On to Croatia

We spent our last couple of days in Italy on the beach just chilling out. One highlight was, when returning from the restaurant in the evening, we found a small crowd of Italians standing and admiring ‘Stavros’ (our caravan for the uninitiated!)  They noted our approach, and a large lady beamingly shouted out, pointing at Stavros

“Bella, bella, molto bella!”

We felt quite proud, as other than admiration when using the motor movers, we hadn’t realised how special he was!

Our ferry to Split departed Ancona at eight in the evening, so we set off in plenty of time to check in by six. We duly arrived, checked in, and were then directed towards the correct area of the port which involved a drive through the coastal roads of Ancona. It turned out to be a bit chaotic as the customs post is right next to a main road, so we had a guy standing on a roundabout with a walkie-talkie trying to regulate the flow of vehicles thorough customs from a car park adjacent to the road. This involved passenger vehicles crossing the road via the roundabout on his direction, whilst trying to avoid the other non-customs port traffic – and pedestrians!
Now, as I’m sure you know Italians are not noted for their patience, so quite a few – lorries mainly – decided that they weren’t going to join our guy’s queue but were, instead, simply going to join the customs queue directly from the roundabout. This resulted in lots of arm waving and shouting from walkie-talkie man, and vehicles having to reverse out of said queue and back onto the roundabout, which was busy enough already!

Of course we all got though in the end, and moved into yet another queue to board our ferry. We were put in with the lorries, so patiently waited our turn as each of these reversed onto the ferry as they had in Barcelona; unlike the ferries in the UK these only have one door, so are not ‘drive on, drive off’. However, unlike Barcelona, where there was room for us to do a U turn with the caravan on the car deck itself to end up facing the right way, this time they wanted us to reverse on.
I have managed to avoid any serious reversing with a caravan since we got it – maybe a few yards in a straight line, but nothing more. I clearly looked somewhat alarmed, but was reassured that the ‘guy’ would stay with me and give me instructions, to make sure everything was OK. We were the last to board so had an interested audience of ferry workers expecting to be entertained. I don’t think we disappointed!
The ‘guy’ did indeed give us precise instructions – but in very fast Italian! I have now learnt to distinguish my left from my right in said language, and whilst there were a few hairy moments which involved lots of shouting, and moving forwards and backwards to adjust position, after a while we got a bit of a system going and covered the 200 meters up the ramp and into the car deck, finishing with some aplomb. I’m not sure if we got a round of applause but it felt like we had, with lots of mutual congratulations (and relief!) all round.

The ferry docked on time at seven the following morning, and we cleared customs in about an hour – another free for all with vehicles pushing in from all sides instead of forming orderly queues!  Our campsite is just outside Trogir, which is some 30 km north of Split, so we were checking in by nine o’clock, and set up a couple of hours later.

When we checked in, the receptionist told us about the bomb that had gone off at the Manchester Arena the previous evening which we were not aware of, but soon picked up on via WhatApp and our kids horror at the loss of 19 lives, with many more injured.  It felt as if we were being disrespectful enthusing about the site and the views of the bay, with beautiful clear waters, lots of little islands and boats to gaze at.

It’s a really good site, which bodes well as Debi and Ed, Ros and Rob are joining us here later in the week to help celebrate my birthday at the weekend.  We have a sea view from our pitch, and everyone around us is very friendly; a real mixed bag of nationalities – Dutch, German, British all of whom seem happy to stop and have a word.

The weather was absolutely perfect – clear blue skies and temperature in the mid twenties, so we had an explore along the coastal path on our bikes cycling the 5 km to Trogir itself, via an amazing marina, before stopping at a beachside restaurant on the way back for a drink and some fish, which was excellent.  Everyone here is so friendly!

There was some rain forecast for Wednesday, so we made the most of the good weather in the morning, and got caught in a thunderstorm on our way to the supermarket in the afternoon – I almost had to stop the car as the rain was so heavy, and we got drenched running into the store. We then watched the Europa League Final between Manchester United and Ajax in the site’s Sport’s Bar that evening along with eight others (6 Dutch and 2 Brits, one of whom was a passionate, club shirt wearing MU fan)!  It wasn’t a great game, but I entertained myself by sending Karen some wind up texts which she duly rose to!

Debi and Ed arrive this evening, so today we’re going to take the boat from the site into Trogir for a look round – its another Unesco World Heritage site – and I need to find a dentist as I’ve broken a tooth!