A quiet night in Sveti Filip i Jakov, Croatia

Zagan the motorhome is destined for a very quiet night, as he has an entire campsite to himself. He’s parked up in the best spot in Camping Filip in the small town of Sveti Filip i Jakov (N43.95970, E15.42848).

Charlie playing ball on his own personal campsite

This morning we prepared for the off with a plan to head to Zadar, sure we’ve been there before, but we’ll be passing so might as well nip in again. As Zagan rolled off his chocks (we use these to help level him up when the pitch isn’t flat) there was a loud cracking noise – never good. The chocks that came with him – see link above – have a high lip at the front, presumably to stop you going over them, which doesn’t work as I have proved in the past. This lip is very close to the height of Zagan’s low profile front end, and this morning the chock decided to spring up off the grass just enough to whack poor Zagan’s front end and put a big crack in his bumper. Bugger! We performed a quick fix with the black gaffa tape we had on board, which will probably end up being the fix for the next few years unless we find some silver gaffa tape. Not a great start to the day, but on the bright side the ants that were running around in the wardrobe appear to have left us overnight as we’ve moved Charlie’s food stash.

Back on the road and we trundle along feeling a bit sorry for ourselves. We did some planning last night and have decided to stay in Croatia until the end of the month, heading out via Zagreb and then north to the top of Norway (our planning is a tad vague, but we do suspect there to be a couple of other countries in between…).

Sorry – Jay just came back in the van to tell me Prince has died. Took a moment to clarify which Prince (the singer, not any of the Royal family, as he’s now singing Purple Rain) but such sad news, especially after hearing about the lovely Victoria Wood yesterday. If ever you need a kick up the behind that life is too short and you should get out there an enjoy it now, here’s one for you – neither of them were retirement age – too sad.

Back to today. As we drove along advertising boards showed us the towns we were approaching, and as we’re both suckers for advertising we hadn’t gone more than a few miles before we stopped. OK, so we stopped at Lidl first so Jay could research nearby campsites while I bought some supplies – including a two litre plastic bottle of wine for less than £2, winner, then we headed towards a campsite at Biograd.

The first one we reached looked massive so we turned around and searched out a couple of others. The single track tree-lined roads took us to closed gates, as we carried on to try to get back to the main road, it opened out into a large car park next to a beach. We checked with satnav and we were only one kilometre from Biograd, right next to the massive campsite, so parked up Zagan and strolled past numerous closed bar and cafes lining the beachside path into town.

At some point this place will be heaving!

Biograd is famous as being a Royal town in the past and for its massive marina today. We walked along the waters edge lined with cafes and restaurants. As it was lunchtime those that were open had a few people in them which gave the place a bit of life.

Stinky fish in the boats just across from the restaurants, the smell didn’t get that far, but we hope they are bait and not dinner!

Charlie loves Biograd as he found a stack of stale bread on the quayside

It’s hard to believe that only 25 years ago this place was at war

After a stroll around I nipped into the tourist office and found a fantastic booklet listing campsites in Croatia, it looks like it was produced by the people who create camping.hr which is a great resource if you are coming here. Sadly, unlike the website, the booklet was in Italian, so I asked the chap if he had a copy in English. After much rummaging around in the back office he reappeared with every leaflet they have in English – sadly that didn’t include the camping one, but top marks for trying. We’re happy with the Italian one as we’ve worked out what all the symbols by the campsites mean.

Back at Zagan we picked a campsite from the booklet and headed there, it was all of three kilometres away in the next town of Sveti Filip i Jakov, so it didn’t take long to get there. The road between the two towns has several campsites on it. Having missed the turning for one we were aiming for we carried on to the town, turned around and pulled into the first one with an open gate.

I think everything in the whole town is on this sign!

The owner appeared out of the reception to tell us they are closed, but will open on Saturday. The campsite next door is open though, so we turned around and pulled into the next driveway, which leads to two campsites. Luckily the lady from the first site had phoned ahead and we were ushered into Camping Filip by the owner. She was about to show us which pitches we could have, as some are booked from tomorrow, when I mentioned that we were only stopping for a night – so she brought us down to the best place overlooking the sea.

The water here is so clear you don’t need to snorkel – spotted these two from the quayside

Within minutes our camping chairs were out and lunch of bread, cheese, ham and salad stuff was being scoffed. We stayed in them for the rest of the afternoon, watching the guys prepare the campsite next door by moving around tourer caravans with a mini tractor – later this continued as they swigged from bottles of beer and the caravans got positioned a little less straight.

Not a bad view!

As the sun was setting we walked the 300m into town, then what seemed like a further 300m around the town, before stopping off for a drink in one of the waterfront bars. Dungerees seem to be the outfits of choice around here at the moment as there is building work happening everywhere. As we sat supping just along the row, two groups of men were putting up wooden frames to cover with awnings to protect drinkers from the sun in the coming months. I’m quite glad we won’t be here then as I suspect the sleepy Croatia I love becomes very different in the summer.

This fella looks like fun

Sveti Filip i Jako’s collection of the type of boat we now call Boaty McBoatface!

As for Zadar, well this afternoon while sitting in the sun we decided not to bother going there again. Instead we’ll stick to the smaller places along the coast and a couple of the islands, Croatia has too much to offer to be repeating things.

Ju x