Day 14 – Monfalcone to Senj

I was in a fairly good mood to start with today and I managed to get away earlier than the last few days. Which was lucky, because as it turns out – today was the longest day I’ve ever had in the saddle.

The first half an hour passed by quite easily until I realised I hadn’t started my Garmin. This means another 10km is missing and it annoyed me. My spirits were high though and I moved on! The first 80km were pretty much all uphill and it seemed yesterday’s headwind had stuck around to annoy me a bit more. Time passed quite quickly though as I soon crossed into Slovenia, where the weather took a turn for the worse. Most of the time in Slovenia it was snowing. But I was in and out of it in less than two hours and headed on into Croatia.

Croatia was interesting, there were almost some very nice views, but they were all spoilt by the odd industrial building or oil tanker. Bit of a shame really, as it was the first time that day I’d been below the clouds. The day continued like this for a few hours.. slow but not too difficult on the mind.

The final 25km were a completely different story. The day up to this point had been cold and wet but it had been interesting and had passed quicker than yesterday, despite being even slower. I’m not sure if I can bring myself to write about the last bit yet, but if I do, I’ll post it later (and I can’t promise it will be free of some choice language). For now, let’s just say that I thought my knee pain would probably be my lowest moment… I’ve been proved wrong.

Excluding the last hour and a bit; in summary: 2 border crossings, a fair bit of snow but generally an ok day.

Todays numbers are a bit off again:
Distance: 106miles / 170km (approx.)
Riding Time: 8:40:00 (approx.)
Av. Speed: 12.3mph / 19.7kph