Into the Dalmatian Hinterland, Camping Krka

Zagan the motorhome’s finally rolled off Čiovo and is sat under pines with one other motorhome for company at Camp Krka, Dalmatia (N43.80029 E15.94143). It’s a €14 a night ACSI site (€13 plus €1 tourist tax).

Camp Krka, Near the Krka National Park

Last night the sun again laid on an Oscar performance, burning up red in a final flourish before bowing down beneath the waves. All three of us sat outside, me still in shorts, grabbing a few photos and sharing a glass of wine.

Charlie basking in evening sunshine. It’s hitting 23°C here at the moment

We’d become used to these Čiovo sunsets

As a goodbye to Čiovo, we headed into Okrug Gornji for a meal, once again A1 quality with service to match. Tip for you though: if you like your steak medium, ask for it well done. Medium equated to rare, or really closer to blue, uncooked but tender and delicious. I had a schnitzel, roughly the size of a football pitch, and perfectly cooked. Our downfall came in the form of a litre carafe of house red. Smooth and easy, we attempted to fend off likely ill-effects with a few glasses of water but to no avail. Days of dehydration kicked in, and Ju felt pretty pants yesterday evening. Note to self: drink more water, it’s getting hot down here. Oh yes, cost of this blowout meal? £35.

This morning we went through the motions to move, all familiar but suddenly unpractised. Out came the checklist to ensure we’re not done anything daft: power cable detached, skylight down, gas off, fridge on, step up. Ready. Zagan fired up, eager, and off we rolled, waving a ‘see you soon’ to reception – they’ll send a text when the ACSI book finally arrives. In the meantime we’re off for a Dalmatian wander.

The bridge to Trogir

As there’s no business post at the weekend, we have a couple of days to kill at the minimum. The Krka National Park an hour to the north of us was an obvious candidate, although we’d probably have headed to Split if we’d not been there before. The park’s a good size, with numerous entrances, but the main attraction appears to be the Skradinski buk falls. So we set our sights on the Lozovac entrance, via a Lidl at Šibenik of course; our cupboards were bare after 2 weeks without a Lidl snifter!

Dalmatia, like much of Croatia, is all coastline, islands and hills. Almost as soon as we’d crossed the bridges of Trogir onto the mainland, the road swung skywards holding us up in the air for famous views of the area we’d stayed in the past weeks.

Hymer Heaven in Croatia

Views down over Trogir

Our much-appreciated home for the past 17 nights

Leaving the coast behind, the road swoops into the hinterland, and a landscape we found ourselves agreeing looked to be rather a lot of nothing. Stones lie everywhere. Some arranged into tumbling walls, others stubbornly confounding attempts at agriculture. Stunted pines cluster on otherwise barren slopes, outnumbering occasional olive and fig trees. Low on diesel, we didn’t see a single fuel station in an hour’s driving. We did smell a couple of enormous road-side wood ovens being fired up, presumably for pig or lamb roasting.

Wild boar! Wonder if we can get roasted boar? Hmmmm.

A rare bit of agriculture on our ride to Sibenik

Šibenik rose up, all high-rise blocks of flats, which we skirted to find Lidl, cramming £90 worth of food into Zagan’s creaking fridge and cupboards. The receipt is literally as long as my arm. Focussing on the important stuff: the cheapest beer come in the huge form of two litre plastic bottles, 4% Löwenbräu at €1.07 a litre, just edging my €1 a litre maximum. Ho hum.

Šibenik

The naughty cupboard cannae tek nay more captain!

From Lidl we headed 10km or so here, the campsite. The reception lady’s very friendly and, speaking English, welcomed our attempts at a few words in Croatian. She then told us a story about the male half of an English couple who come here every year: “He wanted to tell my daughter she was a beautiful girl. He used his little book for the words: ‘you are beautiful puppy‘”. At this we laughed and said it could have come out worse, which as it happened, it had. “no, no, not puppy, pussy, pussy.” The chap had inadvertently told her daughter she was a beautiful pussy. Oops. Apparently he doesn’t try to speak Croatian any more…

Aside from anecdotes, there is, to be blunt, nothing here but the nearby park. We checked the area out with a short walk in the afternoon sunshine. Nah, nothing. Pines and stones, with a small cluster of villas to cast an eye over. Back at Zagan Ju borrowed a ladder and I’ve cleaned the solar panel and rinsed off the skylight. Charlie’s played ball, we’ve read up on the park, and night’s fallen. Being honest, both of us would rather be back on Čiovo, but bring on the falls.

Solar panel finally cleaned!

The road to the Krka National Park

One thing which will grow here: vines!

Nope, can’t think of anything to say about this one…

Oh, just remembered to add, when we did find diesel it came in at 7.58 Kuna per litre, 80p a litre.

Cheers, Jay