Our planned journey from
the island of Krk to Istria in the north west of Croatia was a short one and we
decided to take our time before setting off.
I had started planning
one of the final stages of out trip, namely preparing Mabel and Smarty for
their trip to New Zealand. Smarty was booked in with Smart Car Specialists in
Guildford for a service and check of the towing system. Her speedo face is only
calibrated in mph will be replaced with one in kph and, hopefully, the odometer
will be converted to read kilometres. I couldn’t find anything on that being a
requirement in NZ and didn’t think it was a game breaker either way. Mabel
needs some warranty work doing and a few things replacing that we have broken
along the way such as a new handle for the grill plan to replace that which we
grilled. To me about the only significant work required was the cruise control
which gives up on hills and the satnav which only works when it feels like it,
which wasn’t often. I had emailed Elite with a list and photographs of things
that needed doing. They had responded saying the cruise control was something
for a Fiat dealer but they should be able to do the remainder on 6 November,
less than a week before we planned to take Mabel to Southampton docks to be
shipped home.
I checked the Auto Trail
warranty, there were indeed split responsibilities with Fiat being responsible
for the bit they supplied to Auto Trail and Elite the rest. A very strange
arrangement in my view. I emailed Elite saying I would like some certainty that
everything would be fixed on the agreed date and repeating my offer to drop by
a few weeks beforehand for them to have a look and order all the parts
required. I found a Fiat commercial dealer on the same industrial estate in
Guildford as Smart Car Specialists. Their service department would call back
later in the morning.
We started to get Mabel
ready for the road. When sweeping pine needles off the awning I noticed there
were also numerous spots of pine sap which we set about removing with kitchen
cleaner. In leaning on the awning to reach some of the furthest spots there was
a loud crack and the front end of the awning sagged. I added that to the list
of things for Elite to attend to.
Having dumped our grey
waste in what we subsequently discovered was the car wash area we headed off
under grey skies re-crossing the bridges to the mainland where we didn’t have
to pay a toll. Unlike me, Jane successfully negotiated the roundabout seemingly
designed by Escher
having a bad day. From there we followed the coast road towards Rijeka. Satnav
wasn’t happy showing a U-turn 11km ahead. Jane wanted to turn back, but I could
see from our road atlas that we could keep going and join the motorway that
would take us west into Istria. Just before reaching the motorway satnav
instructed us to do a U turn. Jane took a lot or persuading to press on.
The Fiat dealer in
Guildford returned my call. In spite of being listed in the Fiat Camper Assist
book that came with Mabel, they couldn’t handle a vehicle Mabel’s size in their
workshop. He recommended Thames in Slough who dealt with the larger Fiat
vehicles.
We pressed on and a
convoluted interchange dropped us onto the motorway high above Rijeka. After
that it was easy going on the motorway in light rain as far as Opatija from where we took a local road that
skirted round the hilltop town of Buzet.
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| Convoluted Interchange In The Sky |
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| Buzet |
A few kilometres west of Buzet we
turned off climbing a steep hill with numerous ‘serpentinas’ to the hilltop
town of Motovun. The camping ground there was more of a parking area suited to
day visitors to the town than a camping ground. The pitches were too narrow to
put out an awning, not that we wanted to in the cool and damp weather
conditions. The facilities comprised of just one shower and WC for each sex,
but there were chemical toilet disposal and grey waste disposal points.
We found ourselves a
pitch close to the facilities and got Mabel’s rear wheels onto the tops of the
cheeses after a bit of a struggle spinning her front wheels on the loose
gravel.
For lunch we ate a tin of
Croatian soup selected at random from a supermarket. We knew that the base
ingredient was Grah (haricot beans) that came with pieces of sausage. The beans were
much bigger than the baked beans we had been used to and came in a spicy sauce.
It was delicious.
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| Grah and Sausage |
We spent the afternoon
reading and blogging as heavy rain started falling outside.
For dinner I cooked pasta
with salami and garlic mushrooms. Our two trivia quizzes averaged the usual
10/15. Jane was feeling under the weather and had an early night while I
watched a documentary on the Concorde crash in Paris in 2000.
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| Today's Trip (118km) |
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