THE BEST LAID PLANS - Croatia, Thursday 20^th October 2011

‘It was like waiting for a train. Really tedious.’ So said Max of our last day at home in Lairg, packing up house and van. He passes the time by taking pictures of household objects:

But for me and Sam, it would be fair to say that our last day is anything but tedious.

The original plan was to leave home on Saturday 8^th October. But on Wednesday the 5th, with the van still to get an MOT and a radical interior refit, the slippage factor has set in.  

Bev and Nicky Beavitt turn the van situation around for us on Saturday and Dickie, our new tenant, helps sort out the stable and clear the workshop. Mark Armstrong comes up to collect the workshop keys and leaves some groovy tunes for the road. At 10pm on Sunday evening, no-one is more surprised than us to discover we are actually packed and ready to go. The kids look relieved and nervous, strapped into their new van seats. We smile foolishly at one another and say, ‘We’ve done it. Now we can relax.’

In gusty dreich weather just south of Glasgow at 3.30am, after a few scheduled and unscheduled stops involving baby bike seats and a pink potty, the handlebar of one of the bikes on the back of the van breaks the rear window. Three hours later we madk it to Sam’s folks’ place near Castle Douglas and find ourselves drinking whisky and Crabbies at breakfast time, slightly delirious from lack of sleep and the beginnings of a nasty cold. Not to mention the early morning drams.

We delay our departure for a couple days to fix the rear window and wait until the kids get over their hacking coughs and raging temperatures which have incubated nicely in the van on the way down the A9. But it is great to catch up with the extended Barlow/ Harvey clan and to see Mary and Al as well.

On Thursday evening, we board the ferry to Holland at Harwich. A few years ago, CalMac introduced the possibility of purchasing a ‘café latte’ on board their ships sailing to the Hebrides. This was considered, by me at least, a marvellous innovation. So we are slightly bowled over by Stena Line and the surfeit of on board facilities including casino, cinema, teen computer room, play room etc. Michael entertains the stewards with card tricks and manages to wangle some free Ben & Jerry’s ice cream for himself.

We drive into Amsterdam, not quite sure what to do with ourselves but impressed by bicycle culture, particularly the barrow-like attachments on the front of bikes capable of carrying two or three toddlers at a time.

Flora is still running a temperature and not eating much. She is too ill for sight-seeing but not ill enough to warrant searching for a doctor. We buy some bread and wafers and drive on until, with the help of Uncle Alistair’s handy European campsite directory, we find ourselves a spot in a pine forest a few kilometres off the motorway. The campsite also happens to be adjacent to a training area for the Dutch military. In the directory, mention is made of ‘occasional gunfire’.

Loud bursts of artillery rattle away throughout the night. Hector and Flora are too frightened to play outside the van. The temperature drops to below freezing and the boys’ tent is nicely rimed with frost. We put the optimistic sandals and flip-flops away and get out the boots and big jumpers. 

By 10.30am on Saturday morning, we are back on the road and soon on the German autobahn. The German countryside looks less meticulously managed than the Dutch. We like the unapologetic contemporary structures, the big industrial landscapes. We stop at a campsite near Nassau, an eccentric place the kids love, equipped with zip wires across the river, a homemade play park and giant chess. But it is cold. Really cold. The boys sleep fully-clothed in hats, two sleeping bags and a blanket. I can hear them coughing in the tent next to the van until they eventually fall asleep. I experience a fleeting moment of maternal guilt about making them sleep outside in sub-zero temperatures before snuggling down under the duvet.

We’d been making good progress down the autobahn the following morning until an ominous rumbling starts up. After a minute or two, the rumbling ‘develops’ as Nicky would say, and one of the back tyres blows. Spectacularly. We slough off the road into a handy layby and Sam gets the jack out. I am disappointed we are able to pull right off the motorway and therefore do not need to erect our handy (and compulsory) red triangle which I had ordered months before for this very occurrence.

‘Shall I put up the red triangle?’ I asked Sam.

‘Not necessary,’ he said, from beneath the vehicle.

‘Oh. Are you sure?’

‘Yup. We’re off the autobahn.’

‘Oh alright then.’

We make a detour into a German town to find a tyre shop, forgetting it is Sunday and all those kind of places are shut. We decide to chance it on the spare and head for the Austrian Alps, spending the night in a layby where it is even colder than on previous nights. We let the boys sleep in the van, everyone packed in like sardines, waking up on Monday morning with cold noses and a cracking view of the Alps.

Everyone loves the tunnels through the Alps and on into Slovenia. Slovenia is beautiful in the autumn sunshine and everything is going well until 20km north of Lublijana we hear the ominous rumbling again. It quickly turns into urgent knocking. Weirdly, although it sounds exactly the same, it isn’t a flat this time. After a couple of hours with the van jacked up in a supermarket car park in the town of Kranj, Sam decides the handbrake shoes have rattled loose and that in addition to buying new tyres, he will have to find parts in Lublijana to rebuild the handbrake.

It is late afternoon by the time we find Tommy and Adja’s apartment in the centre of Lublijana. Michael and Max are thrilled at the prospect of a WiFi connection and a few nights in a warm bed away from the van. The rest of us slope off in the rumbly van to find a campsite on the outskirts of the city.

By Tuesday evening, we feel very familiar with the industrial zones of Lublijana. We have new tyres and some parts for the handbrake. Flora, Hector and I have seen a lot of communist-era housing estates. We have hesitated on the edge of many zebra crossings while I switch my traffic-brain from left to right. We call in at Tommy’s with a big bag of dirty laundry, having decided not to pay the ten euro washing and drying fee at the campsite that morning.

Sam wants to find a place where he can fix the van. A bit of hard ground, an electric hook-up. He decides the best place to find this is next to a beach in Croatia. Why not, I say. Yes, they probably have firm ground and electric next to Croatian beaches. At 8pm, we say goodbye to Michael and Max for a few days, and begin driving to the Croatian border.

Stupice campsite in Croatia is perfect. Set in pine trees on the Isterian peninsula, the sea is blue and the air is warm. It is off-season and very quiet. There are windsurfers and kite-surfers here. We have an electric hook-up. We have water and hot showers a-plenty. We have cycle paths. Bafflingly, we have a WiFi connection. A few days rest and relaxation and some motor mechanics beckon. We need to get the handbrake fixed before we get on the Venice-Patras ferry next week. The Adriatic looks pretty choppy today.