Well I am in Croatia now, the ironic part was that the Slovenian passport control took a close look at my passport but the Croatians just waived me through. Completed only 39 km of the trail today and staying in the village of Grozdjan (just beat a thunderstorm which petered out anyway). Very old town as you can see from the photos (the last ones) - even the Venetians were here too (as in Piran). In fact this region - Istria - was Italian for a long time and all the signs are bilingual. Lots of tourists (particularly Germans, they find everything) and tour groups and rightly so; it's a small town on top of a hill (the highest pint of the trail), surrounded by a stone wall, with pretty buildings and great views down below. I am very tired as it was a lot harder than I expected. No bitumen on this track (although it did parallel the road at times) as in Slovenia and Italy but rough gravel cart tracks. Thankfully I am on a mountain bike and I have reached the highest point of the trail. Apart from that it was reasonably straight forward with the signs showing the trail being fairly good. I did get slowed down by a flock of sheep which were paying no attention to the commands of their owners. Also met an older German who was staying in Koper and swimming and doing bike rides - in a week he amassed over 450km. He didn't speak English but we managed t communicate in a pidgin Geman. You have got to credit these anti-couch potatoes. Talking about communication, the owner of the apartment I am staying at only speaks Croatian, German and Italian but Croatian is close enough to Slovenian for me to understand him and him me.
I still have 57km to ride tomorrow to get to the end of the trail at the port of Porec, so tomorrow will be interesting. I think I mentioned this before but the Parenzana cycle trail follows the old route of the Trieste to Porec railway which crossed Istria - these days crossing three countries.
Anyway enjoy the photos....
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