourselves for our final evening in our little seaside paradise.

Towards dusk, we walked down the hill and all the way round to the slightly swishier restaurants that were right at the water’s edge. We managed to find a table for two at the very front of a restaurant called San Tommaso (Obala Alda Rismondo 19, Rovinj). Our waiter was jolly and obliging and, although we were neither of us exactly starving, we shared a starter of Sea Bass marinated in orange, followed by a Caesar salad for Lucie and salmon with asparagus for me.

I tried a dark, San Servolo beer which was nice – but a bit strong.

Our waiter took a nice shot of us with the Old Town and the Saint Euphemia church in the background. We immediately we it sent to our buddies in Prague as it was a Tuesday and they were busily enjoying Tuesday Night Drinks without us.

On a sad note, I managed to break my tooth on a piece of marinated sea bream. I guess it must have been about to happen as the bream could not have done it. Mercifully, there was no pain. I threw the fragment of broken enamel the two metres or so into the water of the harbour. This perplexed a prowling gull which saw my hand move – but nothing come out of it. I expect a tiny part of me will be in Rovinj for ever.

The only thing left to do was get Lucie a final ice-cream in which action, purely for the sake of solidarity, you understand, I decided to join her. We managed to find a place which seemed mercifully devoid of the truly weird “flavours”. There were still a lot of “chocolates”, so I chose a light one, a dark one and a scoop of vanilla – Lucie chose a chocolate, a hazelnut and a vanilla. Nothing to trouble Papa Smurf there ! We ate them at a table by the water’s edge, knowing our time in Rovinj was up. The next morning we would set off for home.

On the way back to the villa, we passed a lightly customised Heritage Softail with a painted tank. We had seen it in several locations, around the town and I was sorry I would not, in all likelihood, see it again.

We took one last look at beautiful Rovinj in the deepening twilight and that was it.