Day Thirty Two – Sunday 8th August 2010

As Edith and Didier had paid for dinner on the previous night we thought it would be good to take them out for brunch on Sunday. We went to the oldest inn in the oldest town in Belgium. We enjoyed a hearty brunch then made preparations to head off. We had hoped to spend our last day in Brugges and stay overnight in a hotel but with the van needing its nightly charge we had to change our plans and decided we would head for the coast near Dunkerque as we had a ferry to catch at 10.00am on Monday.

Didier, Edith and Dandy

We toyed with the idea of catching a ferry later that day but it was going to cost more than the return trip to change the booking so we decided that was not a good plan. We tried to get into a campsite near the port only to be told it was full, the receptionist was kind enough to phone around some other sites in the area but they were all full. We needed a shower and some groceries to get us by so we came up with a cunning plan. While I had been in the reception Dandy had been ‘casing the joint’ and we sneaked back into the site with our toilet bags and used the shower facilities. The reasoning behind this was that if we could get cleaned up and buy a few bits and pieces at the shop we could go back to a really nice spot beside a marina where we’d seen some other camper vans parked up.

In the Ladies I joined a small queue for the showers. The young, bikini clad girl who was at the front of the queue faffed about and admired herself and adjusted her hair in front of the mirror while the queue got longer and I got increasingly angrier with her. Finally she picked up her mobile and started playing some hideous, tuneless rap music at a ridiculous volume. I could see that she was going to leave her phone in this state of noise on the shelf while she showered and we would all be subjected to this racket. I cracked and enquired of the selfish young nymph whether she thought it was reasonable that we should all be subjected to her noisy music and would she turn it down please? She was French and indicated that she had not understood my request. The lady next to me obliged by translating my request and the young girl shrugged her shoulders and moved towards the cubicle, phone still blaring. I was incensed by now and resorted to some very visual sign language and a full verbal rant, so loud that Dandy heard the commotion in the Men’s block. She got the picture and turned it down a fraction. I was sorely tempted to pick it up and flush it down a toilet, but my desire for a shower overrode this compulsion. Nothing like drawing attention to yourself!

We picked up some wine, beer and bread at the camp shop and sneaked back out of the site and made our way to the marina where we spent a very pleasant evening looking out over the tidal river and watching young guys fish for eels.

Day Thirty Three – Monday 9th August, 2010

As we had no electricity hook up overnight we hadn’t been able to charge the batteries so we made the decision to get the van to Dover and finally admit defeat and call in the breakdown services. It was highly unlikely that the batteries would survive the 500 mile trip from Dover to Edinburgh without an overnight charge. We called Britannia and warned them of our predicament, they told us to call them again when we reached Dover.

We endured the usual hideous ferry holiday makers and screaming brats for the two hour crossing. Luckily the van started when we reached the white cliffs and we rolled off the ferry through the security checks. Dandy’s phone rang as he was driving and he was waved aside by a policewoman who gave him a real dressing down about driving and talking on the phone, she let him off with a stern warning. It was amusing to see Dandy so contrite and I had to suppress a snigger.

We found a car park near the front in Dover and spent the next few hours negotiating with the breakdown service. It was finally agreed that a mechanic would come out to confirm that the van was genuinely broken down and then we would be able to get a hire car. The van would be trucked back to Edinburgh separately. There were no hire cars to be had in Dover so we finally got one in Canterbury some 17 miles away. The technician arrived to inspect the van and agreed with Dandy’s diagnosis then some time later the breakdown truck arrived to pick up the van and he agreed to take us to the rental company in Canterbury.

On arrival at the Enterprise Rent-A-Car office Dandy went to complete the paperwork while I emptied all our possessions from the van onto the pavement with the help of our driver. All our dirty washing and other stuff that had been on the go for the last five weeks were piled up, it was like a jumble sale and I felt I had to keep apologising for my schemieness. Dandy had a tear in his eye as he waved bye bye to his poor Hiace leaving on the back of the truck.



Poor Hiace takes the slow route home

We got an upgrade car that had just come in – a Seat Leon which was a great car. We piled all our possessions into the boot and the back seat and finally got on the road just after 5pm. There was no petrol in the car so we asked Thomas, our SatNav, where the nearest petrol station was and as usual he took us off in completely the wrong direction then he found us one that had obviously been closed for years. Finally we found a petrol station, we were running on fumes by this time, and filled up. Dandy went in to pay and the friendly cashier asked him how his day had been. His face contorted and his eyes rolled, he placed his hands on the counter and replied ‘Right, where do I start?’ I bet she doesn’t ask that question again in a hurry!

The journey through Englandshire was great. We made good time and the car was good to drive. We stopped halfway for some food and made it home at 1am on the Tuesday morning. We were exhausted yet strangely on a high and chatted until at least 3am before finally falling into a well deserved sleep.

Our adventure was finally over and we were home safe minus our Hiace which arrived on Thursday morning and is still lying in bits at the bottom of my garden much to the delight of the neighbours! We had agreed that the van was definitely getting sold when we got home but are now having second thoughts. The problems were not caused by flaws in the van but by the replacement of a high pressure oil pipe which turned out not to be fit for purpose. This high pressure oil escape is more than likely also the cause of the alternator failure later in the holiday. It’s staying for the moment!

Some Statistics:
Travelled 4217 miles
Used 170 Gallons fuel
Used 12 litres oil
Cheapest diesel in Luxembourg @ .80p per litre
Most expensive diesel in Italy @ £1.20 per litre
Visited 10 countries
Highest temperature in camper van was 48 degrees centigrade
Steepest gradient 12.5% for 35km
Highest point - the Grosglockner in Austria at 8,000feet
Lowest point – falling out over icepacks

Day Twenty Eight and Twenty Nine– Wednesday 4th and Thursday 5th August 2010

Woke up to great weather and blue skies with very little cloud, after speaking to the site owner it seemed that the Glockner road would be good with visibility until around 3pm. Dandy took the decision that we would go for it even though it was a pretty reckless thing to do. The scenery on the climb up the pass was once more absolutely stunning. How many more picture postcard scenes can a person take in one holiday? Dandy drove and we took it quite gently even though Dandy ranted at all other drivers who got in his way or didn’t drive to his standards in order to not have to use the brakes too much.

We got to near the top of the pass, parked up near the glacier and took loads of photos. I kept disappearing to track down Ibex and get sandwiches for lunch etc. Dandy had to keep texting me to track me down. We decided to take the funicular car down to the glacier as we thought it would be quite an experience to walk upon it. Unfortunately the funicular was built in 1960 when the glacier was hundreds of feet higher than it is today and we had to descend the rest by foot. It was well worth it and quite spectacular with huge cracks in the very blue ice that you could have stuffed annoying Dutch folk and their kids quite easily.

The bad bit was the really steep climb back up to the funicular in the very thin air. There was a queue when we got there and I joined it while Dandy went off to take some more photos. A car had arrived, loaded up 30 people and left before Dandy returned and I had sat down on a handy bench at the side of the queue to catch my breath. I could see him frantically scanning the queuing people for me and then looking at the disappearing car which was ascending the cliff side. Other people had noticed too and we were having a good laugh at his expense especially as I had his return ticket. He finally spotted me, much to his relief that he wouldn’t have to climb the rest of the way up.


Grossglockner Glacier


Dynamo at the Glockner


The final high was the very highest point of the pass which had very tight hairpins on an old cobbled road. Dandy went for that too and did wonder at his own sanity but the van coped with its very clever gearing and ratios. We were 8,000 feet up – utter madness with a sick van!

Found a campsite that was part of a working farm that night, it was fine, spoiled only by a mild disagreement between us as I hadn’t done my duty by putting the ice packs in the freezer. My hairdryer blew up that night in the toilet block and Dandy interpreted this as me not making an effort for him since we’d had words! As if!
We had to be careful not to offend our neighbours on campsites from now on as we might need to ask them for help with the van. By getting a jump start from someone each day preserved the batteries and while on the move we were careful not to turn off the engine if at all possible.

On the Thursday morning we got a jump start from a helpful Dutchman. On the Autobahn we experienced terrible rain and drove with no lights and using wipers only occasionally. My job was to keep checking the voltage in case it dropped below a critical level where the engine shut off switch would kill the engine. It was very stressful and we barked at each other a lot that day.

Found ourselves in a really daft campsite in Germany that night. The rain was still hammering down and when I got out of the van my feet and ankles disappeared in about 5 inches of wet mud. It was so depressing. For lack of any real choice we ate at the site restaurant – schwein schnitzel and a glutinous sauce and once more the language barrier led to us ordering three very large salads between us as well. We took what we couldn’t eat away with us in a Tupperware box and finally jettisoned it four days later in Dunkerque.

It was still hammering down when we retired to bed and we reckoned that they probably ate their children in this part of the world.

Day Thirty and Thirty One – Friday 6th and Saturday 7th August 2010

We were up very early, it had rained all night long and the ground was sodden. We got a jump start from our German neighbour who was quick to point out to Dandy that he would not normally vacation in this area but had to be there for a family wedding.
We were heading for the Rhineland area and we had two options - to stay with an acquaintance of Alan’s in his guest house in Rupertshoffen where we had been two years previously, the other option was another daftie campsite near the town of Bogel where we had also stayed previously. Andree, the hotelier, was not in and his home looked pretty closed up, a neighbour said he was on holiday in England. We headed off to Bogel, and got a pitch well away from the long stay natives, especially the mountain troll (see 2008 blog) and tried not to make eye contact with anyone. We were looking forward to our steak meal in a favourite restaurant that evening.

The troll accosted me when I was on my way back from the toilets to warn me about her two year old child who would appear at some point and run around beside us and snort, she demonstrated this by making the noise of a pig with a lot on its mind. She warned me sinisterly ‘not to be scared’, then she went through the whole story a second time. Strange, I thought, she couldn’t be a day under 60 so I couldn’t figure out why her ovaries were still active and it also occurred to me that we were incomers that she wanted to warn away.

Fifteen minutes later Dandy and I were running round the field making strange noises hotly pursued by a very angry wasp much to the amusement of the troll and other assorted dafties. The strange child never appeared.

Dandy carried out a routine oil check and this revealed more problems – the engine breather pipe had been nipped and become blocked. I had to dismantle the bed to allow Dandy access to the area. I thought – what has gone wrong now, can we take much more bad luck? I went for a shower and on my return relations between us were fractious. We headed off for the 1km walk to the restaurant. As were walked through the cornfields on this lovely summer evening tension between us really escalated. Dandy expressed his disappointment that I had not dealt with the ice blocks again and I flipped – ‘all to try to preserve about 1 Euro worth of food’ I said! The knives were out and we had a heated argument. This was getting us nowhere, then I sniffed the air a couple of times and declared ‘there’s a stink of shite here’. That broke the standoff, Dandy burst out laughing and we kissed and made up realising that we were taking the stress of the fragile, broken down van out on each other and being silly and spiteful.

We enjoyed a great steak in pepper sauce washed down by a couple of beers and sauntered back to the site again. We stopped at the campsite bar for a nightcap. I went to the ladies and when I walked into the bar I was so conscious of everyone staring at me that I walk smack into the cigarette machine. If you’ve ever watched the first Star Wars movie it was like the bar scene from that film! Bizarre. We drank up quickly and escaped to the safety of the van.

We begged a jump start from the owner of the site and headed off again next morning. We took a route along the Rhine rather than risking the river ferry and having to turn off the engine unnecessarily. It was a lovely day and we enjoyed the scenery and the interesting traffic on the river – coal boats, cruise boats etc. We stopped off for a coffee and cake at an outdoor riverside café. Behind me sat a large, overweight, very ugly man. Dandy spotted that he was surreptitiously filming the young blonde waitress. We found this very sleazy as we figured out what he would use the footage for later on. Dandy felt it was his civic duty to tell the waitress about his behaviour when he paid the bill and she was quite shocked. Then he wanted to have words with fatman, he was going to demand that he ‘delete or bluetooth the files’ to him! Fatman paid up and legged it.


Pervy fatman to my left

We were heading for friends of ours – Edith and Didier who live on Tongeren, Belgium. Tongeren is the oldest town in Belgium. Still checking the voltage and fretting over the alternator all the way, we arrived at their house at 5.30pm. We hooked up the batteries with their power and enjoyed a beer together in the garden. We ate in a fantastic restaurant at the cathedral that evening. We enjoyed great food and Didier regaled us with tales of his recent deployment to Afghanistan and how he would sort out the Belgian political system. It was a great night and we enjoyed their company once more.

Days Twenty Four and Twenty Five – Saturday 31st July and Sunday 1st August 2010

At breakfast Dandy was keen to absolve himself of all blame from the farting incident and kept enquiring if my stomach issues had resolved themselves in a particularly loud voice. We said our goodbyes and took some photos.


Outside the guest house in Slovenia

It was a beautiful day and the mountains were stunning. We hadn’t travelled very far when we came across an idyllic campsite beside an amazingly clear, emerald green river. We decided to stop even though it was only early afternoon as we loved the setting so much. We just chilled and watched several coach loads of pished local geriatrics return from their Sunday school picnic by the river, it was hilarious.
Sat with our G & T’s watching the sun go down and the mountains gradually change colour. The night sky was clear and full of stars and the Milky Way. What a place!


View from our campsite at Soca


We decided we would stay an extra day as we liked it so much and that was what the holiday was all about. We had very little food left so instead of packing up the van and driving to the nearest town Dandy investigated catching a bus. The campsite owner told him that we could get one at the junction on the main road, about 500 metres away, at 11am and we could get one back at 1.15pm. Off we set and right enough the bus turned up and we clambered on. The bus driver was busy gassing on his mobile and drove most of the way to Bovac along narrow, twisty roads multi tasking phone and steering wheel. We checked that there was a bus back at 1.15pm but no, it was Sunday so we would have to wait until 3.30pm. This was a pain as we wanted to make the best of the day back at the campsite and it was a very day hot so our perishable food wouldn’t survive till then and the supermarket closed at 12.00pm. We had a quick dash around the very busy supermarket and reached the till only to be sent back to weigh and label our fresh produce, this made us quite unpopular with the rest of the queue.
We went into the tourist office to enquire about taxis back to our site and hey presto before you could say Ljubljana there was one outside for us. We were back in no time at the small cost of 10 euros.

Our neighbours, the Klagenfurts, were a German family who’d travelled on motorbikes and a sidecar combination (the dog went in the sidecar as well as one of the kids). We got talking to them a few times and they seemed very nice. At one point we were speaking to Mrs Klagenfurt point while they were getting packed up ready to go on a day trip. Mr Klagenfurt was clearly not pleased that his missus was not pulling her weight and barked at her to join them to which she responded immediately, Dandy wished he had this effect on me.

We went down to the river to enjoy the sun and the breathtaking colour of the water. I noticed a strange phenomenon in that there was no algae or weed on the stones on the bed of the river, just bleached white stones. It was excruciatingly cold and even paddling in it made your legs go numb. Some swimmers were wearing full wetsuits. Dandy went for a dip and suffered the cauliflower beanbag effect mentioned earlier. I think his genitals actually took refuge inside his body. We barbequed, lit a campfire and watched the stars and mountains again.


Frogmen in the river at Soca

Days Twenty Six and Twenty Seven – Monday 2nd and Tuesday 3rd August 2010

We reluctantly left the campsite at Soca in order to move further north. We both agreed that we could have stayed there longer. Our plan was to go over the Grosglockner pass, the highest mountain in Austria. This had been planned as one of the highlights of the trip.

To leave Slovenia we had to head over another high pass into Austria. Once more the scenery was stunning and we stopped at the top to take photos. However the arduous second gear climb had caused the engine to overheat and the Hiace resembled a steam train. The aftermarket turbo had caused the cooling system to work overtime so a litre of sparkling water was added to the system. Within 50 metres of starting the descent the dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree and a warning buzzer suggested something may be amiss. As quickly as it arrived the fault sorted itself and the lights went off and the buzzing stopped.

We stopped part of the way down the mountain for lunch and to give the van and Dandy a rest. He had been ranting extensively at an old bastard in a Talbot camper that was being too cautious by descending the pass in first gear and at a young guy in a car of whom he enquired ‘how much of the f**kin’ road do you want?’

We got involved in a conversation with an Austrian cyclist at the next table. Dandy asked what he did for a living and he replied that he was a sailor. We looked quizzically at one another then Dandy enquired if there was a huge requirement for sailors in a land locked country. It turned out he was a seller and not a sailor and he explained what he sold by saying ‘you have this in Scotland’. We were thinking Haggis, Whisky etc. but it turned out he was involved with internet and telecommunications. We were quite impressed by his challenging cycle but it turned out he had got the bus from Austria and was cycling downhill back home!

The lights and buzzer returned with a vengeance as we entered a small town at the bottom of the pass. We headed for a filling station and 5 minutes of testing revealed that the alternator was dead and the batteries weren’t charging with over 1,000 miles still to cover before home. WTF? Dandy thought that this was going to be the end of the road for our trip, he wasn’t going to be able to fix this problem readily. We limped into a campsite at Sachsenburg on the River Drau in Austria. This campsite was beside a medieval walled village and was proliferated by masses of Dutch and their hyper, badly behaved offspring. I had to have words.

Between us we hatched a cunning plan to get back to Blighty using a combination of rewiring the three batteries on board and charging them up at a campsite each night with the mains hook up. The down side was that brake lights, wipers, headlights and indicators all used up the valuable electricity and had to be used minimally.

We spent an enjoyable couple of days here and ate both nights in a local restaurant where the owner, Kristoff, poured Schnapps down our necks on a regular basis. On both occasions Dandy was pleased to see that the bill was less than thirty Euros.

We had picked the only town in that area without a bank or a cash line machine. A train line ran close to the site so we decided to have an adventure on a high speed train to Spittal an der Drau. It cost us 12.5 Euros for the return trip so we’ll never complain about bank charges again.


Our train in Austria

Because of the van problems and the poor weather forecast we had scrapped our plans to go over the Grosglockner and had decided on a less demanding route through Italy. I was disappointed but thought it best.

Day Twenty Three -Thursday 29th July 2010

We were up quite early and packed the last few bits and pieces into the van. Dandy had checked the oil levels and declared that ‘she hadn’t used a drop of oil’. I smiled wryly and thought ‘apart from the two gallons that had emptied itself all over the side, underside of the van and the poor gits following behind us’.

We had decided to pay a visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina, a well known tourist destination. So we set a route on Thomas and off we went. We were stopped at a border checkpoint by an armed policeman and his mate who rigorously checked our documents and asked us various questions about our insurance. Things weren’t looking good, it seemed that our only option was to head back on the road we’d come on and try to purchase insurance in a town about 60 miles away. Suddenly the conversation took a new turn and after finding out that we were from Edinburgh Dandy and official chap had an engaging conversation about Hearts FC who had been gubbed by a Sarajevo club in a UEFA Cup match a few years previously. A sudden change of heart and he waved us across the border. His mate had a prosthetic arm, probably blown off in the war 16 years previously, an armed man without an arm I thought!

I had been to Bosnia two years previously and had visited the city of Mostar where the bridge was blown up and most of the city shelled during the conflict of the early 90’s so I thought I knew what to expect. As we drove into Bosnia we had a feeling that we shouldn’t really be there. I was driving and wasn’t too confident about the insurance situation and given Dandy’s fidgeting and barking he wasn’t either. We found the area and the small towns quite depressing after Croatia, so after a few hours we decided to head back to Croatia and chalk it down to experience.

We found a great campsite nearby the Plitvice Lakes National Park, Dandy’s eyes were out on stalks at all the fancy camper vans. We found a nice spot, cracked open a couple of beers and people watched, one of our favourite pastimes. We ate in the local restaurant that evening and had a great meal washed down by a litre of local ‘yellow’ wine.

Day Twenty Four – Friday 30th July, 2010

Dandy was dispatched to get milk and bread for breakfast from the campsite shop. Sometime later he returned empty handed and looking rather sheepish. He admitted to having got involved in conversations with other camper van owners en route and the shop was closed by the time he got there. I held my tongue as I know what he’s like.
We set off towards Ljubljana in Slovenia with very little fuel and Thomas was being absolutely no help in trying to find us some, he seems to be an expert in locating fuel stations that went out of business many years before! We rolled into a small town on the border of Croatia and Slovenia and we were shocked to see so many shell attacked houses next to undamaged ones and could only surmise that when the war was taking place it had turned neighbour against neighbour during the ethnic cleansing. We found out from a local cafe owner that the area used to border Serbia and was the scene of terrible fighting. We stopped to view an outdoor homelands war museum in the same town, which was quite shocking as well.



Two Mig jets at the museum and one of the shell blasted houses

In Slovenia the roads were narrow and the driving just plain silly, they seemed to have no idea what the white line down the centre of the road means, Dandy predicted we’d see a crash that day, I hoped that we wouldn’t be involved in it. He was right and we saw two, neither involved us! Being a right hand drive vehicle the driver had to rely on the passenger to check for oncoming traffic at junctions, we had a bit of an altercation that day as Dandy couldn’t distinguish my ‘go’ from my ‘no’. We compromised with ‘go’ being replaced with ‘yes’ which I found quite difficult to remember.

We started to look for a campsite late afternoon and found quite a basic one beside a river. I got out to inspect the toilets as I feel that it is quite important to have clean loos, they didn’t meet my high standards. When I came out I was aware of a heated argument going on. Being a nosey type I took a stroll in the general direction of the voices to witness an angry Frenchman and a hippyish looking woman with a baby in a pushchair shouting at each other. I went to tell Dandy about it and he being the nosey type too wandered over and struck up a conversation with partner of hippyish woman about places to go in Slovenia. The argument had ceased by now and the man was very helpful and recommended that rather than head for the touristy area around Lake Bled we should head west towards the Slovenian Alps. The chap was dressed very strangely in brown corduroy breeches, a harlequin type top and funny pointy shoes, a small sign on the back of their van read ‘small elf on board’ so we surmised from this that they were a family of elves on holiday, they looked liked extras from a Lord of the Rings film.

His advice was good and the scenery was amazing. It was getting late and we’d hoped to stumble across a campsite or small hotel but we saw nothing and it was now 8pm. Thomas had informed us that there were no campsites in Slovenia at all. Finally when we were ready to give up and camp out at the side of the road we came across a guest house high up in the mountains and looking down the valley. I negotiated with the owner in my best Slovene and we got a nice room and evening meal for a reasonable price. Mine host served up a hearty meal of goulash type broth followed by chocolate pancakes washed down with some local ale.


Outside the guesthouse in Slovenia

We had been told that a woman would probably be arriving late and leaving early in the room next to us and to expect some minor disturbance. We retired to bed but the pulse laden broth had played havoc with Dandy’s alimentary canal and he relieved his wind problems loudly outside the bedroom doors in the early hours so as not to disturb me. He had thought that the woman had left and he was safe to do this but it transpired that she was still in her room with her door slightly ajar and had probably witnessed the full trumpet voluntary.

Week Two in Pirovac, Croatia 23/7 – 28/7/2010

We decided on an excursion to the nearby Krka National Park to see the waterfalls (or ‘slaps’ in Croatian), it was a stinking hot day but it wasn’t too far away and the AC in the Hiace was working wonderfully which kept the kids quiet.
We paid up our entrance fee, boarded a non air conditioned bus and headed to the drop off point. It was an oasis of tropical beauty in an otherwise barren, arid landscape. As we tramped around the walkways the only thing that impaired our enjoyment was the other people. A sign indicated a large number of reptiles indigenous to that area, a number of which were scary poisonous snakes. A young, overweight, spoilt German child was clearly upset by the thought of encountering these evil beasts and as she was particularly annoying we took great delight in regularly pointing up to trees in mock horror and shouting ‘schlang’ while making loud hissing noises.

We stopped at the main waterfall area which absolutely stunning, tiers of water cascaded down to a large pool over a span of hundreds of feet. People were swimming in the lower pool and it wasn’t long before Caroline and Dandy were in too. Michael seemed quite reticent to join them and spent some time fiddling with my video camera. When I quizzed him about this he admitted to secretly filming some young, bikini clad, nubile fillies that he referred to as ‘water fluffies’.



The Krka Park falls

Back up at the entrance area, we were hungry and ordered some overpriced, flabby, meat sandwiches, 3 beers and a soft drink for Caroline. Again, lost in translation,only 2 beers and 2 soft drinks arrived. Dandy and I claimed the beers and we persuaded Michael that he must look too young to be drinking alcohol. He wasn’t best pleased and ranted a lot while slyly consuming my beer.

We then drove round a circuitous mountain route to the higher ‘Roski Slap’ falls and although they were not quite as spectacular as the others we enjoyed the peace and tranquillity of the area and a lack of very annoying tourists, which we do not consider ourselves to be! Caroline was straight back into the water and perfected her dives off the pier which Dandy had been teaching her to do. We persuaded her to stand under a waterfall to have her photo taken and by the time Dandy had fumbled about with the exposure settings her shoulders were bruising with the weight of water. She admitted after to always having a desire to stand under a waterfall but now knows it’s not such a clever idea. Returned home tired but happy after a great day, further enthused about another aspect of Croatia.



Caroline under the waterfall

Another fantastic day out was spent in Trogir, a bustling walled town and port brimming with boats and yachts. One in particular caught our eye. It was completely over the top and we were curious to find out who it belonged to as it was so opulent that we thought it must be someone famous. It turned out to be a private charter and some old dude in a white sailors cap came out on deck at one point to exchange niceties with a rather effeminate deck hand who was busy fiddling with the yacht’s buoys! On the way home we stopped to get the windscreen cleaned at a service station and to give Michael a treat. Dandy had mentioned the Croation window washing fluffies in their tight t shirts, alas they had knocked off for the evening and Michael had to wash the windscreen himself.


Michael observing fluffies at Krka NP

Michael’s disappointment spilled over into the evening and after dinner in one of our favourite restaurants (sexy waiter one) Dandy and Michael squared up to one another and Michael ended up wearing a glass of water. They soon kissed and made up, and Caroline’s take on the event was that ‘no one drowned’.

Michael’s sunglasses were causing a problem, they didn’t fit his face too well and were uncomfortable. Dandy thought that he could adjust them using a little gentle heat such as a hairdryer on a low setting. However he spotted the toaster and thought that would do the trick, end result was one melted lens which he hoped Michael would not notice! Needless to say he did and Dandy took Michael shopping for a new pair of glasses.

An appealing feature of our little town of Pirovac was the inspiring and imaginative local entertainment. This ranged from blues bands, local folk music, dancers in national costume and rock bands, all of which took place on the seafront, 100 yards from our wee house. The folky evening also had stalls set up with local food and wine tastings, particularly handy as we hadn’t bothered to eat much that night. Dandy and Michael clambered up on an electricity box to use as a vantage point to watch the dancers. One particular beauty in a scarlet dress, split thigh high, attracted Michael’s attention and Dandy had to reprimand him for uttering ‘get your tits oot for the lads’.
Mozzies were a problem and we all suffered quite bad reactions from our various bites despite spraying ourselves liberally each evening. One morning Dandy found a bloater by the bed (it wasn’t me!). He squashed it and to his disgust it was full of blood, its contents could have come in useful by the blood transfusion service. That evening he found 8 or more bites on his Percy, and quite a lot of swelling in the region. I might have thought that this was a bonus but no, he was now out of bounds for any sort of nocturnal activity. As I document this he is still waiting for the bites to go away and most mornings he commands ‘get your glasses on’ and I have to scrutinise Percy and comment on any improvement from the previous day. He’s not obsessive at all of course.

Michael got to fulfil an ambition by getting to ride a jet bike after Dandy convinced the owner, Mrs Pneumatic Tits, that he was 21. He took his sister out for a short spin before blasting out across the bay on his own following Dandy’s tips on how to handle the machine. On the last day of the kid’s holiday he hired it again while Dandy and I cruised around on a pedalo like a couple of geriatrics.
We said goodbye to our neighbour, Mrs Doofang, and bought her pastries and a bottle of local hooch to express our thanks at her friendliness and humbling hospitality. We took photos and kissed and shook hands. We were showered with gifts of plums, ham and homemade lavender bags.



Caroline's first taste of watermelon


We took the kids to the airport on the Wednesday evening to catch the 20.05 Edinburgh flight. We arrived later than planned, as usual, to find the tiny airport awash with people queuing for four Ryanair flights all due out in the space of an hour. There was no way that the kids were going to get through security in time but after much queue jumping and negotiating we got them near the front and they got to the gate on time. It was really horrible watching them go from me through the gate. We watched the plane take off into the beautiful sunset and I have to admit to feeling really upset and emotional. Dandy wasn’t feeling good either but his way of dealing with this was to tinker with the automatic gearbox cable to enable a smoother change. Back at the apartment we couldn’t settle, we really missed them both. We went out for a drink but it didn’t feel right and we went to bed earlyish ready to start the next stage of the holiday.

We were sad to leave the lovely little town of Pirovac, we had a really relaxing two weeks after the trauma of the first week. The only aspect we were not going to miss was the nearby church bells at 6.00am each day summoning the masses to mass, Dandy found this to be hypocritical when they tend to spend three hours in bed each afternoon when we were likely to need bits for the van!