Friday 13 th started off as you’d expect it to: raining and cold and with a puncture😡
We’d seen the weather forecast announcing a few wet, cool days, but didn’t expect it to be so dramatic. Only 48 hours previously we’d woken up to a day of blue skies and were cycling topless, (only me, in case you’re wondering!) and now we were searching for the heating controls in our 8 th floor apartment.
Fortunately our host felt sorry for us and kindly let us stay put until noon, when the heavy rain was due to turn to drizzle.
This gave me time to fix the puncture, only to find the valve was perished as it entered the tube, and the moment I had pumped it to full pressure, it ruptured completely😡
Time to find a bike shop and get another spare tube, as only one now remaining.
Our plan was for a short day, as we only started at 1pm. We decided to follow a man made lake to our next town.
It would have been a huge project as the river Drava flows through relatively flat land and in order to contain the water, a massive dyke had to be constructed all around it. It is a 12 km long reservoir!
A 12 km long gravel track at the foot of this dyke, along which a crystal clear river flowed, with lots of bird life: mostly Sand Martins of which there were hundreds
We left this cold lake and joined the busy road into Varazdin. We were tempted to find warmth in this bar. Unfortunately, it was on the other side of the road and the name put us off somewhat.
We headed into town and found a bike shop where a very helpful, english speaking guy fixed Sue’s gear problem, sold us a spare tube and some gloves, as our hands were freezing!! Annoyingly I’d decided not to bring our gloves as I certainly didn’t expect 12 degree weather in September! According to the forecast we’ve another 2 days of cold wintery days before we see more normal temperatures return.
We enjoyed a good meal in a cosy restaurant, decorated with many football shirts and memorabilia. As the heroic Croatian football team manager is a regular.
We returned to our “Craft beer pub”, under our room, and decided to have a pint of Croatia’s finest. Unfortunately they were hosting an 18th birthday party, so it was a bit noisy and smokey. We enjoyed a chat with the a young english speaking barman and sought more information about the impressive reservoir we’d passed…He didn’t even know it was there!!!!
The party didn’t really get going, (Most of them were on their phones) so with smarting eyes and stinking clothes we finished our drinks and went to bed.
Euro Vélo Route 6 