12 April 2023 - Kremik

Chris went for a run along the seafront, towards Trogir, which he said was delightful. There were the typical pavement cafes, with old men, sitting having their coffee and chatting, in the morning sun.


Steve and I had a less exciting trip to the supermarket, to refresh the food supplies, but, it has to be done. At least, in the morning, they had a better selection of fresh produce. Kastela seems to be very much a dormitory town for Split, other than having this medium sized, by Croatian standards, marina. However, the local story is about the two castles in this bay: Dobila’s castle, built in 1487, by the Vitturi family, and Miljenko’s castle. Dobrila and Miljenko fell in love, despite the enmity of their families. When their parents found out, Miljenko was sent away to Venice by his father, but he returned when he learned that Dobrila’s father had arranged her marriage to an old nobleman, to prevent the marriage. Dobrila was then sent to the convent in Trogir and Miljenko was exiled to a monastery. Dobrila escaped the convent and went to join Miljenko. Eventually the parents allowed the young couple to marry, but, after the wedding feast, Dobrila’s father killed Miljenko and Dobrila died shortly after, from grief. The lovers are allegedly buried together in the chapel near Miljenko’s castle.

The Simnel Cake by the time of Chris' departure.....

As soon as Chris was away in his taxi to the airport, Steve and I made our way out of the harbour, heading back to Kremik. Today the weather would be fine, with little wind, but during the night and tomorrow, there will be strong gales, so we have to be in somewhere safe. The first part of the journey was fairly uneventful, just dodging the odd other yachts, one of which was making some very strange manoeuvres, as if a four year old was on the helm, so it was a relief to get past that one. As we rounded the corner of the mainland coast, we started to see small naval vessels and a rib, from one of them, buzzing about. As we got closer, the rib came up to us and the two very nice young navy guys asked to us to hug the coast and be no more than three miles off, because of the naval exercises taking place. We don’t know what the naval vessels were, being smaller than frigates, and highly agile, but we estimated there were five or six of them, possibly more. The big booms we heard must have been live fire. Anyway, we went inside the rocks and islands, keeping well out of their way. It amused us than just before the turning into the bay of Kremik, there is a prohibited zone half a mile out from the coast, in the sea, that the forces also use, but three charter boats had gone through it. It makes you wonder whether their skippers can’t or don’t look at the chart, when they do their passage planning.

It was a glorious, still evening, to enjoy an excellent sunset. The ambient temperature is slowly and gradually increasing, but it plummets when the sun goes down. The minimum night time temperature now hovers around double figures, so still cold, but much more comfortable than it freezing, two weeks ago.

Miles today         27

Miles in 2023    142

Tricia (& Steve)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

24 - 27 March 2023 - Amersham / Zagreb / Biograd

Image
Our Spring / Summer adventures started when the alarm went off at 04:20 on 24th March. The flight to Zagreb was completely full, the passengers including Welsh football supporters going to watch their team play Croatia in the Euro qualifiers, and a Para-Olympic Boccia team going to play-offs for next year’s Olympics. We had a superb 22 hours with our friends Stevo and Jasna in Zagreb, during which we managed to walk around the centre of the city. There are lots of late 19th century buildings, making it very attractive, along with the outside cafes and restaurants of European café society. The centre being largely pedestrianised and serviced by trams just adds to it’s appeal. The cathedral is undergoing some repairs after the earthquake a couple of years ago Ties were invented in Croatia, and there is a shop selling beautiful examples If you want a Tesla, this guy was the original On the way to the bus station, on Saturday morning, the taxi driver had said that, as we were travelling ...
Read more

1 June 2023 - Luka Jurjeva, Lastovo

Image
This is expected to be our last day in Croatia, we plan to head to Italy tomorrow.  We woke to a completely tranquil scene, with barely a ripple on the water. We headed ashore in the tender, and walked into Ubli, where there is a supermarket.   It is more than 4 km in each direction, but we needed to buy enough bread to last us today and tomorrow.    The road is mostly quiet, but there are no footpaths, and when the cars come, they are not expecting to encounter pedestrians, so it is a bit daunting at times. The views make it all worthwhile, and we were rewarded at the inland end by finding a larger and better stocked supermarket than we had expected.    The return was uneventful and we enjoyed our well deserved lunch when we arrived back on board. We have read that the chimneys on the island are unique, and are determined by your family and status.  We haven’t seen enough to have good comparisons, but we did see one that was quite noticeable...
Read more

20 September 2023 - Benitses and Kerkyra (Corfu Town)

Image
As we had booked into the marina for 2 days, but completed the necessary maintenance tasks in 1 day, we took the opportunity to go into Corfu town for some site seeing. The bus stop was right outside the marina, so it was very easy,  there was even a ticket machine at the bus stop (of which more later). Alighting from the bus, we started to wander through the narrow streets and alleyways of the old town. It was the sort of place to ignore the maps and just wander and see what you would find. Like many other places in this part of the world, Corfu has a very long history.   It was one of three Greek naval powers in the fifth century BC, with Athens and Corinth. Since then it has changed hands multiple times. It was part of the Republic of Venice from the 12th century, and there are still many buildings and avenues which seem typically Venetian. They built two huge forts to guard the city against pirates and the Ottomans, making it one of the most fortified places in Europe....
Read more