Daredevil of Dalmatia
Angry vipers were the least of Sebastian O’Kelly’s worries on a Croatia cycling adventure
The hiss of a venomous snake is surprisingly loud – but then, I had made it grumpy by missing its tail by a fraction with the front wheel of my bicycle. For a second I had thought I was going to fall on top of it, with the guide behind me piling into my rear. Then he too heard the sound. We stopped and both got a good look at the tell-tale, zig-zag skin and triangular head of the best-avoided asp viper before it slithered off.
Snakes had not been foremost of my concerns about cycling around Dalmatia, on Croatia’s Adriatic coast, but there were plenty of them coming out in the sun. They are not much of a hazard, except to themselves – and they are nothing compared to taking a mountain bike down from the great, white, limestone wall of the Dalmatian mountain range.
Riding over rocks the size of rugby balls, which will pitch you over the handlebars if you get it wrong, it took me more than two hours to make our 1,200m descent.
My base to explore Croatia was Zadar. Its walled, Venetian centre still has some elegance, but it was badly bombed by the British in the 1940s and shelled again during the Yugoslavian civil war 30 years ago. The upside of this destruction is that the old Roman forum is now revealed – then the location of religious, political and social activities – and it remains the centre of the town.
The Dalmatian mountains are around 20km back from the coast, so it is an uphill slog, but opposite Zadar are a score of fascinating islands to visit – and cycle. Accommodation was in the comfortable
Austrian-owned Falkensteiner resort, 2km outside Zadar’s centre, where meals were a self-service buffet and there was free beer and wine on tap.
In the Dalmatian mountains, much of our cycling was done on an abandoned 1830s Austrian road, down which emperor Franz Joseph came to see his southern dominions. Whereas the Venetians selfishly made themselves comfortable on the coast, the Austrians – still the most numerous tourists – governed with some regard to the wellbeing of the locals and are recalled more fondly. Italian influence is now almost solely gastronomic – the inkfish black risotto being particularly delicious.
Zadar is also proud of being the real home to Maraschino, the delicious liquor made from the stones of the bitter amarena cherries.
Among the chance discoveries on this trip was that, in the rugged hills, the Germans funded a series of socalled ‘bratwurst westerns’ in the 1960s – bringing in faded Hollywood A-listers such as Stewart Granger and Lex Barker, with implausible Croatian extras standing in for Native Americans against the backdrop of the Dalmatian mountains.
How Yugoslavian president Tito and his communist comrades must have laughed, producing complete cobblers about the US’s cowboy foundation myths, right on his own Balkan doorstep.
■ Return flights to Split from €230 (aerlingus.com). Zadar is then about an hour and a half drive. Doubles at Falkensteiner Club from €1,087 a week (falkensteiner.com). Marin Marasovic run a range of excursions including biking (hotel-rajina.com) and you can hire bikes from Zzuum (zzuum.com).