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There was another high section , but the road surface was good all through ; including all the twists and turns where the little streams came down to deep , rocky ravines and hard-to-reach inlets where tiny villages nestled .
At a deep-water bay ( where I remembered having seen boats sunk by the Serb shelling in 1994 ) I took the main route that doubled back before rising onto the hills , and all-of-a-sudden I found myself at a toll barrier leading onto the new motorway to Split . I jack-knifed on the rainy , diesel-splashed surface as I pulled away from the booth and cursed those square-blocked TKC80s again , but I re-set and was away and blasted the 200kms to Split , where I didn ’ t see anything but level , stony and totally unmanaged scrub-land all the way ; nothing seemed to be cultivated at all .
I picked up the coast road again and rode through a lot of built-up holiday-type villages , but nothing as pretty as earlier on . It wasn ’ t too bad , being off-season , and I managed to sit out a heavy downpour at a trendy beach-side coffee and burger place .
It was the end of the day and the sun had gone down , by the time I got to Krvavea and followed a steep winding road down towards the sea and so checked myself into an “ autocamp ”. It was all motor-home plots , hard-packed gravel terraces , no grass , and impossible to push a tent peg in . I rigged up lines to stretch my tent between a steel post and to both my bike wheels , which made a reasonable job of it . The site was terraced , due to being mostly on a steep slope and I ’ d put myself up as high as I could get , with the natural treeline just up above me .
That night the rain started for real , it was heaviest in the small hours , I was protected from the wind , but
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