The Road to Nowhere
Author Bio:
Paul Knight aka Milky, been riding since I was about 12, became a courier in 1974 for Mercury despatch in London, which is where I got the nickname that’s stuck for almost 50 years! To celebrate our 50th’s My riding companion Dave Newman (also of the above parish) and I entered the ‘Classic Dakar rally’ , which is basically the original Dakar route on a 28 year old XT500.
Since then it’s been ‘Adventure’ riding all the way. Me and my bikes have crashed in most European countries that have trails.
Most of this article and many others have appeared in the Wemoto newsletter. They nearly sponsor us with bits n pieces from time to time. www.wemoto.com
The Road To Nowhere
Towards the end of our first week in Croatia, we decided that what we really wanted was Fish n Chips ( it’s a British thing) for tea on friday, at the seaside.
Our host , the inimitable Mr Rod Young said “I’ve a route from here (Gračac) to Spilt, nearly all off road.” And so our fate was sealed, 3 of the 4 of us were going to make the trip, Mike was suffering from ‘Coviditus’ or some such lurgy and took a rain check, which left Andy on his T7, Dave on his Kove 450 and me (Milky) on the 790.Rod explained he had ridden and mapped the first 3 sections himself and had persuaded TET legend Elion Oxa from Albania, to do the last section. Over to Dave for the rest of the story.
It is about 100 miles on the main road from Rod’s to Split and takes two and a half hours or thereabouts. Off-road it would take most of the day. The first track was just a few clicks out of town and we barely rode on tarmac after that. One of the positives of riding on Rod’s trails is they are routes less travelled. This does mean that you have to pay attention to the line on the screen, which is not always easy as the way and the route can take less obvious turns. It can mean a little back tracking but it’s all worth it to be on some marvellous trails.
Having reached the end of Rod’s route at Gornje Ororje, we embarked on the ‘new’ trail towards Split. It started as a typical stony track from a small road, passed a farm and up, up, up a mountain. However, once the track plateaued, the trail became much less defined and difficult to follow as the ground was very rocky with wooded areas that barely had a path at all. On the GPS, we were either directly on the navigation line or very close to it, but we had to keep stopping to walk about looking for more obvious tracks, of which there were none. Thus we carried on our slow and extremely arduous progress until, after a small rocky clearing, I came upon a much larger section of rock that we were not going to get over. On the other side of the rock there was a marked footpath going down the mountain. I would describe it as extremely rambling.
We conferred. It was getting late, almost dusk, we had eaten all our food and drunk all our water and we were pretty damn well knackered. Going forward with the bikes was not gonna happen, going back might be possible but it would take a very long time. There was a village of some sort at the bottom of the mountain so we decided to leave the bikes and walk down. Fortunately we had brought trainers for our night in Split so we could leave boots and crash helmets with our bikes.
It took about an hour to walk down to the small collection of farms at the foot of the mountain and by then evening was upon us. We had phoned back to Rod’s house to report our situation. When Andy and I approached one of the farms it became clear that the warm welcome that had been suggested was not the response we were going to get. Mr & Mrs Farmer made it abundantly clear we were not at all welcome and as we walked back to the road Mr Farmer fetched the dog.his neighbour fired a gun into the air.
We left the village pronto. The next village was several kilometers away. In the meantime Rod told us that the police in Croatia will come and rescue people in such situations. His other guest, Maya, is a Croatian lady and she had called the police, they told her we needed to call them ourselves. This we did and after giving details were told that someone would come. Instead of sitting in a nice restaurant on the seafront enjoying our well earned supper, we were in the middle of nowhere in the dark with no food or drink, getting colder and waiting for the cops.
Waiting for the cops.
The bemused police eventually arrived, three of them in a car. The older one spoke English and was initially suspicious but soon understood our dilemma and after conferring with his controller it was decided that we would be taken towards Split and a hotel found. The parcel shelf in the back was removed and Milky gallantly volunteered to sit there, kebab wrappers and all. Whilst Andy and I squeezed into the back with the third cop, all very friendly. It took the best part of an hour to get out of the mountains and to the coast. On the third or fourth attempt, our friendly English speaking cop had located a hotel able/willing to take us, his next concern was how we would get back to our bikes. No problem, he would arrange a taxi for the next morning and we should be ready at 9.00 outside the hotel.
By now it was close to midnight, so far too late to eat, but we welcomed the bottles of water, shower and beds. The next morning we made the most of the buffet breakfast and waited for our taxi. It duly arrived on time and, lo and behold, the driver was none other than the copper from the night before! What a guy, protecting the citizens of Split by night and taxi driver by day, and at least he knew the way back to the drop off point.
We headed back up the steep ramblers route to our bikes and started the task of retracing our way over the various obstacles and back to a proper trail. It wasn’t extreme enduro stuff but it certainly wasn’t trail riding. Some of it would have been a challenge on a mountain bike, at least for me. The plan was simple and cunning, we would take one bike at a time through to the next tricky section, with the other two assisting when required. The first two got through the first section OK, then it was my turn. It was only when I pulled away and the others both shouted that I realised I had a rear wheel puncture, there was a three inch rusty nail through the thickest part of my brand new tyre. Where the f*** did that nail come from? How did it get there? There was absolutely nothing apart from rocks, grass, rocks, trees and more rocks for miles! Anyhow it needed to be repaired. Thankfully the tyre was fairly easy to remove and replace which turned out to be useful because there was not one but numerous holes, some teeny weeny. In the end I ran out of glue so a spare, skinny 21 inch front tube went in the 18 inch rear and I kept my fingers crossed.
Several hours later eventually we made our way back to where we left the sensible trail, all the while questioning how the route could ever have been plotted? We have our suspicions.
It was an easy decision to head back on tarmac. I was keeping to 50mph due to inner tube anxiety. We stopped at a town called Knin for coffee, in reality we didn’t have much choice. On the road in, there was an unusual build up of traffic, it looked like there was a violent demonstration occurring at the top of the road. Turned out to be a wedding celebration with a cavalcade of horn blaring cars, people on car roofs waving flags, smoke bombs and general noise and good humour, that brought the town to a full stop for a good while. Apparently, it’s a thing. We sat in a café to spectate.
When we finally got back to Rod’s there was a bbq happening. My goodness we were happy to sit there with a glass of something cool and refreshing and some fine dining.