wirral to croatia some recommends.
Our trip over 18 days worked well as follows;
Early channel crossing to Calais then Belgium, Holland and Germany with a night stop in hotel near Karlruhe. Continue south to Munich for a look round the BMW museum (worth the diversion and they even gave us the old gits price on production of our UK bus passes).
On to Salzberg for a night stop on a great campsite as I had knackered my rear tyre. New tyre fitted by BMW dealer (much cheaper than UK) and on to Vrisic Pass and into Slovenia. If you like mountains Vrisic Pass is a must. We were going that way anyway but the BMW dealer in Slazberg said it was the only way to Slovenia on a bike.
Stayed on campsite in Triglav National Park and visited Ljubljana. Lovely small capital and worth the diversion.
Continued south visiting the amazing Postojna Caves and Predjama Castle. They are quite close together and a ticket can be bought to cover both. Nice restaurant by the castle for lunch.
Aimed bikes at Rijeka in Croatia staying the night in a small hotel in Slovenia. Long queues at Slovenia/Croatia border, glad we were on bikes. Then on toll road to coast. Did not think much of Rijeka so went on south following coast. Great views but very slow with heavy traffic so turned inland for toll motorway to Split. Followed coast again south of Split looking for campsite. Lots of sites about the size of our small garden but eventually stayed at a huge site in Omis.
Omis site was right on beach with bar, restaurant and great facilities. For us the downside was you rented a marked pitch big enough for a couple of caravans at a fixed price. OK if you had two caravans but a little pricey for two bikes and a backpacking tent. Good location though, walking distance from a tourist town with some decent restaurants and a good bus service to Split.
Its worth spending a day in Split and we stayed on the Omis site for a couple of days so we could explore inland. Then continued on the amazing coast road to Dubrovnik.
Dubrovnik is a major tourist destination so hotels were pricey and we could not find a campsite but eventually stopped at a great little hotel a few miles north for a couple of nights at about 45 Euros a night.
After a hot day in Dubrovnik turned back north and then crossed into Bosnia and drove north to Mostar (buy insurance at border). No campsite near Mostar and those we found some distance away (including Camping Wimbledon!) looked pretty ropey so decided on hotel. Tried a few before finding a room but it was a great room in a very friendly hotel about 5 minutes from the famous bridge at 50 Euros.
Mostar was worth the visit but, for us, an afternoon walk around plus an evening on a great restaurant terrace overlooking the bridge was enough so next day continued north aiming for Jajce waterfalls. we found the waterfalls disappointing but the drive was great over deserted roads. We continued north aiming for Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia.
Next night spent on the National Park campsite. Huge site with good facilities including good restaurant. The Park is a collection of lakes and waterfalls with a range of marked trails. We were there on a Saturday and it was very busy but a lovely place to visit.
Continued north to a campsite near Maribor at a winter ski centre. Nice little site but it was Sunday and we found Slovenia closes on Sunday. The town was dead and it took us ages to find a restaurant open for dinner.
We were now just driving home and decided to stop at the Salzburg campsite again but it poured with rain all day and we were soaked so found a hotel. As with Dubrovnik the hotels in Salzburg are expensive but we eventual found a great one at about 80 Euros.
After a day in Salzburg we spent the next two nights in small hotels in Germany on way to Calais and then home.
We never book hotels or campsites before a trip as we like to be able to change our trips on the fly. We either use the great Archies Camping Garmin database for campsites or just pass hotels/guest houses that look OK or use booking.com on our iPhone once we have an idea where we will be. We never have any major problems although it took us a little while to find a room in Mostar and something that did not need a mortgage in Salzburg.
I have not given details of any of the hotels as for us part of the fun of traveling is finding hotels and campsites and over the years we have stumbled on some great hotels and spent some memorable nights with locals and hotel owners. I think in the last seven years I have only found one hotel I would not go back to and that was the hotel in Lille this year that looked good on booking.com but was in a very poor area surrounded by drunks, vagrants and rubbish including piles of smelly mattressess. We found another hotel Lille but it is now one of those rare towns I would never bother to go back to. Some positive memories of this trip include.
The small roadside hotel in Slovenia where the owner moved his car from a garage so we could park the bikes. In Dubrovnik hotel we could sit by the Adriatic having a beer before a meal on the hotel terrace.
In Mostar the owner would not charge us for drinks as there was some power drill noise during the afternoon - although we said we were out at the time anyway. After one night the owner and his family all came out to shake our hands and wave us on our way.
In Salzberg the owner was much more interested in getting two wet bikers into a room so we could get dry than bothering about things like check in.
Back through Germany and one night in a lovely small village hotel where the owner moved her car out the garage for the bikes, phoned the chef to come back to prepare dinner and spent the evening chatting and drinking with us. Then the next night near Ramstein drinking with the owner while we watched the UK riots on the TV.
All navigation was by Garmin and MacBook. It's years since we have bothered with paper maps and the only small problem we had was Dubrovnik to Mostar. I had not noticed that I had missed transferring a tiny map section of the Croatian coast onto the Garmin so it wanted to go a crazy way. No real problem as it was an obvious route anyway but I just used the Nav program on my iPhone instead.
