Wednesday, 4 June, 2025 – Saturday, 14 June, 2025
It is a bit weird to start cycling again. In the last 6 months we got used to all the luxuries that one can get at home. We again started to take for granted things like electricity, tap water, hot showers, warm beds, the internet, security of home, and much more. We were shocked how easy it was to “forget” all of the struggling and suffering on the road—we had to actively think about being grateful for the luxuries of home.
After gaining a ton of experiences on the first part of the trip that ended in Mexico, we knew exactly what we wanted to change for the second part. We had detailed lists of equipment that we wanted to switch or leave at home and a few more items that we would take with us for the next trip. What we didn’t have anymore was the bliss of ignorance. This time, we knew exactly what we were getting ourselves into. We knew that it would be hard—mentally way more than physically. We will again be homeless in a sense, always on the move, often trying to hide somewhere through the night.
And one more thing: we would start at day one again. This might not seem like a big deal, but as the days passed on the first part of the trip, and that number grew, so did our confidence alongside the amazement of people that we’ve met. We would lose the ability to say, “We’re on the road for a hundred-and-something days”—we will have to earn it again.
But without a doubt we can say that we’re excited to start bike touring again. For us, the pros of traveling like this more than outweigh the cons that we’ve mentioned above. All the people we’ve met in the first part had a huge impact on our trip, and even more so on our mindset. There’s hardly any day that we don’t remember at least one person and what we’ve learned from them. From the kindness that we’ve seen to different lifestyles, life lifeviews, and what’s important to different people. We’ve learned so much; we’re slowly discovering what we want in life and what is important for us, and we see how much everyone we’ve met on the trip impacted us. We would like to take this opportunity to thank again everyone who we’ve met on the first part of our trip; thank you for your kindness, all of the conversations, for letting us in your homes, for allowing us to meet your families and friends, and for everything that we’ve learned from you. We hope that some of you still remember us once in a while and maybe check online where we are. Also, thank you to everyone who we’re still (occasionally) in contact with; we love to hear from you. Now, as we’re looking in the future, we hope that we will meet even more of the amazing people like that.
Also, there’s one more new thing with us—we bought a drone for this trip, so we will include some of the pictures and videos from that. Hopefully, this will give us an additional way to show you where we are and to give a new perspective on the surrounding area.
Day 1 of our trip started like most of our previous trips—there was still plenty to do before we left. We woke up early and packed a few of the last things on the bikes (we already had most of our stuff on them for the last 3 days), and then we started to check off the last of the things from our to-do list. We still had a ton of planning to do, especially what roads we wanted to take, what we wanted to see, where we would sleep, etc. But neither of us was surprised when we had almost none of it planned—there will be some improvisation on the go.
At 11 AM we were finally ready. We finished most of the important tasks and decided to leave the rest of them to do on the road. Route wise, we were still far from having it planned; the first two weeks were covered, then we will improvise from there.
We started at Iris’s home close to Cerknica in Slovenia, and we knew the roads ahead of us since we decided to do a similar start to the trip two years ago when we visited some of the Croatian islands.
To say that we are in great cycling form would be an overstatement. We didn’t assemble our bikes after coming home from Mexico (in December) until the middle of May, just a few weeks before the start of this trip. In this time, we did probably between 100 and 200 kilometers, with the longest ride less than 20 kilometers. Also, all of that was done with empty bikes. Nevertheless, we decided on a start date, hoping that we would get in shape along the way. Before we left, we weighed our bikes to see if we managed to reduce their weight a little bit. Fully loaded without water, our bikes weighed 45kg and 42kg. Out of that weight, we had a bit over 10kg of food, which meant that we will be lighter in the future.
Contrary to our expectations, we did almost 50 kilometers on the first day and 85 kilometers on the second one. It wasn’t as hard as we expected it to be, besides our butts hurting more and more each day. At least our knees weren’t getting sore; we can deal with some pain in the ass.
Nothing special happened for the first two days. We already knew the road, we decided where we would sleep in advance, and it was a lot of downhill. From Cerknica we cycled to Ilirska Bistrica, and we slept right before the Croatian border. We crossed the border in Jelšane, then continued south to Rijeka. From there, we followed the coastline, crossing a bridge to the island of Krk, and slept on the second night less than two kilometers before the ferry. In the morning of day 3, we boarded the ferry to the island of Rab and spent most of the day there, enjoying our time on the sandy beach. Toward the evening, we rode across the island to the city of Rab. Our plan was to take the ferry from Rab to Novalja, on the island of Pag, but this is where we encountered our first troubles on our journey. We weren’t careful enough when we planned this boat ride, and we assumed that it would be a ferry that we would board, but in reality it was a catamaran boat for around 300 passengers (without cars). We still tried our luck and asked if they could take our bikes on the boat, but with no success.
No problem, we were willing to change our plans, and luckily we didn’t buy any tickets in advance. So we changed directions and turned from the city of Rab toward Mišnjak, from where we could take a regular ferry boat (that we already knew from the past) to the Croatian mainland. The only appropriate spot that we could find for sleeping was a couple of kilometers before the ferry, but on the slope, so we kept sliding down inside the tent the whole night.
But this change of plans didn’t affect just us; Iris’s parents planned to visit us on Saturday, day 4, and it wouldn’t be on the island of Pag anymore. We got on the ferry early in the morning and started the climb uphill from the port on the mainland. Somewhere in the middle of the climb, Iris’s parents caught us with their car, so we put our bikes on the roof and drove around 60 kilometers to campground Šibuljina, where we stayed for one night together.
The number of our daily kilometers kept on falling, partly because of our limited options to camp in the wild or because we decided that we could use some rest. Either way, we moved only 20 kilometers south on Sunday, day 5. In Croatia, wild camping isn’t allowed because the country lives off of tourism. We’re not sure about bivouacking—setting up a tent after dark and continuing early in the morning—but we didn’t want to risk getting caught, so we did our best to stay hidden. We’ve heard that high penalties of a few hundred euros per person are mostly aimed toward preventing people in campervans from simply parking somewhere and sleeping, and hopefully, we’ll never find out what happens in our case. Anyway, we’ve decided to stay in campgrounds when we won’t have any other options, or when we would need a break, or come across a beautiful campground where we would want to stay.
On day 6 we finally started to move again. We woke up early and started cycling at around 7:30. At noon, we had already made 60 kilometers, then we took a break for lunch. This was the only day that we came across several turtles that have tried to cross the road. We stopped 8 times to move them to safety. Our next goal was a campground close to Primošten, 55 kilometers further down the coastal road. We felt like we could do it in a single day, but we would arrive there late in the evening, completely exhausted. When we pay for the campground, we want to maximize our time there, so coming in late feels like the complete opposite. So we decided to sleep somewhere outside, then get into the campground the next morning. After 15 additional kilometers, we found an appropriate spot a bit off the road, under a few olive trees.
It was 11 AM on Tuesday, day 7, and we were at the entrance of Camp Adriatic, close to Primošten. We knew the campground from previous visits, and it’s one of our favorites in Croatia. The fresh smell and relaxed atmosphere under the pine trees, extremely clean and clear seawater, clean bathrooms, and kind personnel. And still, we were extremely surprised when we entered the reception for the check-in. We explained that we’d arrived by bicycles, would like to stay for 2 nights, and that we have only one small tent. We were told that we could stay in the “open camping area” of the campground, free of charge, with the words, “No one will notice”. That lady saved us around 40-50 euros.
“Open camping area” in the campground is an area without fixed, marked-out pitches, where you usually pay only per person, not for the full pitch with electricity and water. At the time we were there, it was mostly empty; there were only 2 other tents, so we had plenty of space to choose from.
Day 8 was our rest day. We spent the day reading books and swimming, did some route planning ahead, and caught up with Instagram and the blog. We were mostly following the road called “Jadranska magistrala” or “Adriatic Highway” in English. It’s the coastal road that runs along the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea, mainly through Croatia, but also through parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It’s known for its scenic beauty, twisting curves, and cliffside views of the Adriatic.
South from Primošten, around the city of Split, we expected about 100 kilometers of mostly urban area, without many options to find a free spot for camping. So, when we left the campground in Primošten, we had already decided on the campground for the next night on day 9—Camp Almissa in Omiš, almost 80 kilometers away. It seemed appropriate to put in more kilometers since we just had a day off. Most of the time, we were riding right next to the sea; the temperatures were high, and we were eager to jump into the water. But even though there were a ton of beautiful beaches with clear water and everything from small pebbles to big rocks, we decided to keep on going, with a desire to get into the next campground as soon as possible.
Well, we’ve learned a new lesson that day—when you see a beautiful spot, stop and jump into the water. When we got to the campground, there was only a sandy beach with a lot of seagrass in the sea. The clear water or pebbled beaches were nowhere to be seen (this is mostly our fault, since we didn’t take time to check pictures of the campground online). Also, we were a bit shocked by the price they gave us—we said that we didn’t need a pitch or electricity, only a small spot to sleep for the night, and we got an offer for 44€ for us to set up a tent in the parking lot. We managed to get a better deal for a pitch for 33€ (which makes no sense). We felt better after Iris went into the nearby store and bought ice cream, bananas, and whipped cream—we were making our own banana split! It seemed appropriate since we passed the town named Split on that day.
We were woken up by the heavy wind during the night, and when we got up on the morning of day 10, the wind was still going strong. Unluckily for us, it was blowing directly in our faces, which didn’t help when we had to climb uphill. A bad combination of a strong headwind and a lot of uphill made day 10 our most tiring one yet. It wasn’t the longest by the distance or the highest by the ascent, but after the first 30 kilometers, we were both willing to call it a day. It got so bad at one point that we had to pedal downhill in our easy gears to keep moving. But, there was a goal in our mind—it was Friday, and tomorrow Primož’s parents were about to come visit us in Žigovošče, so we wanted to get there by the evening. The thought of good food and comfort for the next two days kept us moving, and we did a total of 65 kilometers on that day. It helped that the second half had fewer climbs and that the road turned a bit and the wind got partly blocked by the surrounding mountains. Anyway, we decided we were too tired to deal with hiding, so we found a cheaper campground to stay for the night. The receptionist there felt a bit sorry for us because of the heat, so we even got a small discount. 🙂
Two full days of relaxation—this is what was ahead of us on day 11. It was Saturday morning, and Primož’s parents and their dog Rozi came for a visit. We went to a nearby campground, Dole. We did some necessary work—washed and dried all of our clothes, recharged electronics, and planned ahead.
For the last few days, we started to think more about the route ahead of us. With the goal of reaching Istanbul in Turkey, we’ve found out that the countries Albania, Macedonia, and north of Greece (where we planned to go through) are all very mountainous. Since we were already struggling with the smaller hills on the Croatian coast, we needed to do something about it. The possibility of magically getting more in cycling shape wasn’t very high, so the second-best option was to reduce our weight as much as possible. When we were planning for the second part of the trip, we already had a big discussion about every item on the packing list and how necessary it was, and we managed to leave some of them at home. But when you’re slowly pushing uphill, it’s much easier to decide what you don’t need. At those times, we would gladly throw away half of our things.
Since we had the perfect opportunity to send things back with parents, we got rid of as much as we could. Almost everything that wasn’t completely necessary went on the pile, and at the end, we got rid of 7.5 kilograms of weight. The next part of the trip will be meant as a test ride—if we see that we’re missing something, we can still take it with us on the flight from Istanbul, when Primož’s parents will come to visit us one more time.
Some more pictures:
😘😘, 🍀🍀…