Wednesday, June 5th, 2024

Distance ridden 474 kilometres

It was time to go home ! We knew, when we woke up, that our breakfast down on the terrace would be our last one in Croatia. We half packed and went down to eat.

The Villa Matohanca is family run and the owners’ daughter was in charge of breakfast. She already had my “English tea” requirements off-pat and she knew how I preferred my egg (hard-boiled). She was also the local “Minister of Finance”, so while Lucie retired to put the last of our stuff into bags, it was with her that I settled what I considered to be a very reasonable bill. I know it is part of her job, but she seemed genuinely sorry to see us go.

We packed, loaded the Harley and rolled gently out of the gate. The daughter and the rest of the still breakfasting guests all waved enthusiastically goodbye. Perhaps they were NOT sorry to see us go.

To make time, we had decided to travel on the motorways. Naturally, the SatNav now seemed against this move and instead of being on a highway, we found ourselves directed onto an interesting side road. This actually ran up the side of what is called the Lim Fjord, a narrow, blue watered inlet, populated with bobbing launches. We had missed it, the previous day, so I suppose it was a small bonus, but we were never going to get anywhere at the speed at which we were travelling.

 As soon as we left the coast, the nature of our surroundings changed. The countryside was greener, there were far more taller trees and, in the distance, the peaks of mountains became visible. We came to another entrance to the motorway, which the SatNav again insisted that I ignore. Lucie, however, had different ideas and down onto the motorway we went. Croatian motorways are Toll roads, so we took a ticket.

One thing I also noticed was that the price of petrol in the motorway service areas was no more expensive than in the rural garages.

We headed initially towards Trieste, which is, of course in Italy, but the highway branches towards Ljubljana, in Slovenia, before it gets there. With Ljubljana now set as a destination, the SatNav was still trying, at every opportunity (which was, essentially, every exit) to tempt us back into the country side. It was obvious that I had somehow given it weird parameters, so we just ignored it. There were good direction signs everywhere anyway.

Some strange things happen. We were on a good motorway with two lanes in each direction. We came two a wide valley, spanned by a long, elegant and, obviously, recently constructed viaduct. The viaduct, was only two lanes wide. This meant several kilometres of cones on either side of it to funnel two lanes into one and then one lane back into two. I wondered which had been built first ….

Soon after that, as we approached the Croatia/Slovenia border, the motorway ended and it was back to slow moving, single lane traffic. Fortunately, it was chiefly going our way so I could safely cruise up the outside.

We passed through the two border posts, without stopping and then the Slovenian border town of Razdrto where we again picked up the motorway and headed on towards Ljubljana. There was a LOT of road construction going on and I guess that the motorway from Croatia will soon loop around and join seamlessly with its Slovenian counterpart. I think the route from Trieste already does.

The first one hundred kilometres passed under the tyres and we stopped at a service area for a drink. In the car park there were three Harley-Davidsons from Poland, but the riders obviously thought of themselves as some kind of “Outlaw” club and they did not even acknowledge our existence. Right you are then.

I took the opportunity to examine the SatNav parameters and found that instead of selecting “Use Motorways”, I had inadvertently selected “Always Avoid Motorways”. Whoops ! Glasses on for the small writing next time …. Luckily, even from the motorway, the scenery was both dramatic and beautiful.

The motorway neatly skirted west of Ljubljana and, when a service area and the two hundred kilometre marker appeared almost simultaneously, we stopped for another drink – and also shared a slice of Krém Pitta that Lucie spotted in the food cooler. Well, it was our last chance !

We headed towards the border at Jesenice, which always makes us smile as there is a suburb of Prague with the same name. On the way, we passed signs to Lake Bled and Lake Bohinj, two places we have already visited.

We filled up with petrol in Jesenice, Slovenian fuel prices are higher than those in Croatia, but lower than those over the border in Austria, paid our toll and headed into our old friend the almost nine kilometre long, Karawanken tunnel. This tunnel is only two lanes, one in each direction and of some vintage. When we were last there, three years previously, work on a twin, parallel tunnel seemed to be well advanced. It does not seem to have moved on much since our last visit although, naturally, the Austrian side appears to be ready ….

The. motorway we were now on is known as the A10 or E55 or perhaps the Tauern Autobahn (it crosses the Tauern Alps) in the direction of Salzburg, where we were aiming to stop for the night. I will say this for the Austrians, they do know how to dig a tunnel and the route is a seemingly unending succession of swooping concrete, sensational mountain views – and tunnels ……. I think I counted twelve, but there are also many kilometres of snow and falling boulder “defences”. Some tunnels are of spectacular length, at least two are of around six kilometres and four kilometres does not seem unusual.

To break up the journey from the border, we did stop twice. Once was for refreshments (an espresso and some hot-chocolate that only an Austrian could make) at the Rosenberger Services, near Eisenstratten. The view from the terrace where we drank them was so lovely, it almost defied belief.

There is a Toll, in addition to the Highway Sticker for using the motorways through the Alpine regions. It is not cheap, a bit over fifteen Euros (at time of writing), for a motorcycle (the same for a car, strangely enough). This feels a bit exorbitant when you waggle your payment card at the Toll station, but I remember my first trips to the area, in the 1980s. There was no motorway for a lot of the trip then and the tiny roads did not make for a fun ride. Believe me, what you get, for what you pay, is well worth it !

With only about seventy kilometres to go, we stopped again, essentially for a cigarette break, just south of the famous Hohenwerfen Castle, which perches high on its own little peak, just west of the motorway.

We set of for the final chunk and, almost immediately encountered some terrible roadworks. The approach to the Helbersberg Tunnel, just before Hohenwerfen Castle, was restricted to a single lane from about five kilometres out. This meant that there were two lanes of slowly inching traffic from over ten kilometres away. A motorcycle IS the only way to travel and it is times like that when it comes into its own. We glided smoothly up between the two rows of cars until we came to the confluence, at which point even we could only move at the walking pace of the single lane.

 

There are three short tunnels in a line there – all, usually two-lane with parallel tunnels. We crawled through one of the tunnels, the other tube being closed, until, some kilometres after we had emerged, the lane finally branched again. We had to be a bit wary as this appeared to be almost a vertical take-off point for most of the cars that followed us out. But, oh ! the queue on the southbound side almost defied belief. This was a Wednesday afternoon, not a Friday night, but the double line of near stationary traffic behind the southbound lane confluence must have been approaching fifteen kilometres and the trucks, which, legally, have to queue in the right hand lane, stretched about double that.

We had considered taking that route for our southbound journey. I shudder to think what it would have been like in that torrential downpour !

Once we got away from Hohenwerfen, it was pretty plain sailing for the rest of the ride.

The A10 became the A1 and we circled about three-quarters of Salzburg on that motorway and easily found, thanks to the SatNav, our overnight lodging, which was the Gasthof Der Jägerwirt (Kasern 4, 5101 Salzburg). This was only a couple of kilometres from the motorway and in quite a built up area – but it looked like it should have been halfway up a mountain, surrounded by blonde girls with plaits and cows with clanking bells. (Yes, I saw “Heidi” once !).

It was a welcoming place, we could park the Harley about a metre from the front door.

Our room was quite lovely, with a small terrace where someone could smoke if they wanted to.

The only slightly weird thing was that the back wall of the shower was actually a window. I could see the room as I washed off the grime from the road – and Lucie could check that I remembered to do behind my ears – without getting up off of the bed ….

There was an in-house restaurant, which had influenced our choice and we were not disappointed. I had pork medallions, in a pepper sauce and Lucie chose an Austrian specialty, Tiroler Gröstl, which is potatoes, smoked pork, butter, caraway seeds and fried eggs. Even the salad had bacon bits in it ! Welcome back to Cholesterol City ! We ate outside in the pleasant beer-garden and the local beer, from the Stiegl brewery, reminded me that the Croats and Slovenes still have a way to go when it comes to brewing …

Then, it was back to our multi-windowed room for some well earned sleep.