When I woke the sky was blue and sunny. It was also only 6 in the morning. Way to early to get up…Robert and I had agreed to go for breakfast at 8.30. Today we only had to cover 73 K and 1000 meters of climbing. We had plotted a route which would follow the river Bosna through it’s valley to a small town called Konjic.
We had an extensive breakfast and started cycling around 9.15..a late start for me. We left Mostar and passed some building which still carrying the scars of the Croat-Bosnian war almost 30 years ago.
The first kilometers we followed a rather small road on the left bank of the river. Not a lot of traffic and a nice scenery. After 15 K we had to cross the river and needed to follow a bigger, much busier road…A lot of traffic ; cars but also big speedy lorries. If we wanted to avoid any significant climbing the only option was to follow this road. Sometimes there would be less traffic but often a couple of heavy lorries would be speeding by.
Luckily the heavy traffic was compensated by the great scenery today. During the whole day we were surrounded by mountains , the river and beautiful vistas…
Another disadvantage of the route was that we had a lot of tunnels to go through. Most of them short, but some of them a couple of 100 metres, no fun with the heavy traffic. But eventually we reached safely Konjic, a small town, with no real city center but a nice bridge surrounded by mountains. I found an affordable hotel (including rooms with a view on the river), checked in. Until the evening I updated the TBBCA blog.
When we arrived we spend sometime plotting the route for tomorrow. There were a couple of options. The option with the least climbing was continuing the road we followed today. As we had seen enough lorries we settled for a route including a climb to 1590 meters…with a total ascent of around 2000 meters…some gravel but expected to be most of the time traffic free…although the distance is limited (75K) I expect that it will be long cycle day tomorrow.The photo’s on Komoot look promising though….
Later in the evening we planned for a little walk in the city and have dinner somewhere. Roasted lamb is one of the local specialities (we passed several restaurants along our route today with a lamb turning on the spit…I will give an update in tomorrow’s post.
Lessons learned :
- A beautiful route /road does not necessarily mean a traffic free route
- Sometimes stepping out your cycling comfort zone is a good plan (will confirm tomorrow)
- At any given moment I think there are probably a lot of lambs turning on the spit in this world.
Song of today : Mountains - Prince
Een teken van leven daarnet op fb gezien😉 Raar maar ik begon al ongerust te worden zonder post gisteren😅 Gelukkig twee prachtige dagen achter de rug en al meer dan 2 maanden op stap. Time flies when you’re cycling 🚴♀️ have fun Caro
ReplyDeleteik was ook ongerust geweest toen er geen post verscheen, je bent dat zo gewoon dat je dit op den duur vanzelfsprekend vindt , prachtige landschappen, goed gezelschap, morgen weinig fietsen in kilometers maar je zal waarschijnlijk even lang op de fiets zitten door het vele klimwerk, ben benieuwd naar morgen
ReplyDeleteYou had us worrying without post, we are so used to get your daily posts. Thank God everything is alright! Loved the views on this route!
ReplyDeleteWas al een beetje verbaasd een dag geen nieuws te krijgen maar heb dubbel genoten van jouw verhaal van de 2 dagen.
ReplyDeleteZiet er allemaal heel mooi uit en waarschijnlijk is het ook eens plezant niet alleen te fietsen.
Het landschap ziet er heel erg mooi uit en de foto's zijn prachtig.
Wens je voor vandaag ook een hele mooie dag maar zal wel lastig zijn met al dat klimmen.
Veel groetjes en kijk al uit naar jouw verslag van vandaag.