97 Split...the place not my trousers..

Monday 28th November

Today we set off for Split, another medeaval town on the Dalmatian coast.  

The scenery was absolutely beautiful and I have been waiting a while for this part of the trip.  I love every minute of it.

Another one of these little townships with the wall around it.

The different types of scenery was amazing.

We noticed that Gromit was a bit sick and was vibrating quite badly. I started to go into a bit of a panic as I though it was due to the CV joints on the front wheels. These are the drive shafts that allow the front wheels to turn whilst still being driven. 

We started out along the coast road but at about halfway we switched to the motorway. A bit boring but we needed to nurture Gromit.

On arrival we parked up at a place they lovingly call the Riviera, we had a short walk about and a conflab over coffee on what to do about Gromit.

The riviera

by day

We decided to get into a hotel, search the internet and see if we could find a land rover dealer. We found a hotel,the Best Western and once settled we  found a person right by the marina and riviera that did deal with land rovers, so we decided to chill out this evening and Ray would take Gromit down in the morning.
We took a walk into town, unfortunately it was dark. A big problem at this time of year, still, in 3 weeks or so,the days will start getting longer - not by much, but they will.
The place was a like a poor version of Dubrovnik. All the attributes were there but they had not been maintained to the same degree.

by night

tired looking but still impressive

It was very tired looking, and there was lots of graffiti about.  We eventually found somewhere to eat and had a good walk round. It has all the atmosphere and it is still a really lovely place to visit. I have been very impressed with Croatia.
Tuesday 29th November.
Ray took Gromit to the fixer man after breakfast.  Apparently it is no where near as bad as he thought, so normality has resumed.  We have decided not to go to Sarajevo, we are still going into Bosnia but are heading for a place called Banda Luka.  Crossing the border was no problem and we had picked out a nice spot for a bit of wild camping.  We have had lovely weather and it has been very warm and we both miss it, as does Leon.  However as we crossed the mountains we watched the temperature gauge  dropped by about 11 degrees so we have made a decision to hotel it again tonight.

Bosnia is still very pretty, but a lot drier

Ice on the ground made for a re think.

This was part of a large gorge we passed through and made for interesting driving.

After quite an arduous journey we called it quits 7kms outside of Banja Luka and are holed up in the Motel Dragana.  Very nice little place.