22 August 2025 (sunny with some cloud, thunderstorms, hot) 36km

Well...I don't know if it was the 83kms we did yesterday, but last night after blogging, I went out like a light about 8pm. Julia couldn't sleep, due to the massive thunderstorm, with lightning, for four hours and heavy rain.

As we settled down to sleep, I was just hoping that Nessie would get us through without having to spend time during the night, trying to keep ourselves dry.

Ju here. Pete lay down about 8pm after sending the blog to me, and promptly fell asleep. At the time the lightning was illuminating the tent every 10 seconds or so and I stopped blogging for a while just to watch it. Then the rain started gently and I had to shut the zips and the thunder rumbled in the distance. 

The rain steadily increased in intensity and I hoped our site choice wouldn't let us down. When we'd arrived at the site yesterday, the sun was beating down so we opted for the only shady site left, but did note it was in a bit of a dip. It also had quite a bit of grass (well, by high summer Bosnian standards anyway), so we hoped the forecasted thunderstorm wouldn't be too bad and what grass was there would gratefully soak up the rain.

As Pete slept I watched the puddles gather as the rain was quite hard now and the ground struggled to soak it up.

Then we got an earsplitting crack of thunder that sounded like it rolled across the sky right above us. It was a sound to make my heart jolt and enough to wake the dead…..but not Pete. In fact I actually checked to make sure his chest was still moving.  

About ten minutes later, another one and he still didn't move, but I had to go for a wee, so I undid the zip. That woke him. Unbelievable.

It had stopped raining at this stage so I went out to clean my teeth and then settle in for the night as it must have been about 10.30pm by now. The flash lightning was still lighting up the sky and it was an impressive walk over to the toilet block. Back to Pete.

We lay in the dark listening, as the clouds moved slowly and the lightning lit up everything. But gradually I drifted off again.

I was just so tired and needed to sleep that I was resigned to the fact that, whatever happens during the night, we'll deal with it when it does.

The forecast today isn't brilliant, but we think we'll leave the tent here, cycle into Mostar, see the town, get some supplies, including camping gas and hopefully Nessie will have withstood the day's turmoil.

At 7.30am, we glanced outside and decided to make a dash to the shop for breakfast as the rain had stopped but the sky looked ominous.

Got to the shop and back again and we were just starting to eat when the thunder and lightning began. Strange, sitting and eating breakfast to that. An hour on and the thunder is still rolling across the sky.

Around 9.30am, the sun was out and we left for Mostar. Had to ride the main road for about a km to the Ciro trail, but continued from where we left off yesterday.

Once off the highway, it was nice riding for the first 7kms, and there were a heap of fig trees along the way, which we took advantage of.

But then there were a couple of seriously demented drivers virtually skimming us as they passed. This is on a skinny country road adapted for cyclists. They have this wonderful cycling facility here, but it's virtually empty. We saw two other cyclists using it today, both locals. When you consider we were on it for 14km total today, that's pretty pathetic, but maybe people have been put off by the aggressive driving. 

Then 5kms away from the Mostar Bridge, the cycleway just stopped and we were on the main road.

It was horrific.

Firstly, just the amount of traffic, but then the total lack of care, understanding of road rules and dangerous driving.

We cannot understand their dismissive attitude as far as speed and endangerment of human life goes.

Even my laid back, carefree partner in crime was annoyed and worried by their antics.

We arrived in town on a bridge approx. 50 metres from the famous Stari Most bridge. Snapped some shots here and could see one guy, soon to be two guys, standing on top of the bridge, getting ready to jump.

How long is too long to expect someone to jump off a bridge?

Five minutes....Fifteen minutes

By the time we'd been there over half an hour, I was ready to push them both off the bridge for nothing.

The lead in....and out of the bridge area is full of shops, vendors, beggars (with kids eating ice creams, the size of which we can't afford), cafe's, bars, more beggars with the obligatory baby on the breast and cow eyes sadly looking you in the face as you walk by.

Had no one told them I was in town?

Not only did I not give her money, but I grabbed the baby and threw it over the bridge.

At last sighting, she was scurrying down to the boats below the bridge, to see if she could beg a ride, to try and spot the baby.

I had made a big mistake, when I said to Julia, "Let's take the bikes over the bridge.”

Ju here. Yes this was one of Pete's worst ideas. From the bridge 50 m away you could see it was crowded and steep. But that wasn't even the start of it. First of all he leads us through the crowded maze of cobbled streets with market stalls and cafes, some even with tables jutting out into the skinny streets. Factor in the packed walking tours, of which there were dozens and all the other hapless tourists with the same idea, some with babies and strollers and what a bloody mission. Felt so stupid for even attempting this. The only saving grace was we weren't fully loaded.

I had to wait for five hours to get this shot of Pete with nobody else in it.

The bridge by the way, I think is made of marble with stepped ridges because it was so slippery, your feet would slide to the next ridge, then you could lift your foot over and slide to the next one. Utterly ridiculous idea and I apologized to everyone around us.

We were so desperate to escape the throng on the other side, we carried our bikes up five flights of steps to the first road we could get onto. Back to Pete.

We had been able to take some good shots of the bridge before our walk through the throng from an isolated place down by the river. It was a nice setting and would have been an ideal place for a cafe or bar, but, as the photos show, this is another opportunity lost. 

It seems this idyllic setting is a place to park the odd car, dump rubbish and do drug deals. Mostar, forgetting the war and atrocities, let's itself down hugely, with its lack of pride.

Not ten feet from probably the biggest tourist venue in the country, you have unbelievable amounts of litter.

On the roads, which we eventually were able to navigate, due to so many one way systems, there is rubbish everywhere.

If it was my position as tourist minister, I would be getting the general public to show some public pride, by clearing up rubbish.

It would instil a community spirit and create public perception of their own misgivings, hopefully leading to a better economic outlook in their tourism industry.

In other words, get off your backsides and clean the place up.

Forty years ago when when we toured these parts there was a socialist government in power, people wanted change and there was rubbish everywhere.

Forty years and a bloody war later, their government is made up of a confusing power base, supposedly trying to represent the three main ethnic groups in a democracy and still there is rubbish everywhere.

Ju here. We were cycling back from Mostar earlier this afternoon and Pete brought up an interesting theory. (I know, I was surprised too!). He said, I wonder if because the Bosnians have been ruled by so many different empires, they have just thought, what is the point of building up anything nice to call your own, when someone is always trying to take it over or bomb the shit out of it. Fair point I thought. We are both really struggling to understand how you can just leave all this rubbish everywhere. We've seen rubbish trucks so we know they exist. But also a lot of bins are overflowing so I guess their system is just overwhelmed.

We wondered if we would see any difference between north and south Bosnia and the big difference is the lack of mosques in this area. There's one not far from camp and several in Mostar, but we haven't heard one call to prayer down here.

Tomorrow we will head back down the Ciro trail towards Dubrovnik. Normally we would try and find a different route but it was really cycling paradise. Whereas going in a more direct way means busy roads and forest fires as apparently there's two going on at the moment, which seems hard to believe with all the rain we had last night and this morning.

It will be interesting to explore more of this Ciro trail as we head to Ravno, which has the only camp in the vicinity.

We are pleased we will be able to have a slow start tomorrow as there is no need to beat the heat, as it's only supposed to get to 28 today. No need to beat the traffic either as we only have a km of main road, then we're on the trail.

We celebrated surviving our return from Mostar with an ice cream before returning to camp for a welcome chilly dip in the river.

All but one of the other campers had cleared out so we took the opportunity to move the tent to higher ground, as it looked like another thunderstorm was on it's way.

Water had crept in under the tent so we dried off the bottom of the tent and the groundsheet and set everything up in it's new high ground place with no shade. Of course the dark clouds then cleared off and we had full sun for the rest of the day.

Spent the rest of the afternoon just reading and relaxing and eating.

Had our usual tin of Mexican tuna with corn and beans accompanied by a chopped up tomato. Unfortunately no avocados or greenery to be found in either supermarket we visited.

At this rate we're going to struggle to use up our Bosnian marks before we leave the country.