December 7, 2013
On The Run: 19km From Knin to Split
It was nice to get out of the sleeping-bag this morning without dreading the cold. The landscape is now like Spain: brown slopes and mountaintops with a dusting of snow and clear blue skies as I near Croatia's Riviera.
I'm on the road at eight, wanting to reach Split around lunchtime. I hope but realise now, I should've been paying more attention to the map earlier, as the road I'm on, according to it, becomes a motorway ahead; shown in double red and white stripes; could be nothing more than a divided highway. I could've taken a turning back in Knin yesterday; maybe not the most direct route to Split, but a road that would avoid the motorway. So, I'm hoping when I get to where motorway is shown, there's a service road or some other alternative. There's none shown on the map.
In the course of the morning, an expanse of deep blue lake opens up on the left and spread along the valley floor for quite a bit of the way. I stop at a rest-place with picnic tables on this stretch around ten and eat some of the apple strudel things and drink the remainder of yesterday's Pepsi. Further on there's a build-up of traffic on the approach to Sinj. Then climbing out the other side of this town, there's a sign for Split via motorway twelve kilometres ahead. So I'll soon see what the story is.
The E65, also numbered A1, running north-south, I pass underneath this elevated motorway just at the point my road becomes a divided highway. Although the road from here on has all the usually motorway characteristics, there are no blue-car signs; nor, no cycling, no pedestrians or slow vehicles signs. So I ride on along the shoulder. A few kilometres onwards, I come to a slip off for a place called Klis. The slip leads up a hill and through a village beyond which, the coast come into view, with high-rise blocks of the city sprawled out over the low coastal hills.
Today's ride: 83 km (52 miles)
Total: 8,373 km (5,200 miles)
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