Saturday 1 July

At the time of beginning this post (11 July), if you’d told me two weeks ago that we were about to spend a week in Croatia, I’d hardly have believed it. We found out on Friday 23 June that Ryan had managed to get annual leave for the first week of July and my work confirmed the following Wednesday. This was excellent news, as on Tuesday night we’d booked the cheapest flights we could find from Bournemouth airport – we were off to Zadar, Croatia, that coming Sunday.

We’d had minimal planning time as I was at a conference all week, but in the evenings we’d managed to book flights, accommodation and – with some difficulty – car hire. Ryan picked me up from Salisbury train station on Saturday afternoon and we rushed to Southampton to collect a Croatia climbing book from a friend and buy a pair of 60m half ropes, having discovered that Zadar County is a renowned destination for climbers. To say that packing was stressful is an understatement: the evening was spent – not without argument – trying to squeeze two 3kg ropes, a bunch of climbing equipment (the majority of which is metal), hiking gear and (minimal) clothing into our 20kg hold bag and two small cabin rucksacks.

Sunday 2 July

Our friend Cam picked us up at 9am and dropped us off at the airport, full of nervousness about the weight of the hold bag and size of the cabin bags. Fortunately both were fine, but on realising that I might have left a very much prohibited lighter in a pouch of hiking stuff, I spent the entire two-and-a-half hour flight expecting that our hold bag wouldn’t turn up in Croatia. After a stressful wait, we flew at 1pm, landed at 4:30 local time, and were immensely relieved when our bag appeared on the conveyor belt.

First impressions were good: towards the end of the flight I’d caught glimpses of multitudinous islands, azure sea and sprawling mountains from my aisle seat at the front of the plane, and Zadar airport was pleasantly tiny and clean. We sat on a grassy patch at the front of the airport as we waited until 6pm to pick up our hire car, and I spent the whole time marvelling at lizards, snails, bugs, moths, pine cones, cacti, flowery shrubs and long trains of large ants making their way up and down the pine trees that shaded us from the warm sun.

We picked up our pre-booked car at 6pm, and – although the rental man was very friendly – we were once again racked with anxiety at the revelation of having to put down a €1,100 deposit, at least some of which we’d lose in the event of anything happening to the brand new Renault Clio – even a tiny scratch – due to paying with a debit card. We were quite unlucky in this regard, as we were hard-pressed to find a hire place that accepted debit cards: I have a credit card but unfortunately my driving licence expired a couple of weeks before and I hadn’t yet been able to renew it thanks to DVLA’s hopeless systems, but Ryan only had a debit card, which meant we ended up paying about £100 more than if a) my licence was valid, or b) he had a credit card. I’m waffling on about this because it remains a sore subject. Lesson learnt: use a credit card in the driver’s name to hire cars abroad.

The 45 minute drive through rural Zadar County to Starigrad, the town where we were staying, would have been interesting and far more enjoyable if we weren’t reeling from the pressure of not damaging the car. Ryan had never driven on the “wrong” side of the road before and found it very strange at first, mainly getting the road positioning right – I found the same thing when I drove abroad for the first time in the Alps. Being so new and fancy, the car kept emitting beeps seemingly at random, which we later discovered was an indication that he was straying towards the lines at the edge of the road. Speed limit signs were few and far between, and for the first time in, I believe, his entire life, he welcomed some gentle back-seat driving.

We stopped at a supermarket on the way, parking as far from the entrance as possible in order to preserve the car. We were yet to realise how welcoming and friendly the Croatian people are, and felt very conspicuous and foreign among aisles of unfamiliar cheeses, meats and dry goods. We picked up some supplies, including fruit, pasta, bread, a kilogram of dubious-looking reformed sausage, cheap cheese, cheaper wine, frozen seafood risotto for that evening and crisps of an unidentifiable flavour, and continued our journey to Starigrad.

We arrived at our accommodation at 8pm and were greeted by our host, a smiling Croatian lady who barely spoke a word of English but welcomed us warmly, showed us into our apartment, taught me how to pronounce “hvala” (thank you) after I clearly failed miserably, indicated that an unlabelled glass bottle of thick, dark red liquid was a gift for us, then returned to the ground floor veranda where she’d been sitting out with her family. On her leaving, we decided that the liquid was a kind of cherry brandy. The apartment was perfect: a simple, clean bedroom with a little kitchen and bathroom in a family home, the first floor of which had been split into three apartments. It felt like an authentic stay in a Croatian house, with the added advantage of privacy – we were free to come and go as we pleased without disturbing anyone, as the first floor had its own staircase and veranda looking down onto the street below, which was quiet except for the constant trill of cicadas. With the car parked safely on the drive, we finally relaxed.

I cooked seafood risotto with chunks of the mysterious sausage for dinner and we crashed on the huge bed, exhausted by the stress of overcoming various travelling hurdles and relieved at the effectiveness of the room’s air conditioning unit. After the last minute planning, rushing around to collect climbing gear, packing stress, airport stress, lighter-in-bag concerns, car anxiety and anticipation of finding our accommodation as we’d hoped it to be, we could scarcely believe that we’d made it to Croatia. Our holiday had begun.