So, there we were, fresh off the Hvar ferry on Sunday afternoon, meandering slowly down the coast road, with a vague plan to spend the night at Camp Rogac at Slano   enroute to Dubrovnik. All well and good? Well no, not exactly….turns out that, despite it’s website claims that it re-opened on April 1st, we discovered that it hadn’t! As Team Sebo’s Logistics Officer kicked herself for not phoning ahead first to check (though, in my defence, I never have before!) and hastily consulted her Apps for an alternative abode for the night, the temperature in Sebo was rising markedly with the reappearance of the sun. Time to resort to our never – before – used cab air-con ….which promptly refused to work despite being recharged before we left home in October! Another job to add to The List for when we get back in September/October!

Interestingly, in order to drive to Dubrovnik, one has to tiptoe through a 14km stretch of Bosnia Herzegovina as they were “given” the smallest amount of coastline possible when the former Yugoslavia was broken up. I say “tiptoe” as Bosnia Herzegovina is not yet a member of the EU and our insurance doesn’t actually cover us to drive there but, heyho, we wanted to see Dubrovnik so needs must! Thankfully, we managed to pop-out the other side unscathed and we were back in Croatia before we knew it! Phew!

Things were looking-up for Team Sebo….or so we thought….until we arrived at our alternative abode for the night – Auto Kamp Pod Maslinom at Orasac, just 18km north of Dubrovnik, where we were informed that they were, in fact, FULL! Whaaaaaat?? But it’s mid-May, not July!! To give him his due, the gent informing us of this fact was most apologetic and suggested we try Camping Kate, a further 26km down the road. Funnily enough, it was the site we’d earmarked as the handiest for Dubrovnik and had intended making our way there on Monday. So, off we trot, by this stage with a sense of impending doom…..what if they were full too?? Our only option then was a totally overpriced campsite which had very bad reviews and which we really did not want to have to stay at! As if things couldn’t get any worse, as we reached Dubrovnik, CoPilot suddenly decides that, actually, we couldn’t take the D8 through Dubrovnik and routed us over the mountains. Of course, naive fools that we are, we believed him and glibly went along with his fiendish plan without actually checking what the problem was, only to pop back out onto the main road just as a Roller Team motorhome and a rather large caravan (that we’d seen parked up in a layby just outside Dubrovnik earlier) sailed by. Errrrrr, if THEY could drive it, why couldn’t Sebo???? I need to have serious words with CoPilot – he’s getting a wee bit above his station!

Finally, and by this stage it was early evening and we were both frazzled and feeling distinctly pessimistic regarding our sleepy spot for the night, we pitch up at Camping Kate and informed that they had a couple of grassy pitches left so, basically, squeeze in where you can. To be fair, it’s not the worst pitch we’ve ever had – a bit close to the main road, maybe, from the point of view of traffic noise but, being close to Reception also means we’ve got probably the best WiFi signal we’ve ever had! Also, it turns out that, despite not being listed in our ACSI Camping Card App, they do, in fact, take ACSI and it’s only €15/night all in – including the superduper WiFi. Result! We could actually have moved further down the site on Monday morning as pitches became available but, having wound out the awning and set our table and chairs out, we couldn’t be bothered. I quite like listening to the frog chorus every evening (they appear to be residing in the river running under the road which resurfaces just outside the campsite entrance) and, should the early morning traffic become a problem, there’s plenty of earplugs here!

We’re experiencing a bit of a heatwave here at mo with temperatures hitting 27C by late morning (unusually high for the time of year, apparently) so Monday was spent lazing around and taking a stroll down to Mlini and Svberno in the late afternoon to stretch our legs and let Harley have a cooling swim before lighting up our BBQ.

Dubrovnik beckons for tomorrow…..handily enough, there’s a water taxi service running from Mlini straight into Dubrovnik Old Town so we’re going to avail of the scenic route rather than the much cheaper bus service. We’re both very excited about Dubrovnik – a city with THE most amazing fortified walls which are, unusually, walkable for their entire length and we both recall watching (in absolute horror and disbelief!) the news footage of this beautiful UNESCO-listed World Heritage Site being mercilessly shelled by the so-called Yugoslavian People’s Army back in 1991. Thankfully, the city has been meticulously restored at a cost of some US$10 million (doesn’t seem a lot of dosh nowadays but, back in the early 90s that was a not inconsiderable sum of money!)