Rovinj day ride

September 15, 2018

What a beautiful, such a beautiful

beautiful wreck you are

Shawn Mullins

I was reminded of our favorite Shawn Mullins song (which we were lucky enough to hear him perform at the Sisters Folk Music Festival a few years back) when we were wandering through Bale on our ride today. Bale is a Roman town, built to protect the salt pan road between Pula and Poreč. Like so many interior towns with an impressive historical heritage but without enough flash to draw the large crowds, it’s a beautiful wreck - a mix of fairly well maintained monuments and colorful homes blended with faded paint, peeling plaster, and grey, crumbling structures. It’s just about my favorite type of place to come across in our travels. We know that Zadar and Rovinj will be knockouts before we get there. But Bale? Or Svetvinčenat? Or Vodnjan?

Also though, Shawn’s lyrics made me think of Croatia as a whole, and our reaction to it. Croatia definitely has that beauty thing going for it, and maybe too much for its own good. Its coastline is one knockout resort or historical town after another; and the whole world knows it now. I knew ahead of time that Dubrovnik would be a tourism zoo, but I was a bit surprised to find that Zadar, Trogir and Rovinj had that feel too. It takes some work and imagination to look past the crowds and trinkets to see the underlying glory that made them famous attractions in the first place. The places that have most enchanted me here are the lesser known but still wonderful places like Cres, Rab, Sibenik, and Labin.

So there’s that. Also though, there’s the story from the saddle of a bicycle. We’ve found Croatia to be one of the more challenging places to cycle that we’ve traveled in. It’s not the terrain, or the weather - it’s the roads, the lack of biking infrastructure, and the drivers. We have found some spectacular cycling roads here, predictably off the beaten path a bit - the island roads on Pag, Cres, Mljet and Pasman were very special, and I’d love to cycle them again; and some of the roads in the Istrian hinterland have been a complete delight. In between though we’ve put in many miles on highways that either were too busy to really enjoy, or made us anxious because of the lack of shoulders (nearly a universal road characteristic here - offhand, I don’t remember a single significant road with a real shoulder) and the often too impatient drivers.

Enough of that. Let’s ride.

Today’s loop takes us on a loop through a trio of small historical towns southeast of Rovinj: Bale, Svetvinčenat, and Vodnjan. The ride illustrates what I was just saying above: the ten miles from Rovinj to Bale aren’t much fun, and we rode them both ways because there are really only two paved routes to Rovinj - the one we rode in on yesterday and didn’t think much of, and the road south to Bale and then beyond that to Pula. By the time we got to Bale, we were a bit stressed and not really enjoying ourselves.

But then, Bale. And then a perfect road on a nothing country lane up to Svetvinčenat. And then another busier than we cared for stretch to Vodnjan, an intriguing town with the most remarkable gallery of wall art I’ve seen in quite a while. We broke for lunch there, having tuna salads at an open air cafe that we couldn’t have found on our own - a kindly lady who spoke German but no English helped us find it, walking part way there with us to give us a clearer set of directions. And then, another ten miles of perfect riding on a carfree road that felt like a paved bike path took us back to Bale. And then back to Rovinj the way we came out.

Croatia: a beautiful wreck, in our book. Be forewarned. Also, take a look at Rachael’s video to get a sense of what the roads are like.