Campsites and Aires – Page 2 – Judy and Valerie On the Road

Dubrovnik

From Kučiste we drove to Mlini, just south of Dubrovnik and stayed at a lovely little campsite, Camping Kate. We were glad we got there early as it was full by the evening. From there we took the water taxi to Dubrovnik, a beautiful half hour journey which took us right to the entrance to the old town. Through a website called Freetour.com we had booked a tour guide called Marco who took a group of about 15 of us on a just under two hour tour of the city. Marco was great. He spoke good English and he spoke loudly and clearly. He was very engaging and very interesting. We learned all sorts of things, including that Dubrovnik was founded by Greeks in the 7th century, managed to avoid being taken over by Venice and was an independent state for 500 years until Napoleon turned up in 1806.

Dubrovnik is very beautiful with its pale yellow stone buildings. Its pavements too are made of yellow stone and are very shiny, making the whole city seem very light. It’s also very clean. It has lots of narrow cobbled streets, enticing gift shops and wonderful gelati. What it doesn’t have much of is ordinary shops because, as Marco explained to us, ordinary people don’t live there any more. Instead they rent their properties to tourists. It also has no advertising in the streets. Shops are only allowed to advertise on street lamps!

Dubrovnik was the main filming location in Croatia for King’s Landing, the capital of the Seven Kingdoms in Game of Thrones and the city is full of shops selling merchandise. Some tours take you around all the filming locations.

The view of Dubrovnik from above was stunning with its red roofs. Our guide Marco told us that originally the roofs had been the yellow / grey colour of the local stone, but as a result of the attack on Bosnia during the homeland war in 1991 many buildings lost their roofs. When the war ended, France donated new roofs to help with the restoration of the city and those were terracotta.

Campsite

Just across the road from the campsite was a restaurant where we were able to have a delicious meal on our last night in Croatia.

Peljesac Peninsular

Our third campsite in Croatia has been a delightful small family run site on the Peljesac Peninsular called Camping Palme in the village of Kučiste. We are on the front edge of the site, right by the sea. Fantastic. The sea is crystal clear, calm and warm enough for swimming before breakfast.

We discovered a lovely little wine bar called Dino’s not far from the campsite where you can sample local wines by the glass whilst looking out at a wonderful view of the sea and neighbouring island. We asked if they had any snacks we could have with the wine and this is what they brought. Both the rosé and the white were delicious. Didn’t manage to get on to the red as we still had to cycle back to the van.

Cycling along the coast we stopped for lunch at a restaurant by the sea and had a variety of vegetable dishes – all delicious.

Lunch – Djuvec rice, chard with potatoes and olive oil and roasted mushrooms

On the way back Valerie took a detour up a mountain to a Franciscan monastery above Orebic. “It was a steep 1km climb, partly cycling but mostly walking, up to the Franciscan monastery above Orebic. But it was worth it for the view of Korčuk and the other smaller islands.”

Trogir

We stayed at Amadria Park Camping. It’s a very large site but extremely well run and with an ACSI card costs 23€.

From the campsite it was a lovely half hour boat trip to the medieval town of Trogir, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. With its narrow cobbled streets and beautiful buildings of pale yellow stone it’s delightful. Unfortunately that makes it a popular destination for cruise ships, so we kept becoming overwhelmed by large groups of people wearing identical red boxes round their necks (so they could listen to their tour guide).

The first pharmacy in Europe was established in one of the houses on Trogir’s main square.

The coffee is very good in Croatia so naturally when Valerie spotted a shop selling the Trogir speciality Rafioli , we had to buy one and head for a cafe. The recipe for Rafioli is of course a closely guarded secret but apparently its main ingredients are almonds, butter, rum and citrus peel. So, not surprisingly, it was delicious.

Paklenica

Here’s a picture of the view from our campsite in Paklenica. (Campsite NacionalNI Park). The campsite was very near the entrance to the Paklenica National Park. We didn’t stay long there because thunderstorms were forecast but we managed a short walk in the morning while the weather was still good.

As it was a public holiday for Croatia National Day (lots of red, white and blue flags 🇭🇷 everywhere), a lot of people were out and about. Many of them – some of them quite small children – were rock climbing or learning how to.

Stops en-route to Croatia

We took three days to drive to Croatia via Germany and Austria. After Belgium the stops were:

Car park in Hochspeyer (park4night) by an outdoor swimming pool. Very well set up stop with all facilities. N49° 26′ 28″ E 7° 53′ 35″
Car park in Siegsdorf (park4night) by a railway station. Went to a very nice Italian restaurant – Il Porcino. N47° 49′ 17″ E 12° 38′ 45″
Parking lot Vrhoulne, Croatia (park4night) – couldn’t quite make it to our destination N44° 51′ 7″ E 15° 25′ 27″

First stop Belgium

Spent our first night in a little town called Veurne just across the Belgian border. A pleasant town – completely dead by 9pm, but buzzy in the morning with people doing their shopping. Stayed in a parking area by a canal. Very pretty and it has somewhere to empty the toilet cassette. What could be better??

GPS N 51° 4’ 14” E 2° 39’ 56”

Valladolid

Valladolid was our first stop. There’s a great camper stop in a car park near the city centre for €5 per night (see park4nite).

To get to the centre you have to cross over the river Pisuerga and the town have made great walks along the river bank, bringing in sand to make a beach for bathing.

We went out for something to eat and just happened upon a Tapas bar called Jero. There was a queue outside of people waiting to get in before it had even opened at about 8pm. So we were lucky and able to get a table.

Delicious prawns on mushrooms!!

Thessaloniki Camperstop

The official Camperstop in Thessaloníki proved completely unusable. It was full of trucks going in and out but also so steep the levellers kept sliding away!

But then we found this place on Park4night. Right by the sea, fantastic view, just a big space that the flats use for parking. And Valerie made friends with Makis who has his joinery workshop there plus a vegetable garden and arranged, in Greek, for us to stay here.

Hike in Eastern Pelion

We started from our campsite at Papa Nero intending to follow the trail over to Damouchari and then up to Mouresi where we would have lunch. Imagine our surprise on finding that we had reached our lunch goal at 11am. Then we realised that this was only half of the walk and the second part went up to Kissos the other side of the valley and after a quick Google discovered it was the highest village in East Pelion. Never daunted we set off, now doing our ascent in the hotter part of the day … and that’s not all.

I was using a map from Avenza Maps downloaded onto my iPhone which then tracks your progress. Sounds good but the map is a simplified format and the way marked red arrows and dots on rocks and trees only seemed to appear when there were no options. The path went across a large stream, but the stepping stones were submerged. Fortunately neither of us fell in but Valerie did get rather wet feet. Then of course we lost the path. After wandering around following tracks for about an hour we came across the right path again and followed it down to the river crossing. “Oh good a proper bridge” … and then we saw it close up!

But it was a lovely walk with lush vegetation, flowers, ferns, sweet chestnut trees, lovely birdsong and beehives.

By the time we’d had something to eat it was about 4:30 so we decided to get a taxi back. My iPhone thought I’d climbed 187 flights of stairs!!

Mycenae

Revisted Mycenae after having read Pat Barker’s Silence of the Girls. Felt we now knew more about Agememnon and the site would be more meaningful. It’s an amazing place and I get a real sense of the past from being there. The beehive tombs are extraordinary pieces of architecture and it must have been so exciting to have discovered them.

Lion gate
Lion Gate Mycenae
Grave circle
Grave circle
Back gate to the citadel
Entrance to the beehive tomb of Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra
Ceiling of beehive tomb of Clytemnestra

The museum contains some good examples of pottery 3000 years old with descriptions of history of the period.

And lastly, we stayed overnight at a camperstop by a cafe just down the road from the site. Very friendly guy running the place. It would have been better if we’d spent less time on breakfast and got to the site earlier, but what a fabulous location

Eggs and avo on toast