Part 1: Prelude and Practicalities
Part 3: The Zagorje, Istria, Zadar and Krka National Park
Part 4: Split and the Island of Braċ
The Drive to Split (160 km/100 miles)
Hugging the coast as much as we can meant that what would be a quick one-and-a-half hours along the inland motorway turns into a delightful interaction with the vistas and sights of the Adriatic coast.
Šibenik, a small city of 45,000 people, rises so steeply away from the seafront promenade that you are back where, other than on the waterfront streets, access to the upper parts of the old town is up those step-streets that are familiar to anyone who has been to Dubrovnik. Its jewel is the Gothic-Renaissance cathedral (https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/963/), a cream limestone beauty that sits on one flank of a pedestrian piazza that is further encircled by loggias so Florentine that you feel you must be In Italy. Narrow streets and archways beckon you into exploring the old town beyond the piazza. We did not have time for more than a glancing visit and a coffee/tea in one of the many seafront restaurants but finding more time to stay or visit the city would be well-rewarded. Be aware parking in the seafront area is very limited.
Mobility Access
Given our very limited time in the city I can only speak to the flat, paved seafront promenade and the piazza on which the cathedral sits (Trg Republike Hrvatske). The latter is a set of thirty-odd wide, curved, stone steps up from the promenade but once in the piazza it is smooth paving. If you want to venture beyond this elegant space the paved streets start to slope up or you need to start climbing those steep steps.
Half-an-hour’s drive further down the coast is a totally unexpected find. Primošten (https://visitprimosten.com/en/) is a beyond picture postcard seaside town. Centred on a small peninsula, the walled old town rises to an eighteenth century church set in a small graveyard with views across sea and landscape. Fanning out from either side of the plaza that links the peninsula to the modern town are two curving beaches. Small fishing boats share harbour space with the yachts and motor cruisers. Even in a country that prizes cleanliness in the public realm, it seems unfeasibly neat. We idled away an hour or so, strolling the promenades, puffing up to the church through the narrow streets and indulging in a gelato whilst we sat in the small park facing the old town. At this time of year there seemed plentiful parking along the seashore frontages.
Mobility Access
The area around the gateway and along the beaches is flat with smooth paving and seats on the promenades. You can walk into the large square that sits beyond the gate into the old town on those same surfaces but the streets then slope upward, acquiring stepped elements the closer you get to the church.
Our time with the rental car ends with a drop off at the Sixt car return at Split airport (a demerit to Sixt for the most offhand return service I can remember in recent times). An Audley arranged collection wafts us into the centre for our final urban fix of the trip.
SPLIT
Split only developed as Croatia’s second city after the Second World War when the Tito regime invested heavily in bringing industry to the city, causing a massive influx of workers that tripled its population. With shipbuilding to the fore, it became Yugoslavia’s largest port and its naval headquarters. Now the economic value of that industrial base has been supplanted by tourism and the services needed to support it. Approaching from the airport the city’s aspect is unprepossessing. Light industry shares space with more recent retail and service outlets whilst anonymous modern apartment blocks climb away from the highways. Marco, our driver for the transfer into the city, tells us the dour exteriors belie some very solidly built and perfectly comfortable interiors that residents were allowed to buy very cheaply after the breakup of Yugoslavia. It is only once you have passed through the tunnel under Marjan Park peninsula that you come into the area that contains the city’s most upmarket housing and a complete change comes over the appearance of the city. The sea frontage here is dominated by the Riva, a broad, paved pedestrian promenade lined with restaurants and cafes, that evokes comparisons with Cannes or Nice. Behind the Riva lies Split’s jaw-dropping Old Town area, whose streetscape and feel calls up comparisons with those parts of Venice where you do not see the canals. Narrow streets and alleys are lined with four and five storey buildings that date from the fifteenth century and later and small plazas and courtyards shelter the open tables of small restaurants and historical palaces and churches and into this amazing melange of streets the city throws in an incredible slice of history dating from the late Roman Empire. Despite its attraction to the crowds of us tourists it is wonderful place just to be and enjoy.
Marmont Heritage Hotel (5 nights)
https://dlhv.hr/hotels/marmont-heritage-hotel/#top
If, like us, you want to be in the historical heart of Split, then a hotel in the old town is a must. Part of a small local group, this 21-room boutique hotel is tucked into the narrow streets. Like many other buildings, the hotel’s four storeys have been constructed on ancient bones but we found it had all the modern facilities we needed, including ideal dining and relaxing spaces with an ever-friendly and helpful staff. Our spacious room was an uncluttered space with straightforward furnishings and décor. A double aspect made it very light. Your view is of buildings from an earlier century, which are only three or four metres away across the narrow street. We found it worked so well for our particular needs.
Mobility Access
There are no real issues here. Floors are generally flat and step free. Lifts serve all floors. The size means no long corridors to sap those with walking limitations. There is a step in and out of the doors from interior to street. You are in a pedestrian enclave. The nearest taxi drop off point is about 200 metres away at the west end of the Riva, as is the nearest bus stop. The way from that point is over flat, smooth paved streets which does mean moving luggage across that distance, but calling the hotel in advance brought someone out to our drop off point both to guide us to the hotel and to help us with our luggage.
Activities
Diocletian’s Palace
The Roman emperor Diocletian was born in this land and in 305 took the unprecedented step of abdicating his imperial crown. Having done so he moved into this enormous palace created on the seashore. It was more like a small town enclosed by fortified walls creating a rectangle nearly 200 metres along each side that housed his apartments, his mausoleum, his temples, sundry other structures and a large barracks. It was centred on a peristyle, a sort of mini forum where people could meet, sit and debate. The ground slopes gently down towards the sea and to create a level surface for his palace, he had the floor of the palace raised on a massive arch and column foundational structure. Filled with the debris and waste of centuries, these brick-built halls have now been cleared out and are visitable with an entry ticket. A gate at the centre of each of the four sides gave entry, the southern one facing the sea. That sea gate now opens on to the reclaimed land of the Riva. The sheer scale of the structure is astonishing, even if you cannot help but reflect on the human, probably slave, labour that was put to work to gratify this one man’s ego.
The role of Diocletian’s Palace within Split comes full circle as it is now the centrepiece of a UNESCO World Heritage landscape that draws in the tourists. It is difficult to comprehend before you visit the nature of the palace as all the descriptions, including mine, make it sound like a coherent whole. The reality is that since the Croatian Slavs moved into the region from the seventh century, the palace has been built into, built onto and built over so now it is an embedded part of the old town. Its passageways and open spaces are now the streets of the town, open to all. What is astonishing is that so much of the original framework remains.
Visting is really of a piece with a visit to the old town with the exception of the basement halls. My suggestion is that you make time to visit early in the morning. By 10 in the morning the crowds in and around the peristyle are such as to make it feel like you are wading through human treacle – and this is not the busiest time of the year. Before 07.00 there are only one or two early risers with cameras photographing the extraordinary structures or, in some cases, themselves in those affected poses that seem to be de rigueur for the Instagram world. You will not have the place to yourself but it will be a much more pleasant experience.
Mobility Access
I talk a little more about moving around the Old Town in the section below. The specific issues here are that, if you want to get into the floor of the peristyle you need to negotiate three or four deep steps. However to reach both the basement (where the ticketed arch and column structure is accessed) and the sea gate from the palace’s ‘ground’ level requires climbing down a flight of around 20 steps, although you can go out through the eastern Silver Gate where the street slopes gently down to the Riva, giving access to the sea gate. Similarly going up into the cathedral that was Diocletian’s mausoleum requires climbing 20+ steps and there are about 8 deep steps to climb to reach the intriguing space of the Vestibule and the plaza beyond. Those deep steps can be used for sitting and resting and, even if you find the steps impractical there is so much to be seen from streets that are step free to reach.
Walking the Old Town
Let’s state at the outset that the only way to visit the Old Town is on foot. It spreads out from the original palace to encompass an area no more than 500 metres from east to west and barely 300 from north to south. This space is a rabbit warren within which you cannot really get lost as you are never really far from a recognisable landmark or public space. Its centrepiece and largest piazza is Narodni Trg, just beyond the palace’s western Iron Gate. Here a lovely mix of buildings offer history, eating and retail in equal measure. Just park in one of the cafes with their outdoor tables for a while and take it all in. As I put it somewhat glibly, the Old Town feels like a smaller version of Venice but without the canals. It was under Venetian domination for several centuries. It encompasses the same narrow streets and small plazas were no cars go. Like in Venice, the Old Town is serviced by specialised vehicles. Rather than Venice’s barges and trolleys there are small electric carts, a driver standing at the front negotiating the narrow ways using two long levers, and there are the garbage trucks that look as if they have been shrunk in the wash so as to fit in those same narrow ways.
Early morning remains the most interesting time to wander the streets as those service carts tootle around delivering to the retail outlets, the small hotels and the restaurants where bored-looking staff are slowly unfurling outdoor tables and chairs for the day ahead. On the fringes of the Old Town are vignettes that add to the fun of a slow wander. A grandiose, orange-painted building dating from the 19th century sits incongruously just outside the northern walls. This is the National Theatre, a scaled down version of the one in Zagreb. In the square at its foot those electric carts are loaded from large delivery vans before whisking away into the narrow streets.
On the western edge the fish market is in full swing. The stall holders are, for the most part, women some with lined, strained-looking faces, a few others bent over with age or grey with smokers’ skin. But they are vital, alive, They bawl at each other and at customers across the tiled space. And across the street are the steps up into Trg Republike, a large piazza so closely modelled on Piazza San Marco in Venice that you wonder why the cafes that fill the arcades do not have the competing orchestras of a Quadri or a Florian. At the end where St Mark’s Basilica would be the square is open to the Riva and the harbour beyond.
Turn east out of the Silver Gate to find the local market laid out in the adjacent squares. There you walk past rows of trestle tables manned by local folk selling vegetables and fruit, cheeses and oils, herbs and flowers. Around the fringes are the more permanent stalls of the butcher shops. And shot through the whole of the Old Town are the restaurants and cafes which are always around another corner for a good dose of people watching.
Mobility Access
The street surfaces are those slightly shiny, worn, smooth, rectangular paving stones that are an Adriatic town signifier. The slope down to the Riva is never more than gentle and, the palace apart, steps are few. It is an easy place to take slowly because the stopping places are plentiful.
Marjan and Varoš
Varoš is the part of the town that lies to the west of Trg Republike where the land rises up, gradually getting steeper before reaching the fringes of Marjan Park, a massive wooded, peninsula that juts out into the Adriatic. In Varoš the pattern of narrow streets and alleyways continues, some edged with restaurants and tiny cafes as you climb the hill before the houses take on a smaller scale and individual dwellings cram together behind walls or fences. Most of them seem to date from the mid 20th century or earlier. As the land rises more steeply the streets become those wide steps that take two or three paces to cross and the 600 metre walk up to the belvedere that separates Varoš from the park beyond seems longer than that. Every hundred metres or so on those steeper sections there are three square, wooden blocks set into the ground to act as resting places. At the belvedere there is a cafe and a viewing platform. Both are busy with tourists. I had neither the strength nor the inclination to move further on up the wooded slopes into the many walking routes around the park.
Mobility Access
The lower reaches of this area are manageable for most, but the climb up is, realistically, a non-starter. You can reach the belvedere by car although, given parking is extremely limited, a taxi or Uber might be a better option.
Meštrović Gallery
https://mestrovic.hr/en/gallery-mestrovic/
Ivan Meštrović is to Croatia what Auguste Rodin is to France. A sculptor of such reputation that his studio and house (which he donated to the state) is now home to a museum and gallery of his work. This is no simple atelier but a massive, two-storey, colonnaded building with formal, stepped gardens set high up on the Marjan peninsula facing the Adriatic Sea. His early work does have echoes of Rodin’s sculpture, although much of his work tends to be religious in subject matter. His later work veered towards a smoother modernist style that has echoes of Art Deco sculpture. For a house in which he and his family lived, it feels like a place that he had designed for show rather than for living, a place to gallery his art and to work (his studio is in a separate building in the grounds). It is an intriguing place to wander around, inside and out. Tickets are bought at the shop that sits on the road (Šetalište Ivana Meštrovića) at the bottom of the flight of steps that lead up to the level of the gardens. The entrance is a taxi or bus ride of about two kilometres from the roundabout at the west end of the Riva, which is the closest vehicle drop-off point to the Old Town.
Mobility Access
I considered giving this an orange designation before deciding that a full visit involved far too many steps. There are 30 steps up from the road to the garden terrace then a further 37 steps up from there to the gallery entrance, neither with a handrail. If you want to visit the upper floor, where the bulk of the museum materiel and his works are to be found, there are another 34 steps to climb.
Eating Out
Restaurant Marshal
The Hotel Bastion’s restaurant is in two parts. The main room is air-conditioned but also has glass doors along one wall that can be folded back to create the sensation the restaurant is open to the street. A separate area with shaded outdoor tables sits just off the back of the hotel in a small plaza that is almost a courtyard. Locals and tourists alike move past in the adjacent streets making both areas fun for people watching. We found it was a very useful place to eat as the food is a sensible selection of Dalmatian food with plenty of light dishes and some vegetarian options and we only ventured out on three of our evenings. It also served as a pleasant place for reading and writing and coffee, tea and drinks at any time of day. The staff have predominantly South-East Asian origins and were always cheerful, helpful and efficient.
Mobility Access
The main room is on the same level as the main reception and the lift (and some toilets). There is a step down from the hotel bar to the plaza with the outside tables.
K.užina
https://restaurantk-uzina.hr/en
Alfresco dining again, in another small courtyard down a narrow alley where shaded tables are surrounded by the old buildings that heighten the sense that you could be in a small local restaurant in Venice. And the food of the Dalmatian coast (seafood and pasta to the fore) enhanced that sensation. The food is very good and the service brisk and efficient rather than friendly.
Mobility Access
We only went inside to use the toilets and there were a few steps up into the interior (which has an entrance onto another street that we did not see). Otherwise you are on the smooth stones that pave much of the Old Town.
Corto Maltese
Barely 50 metres from the hotel this place was one recommended by the hotel for straightforward food very much in keeping with the seafood and Italian theme that pervades the Croatian fare on the Dalmatian coast. Right next to the fish market, long since closed for the day, we sat in the evening warmth at an outdoor table as far away from the speakers distributing an additional level of sound we prefer to be without. It was a good place for solid local cooking. We enjoyed it. No website, I am afraid.
Mobility Access
The tables are set on the street so no issues at all. The slightly Bohemian interior was only a couple of steps up.
Konoba Fetivi
The konoba is a traditional, family-based restaurant using fresh local ingredients. Its name is extensively debased to add a superficial cachet to places intended to attract the tourist that are not really konobas. Armed with a short list of nearby konobas suggested by the hotel, we selected this one from the several clustered around a section of Senjska ulica that is pedestrianised and shaded by small trees. A cramped space with a rustic feel, which includes a small open kitchen, greets you as you go through the slightly unprepossessing door from the street but it suddenly opens into an enclosed, walled courtyard bustling with diners.
Eating seafood isn’t quite a requirement but a shared, fresh market fish was very enjoyable washed down with another very good Croatian white wine. Do have a konoba experience but make sure you choose one that isn’t pretending.
Mobility Access
Two steps up from the street level to get inside and two more down into the courtyard. The restaurant is a walk of about 350 metres from the hotel thus within reasonable reach of the Old Town and the Riva. A car or taxi can drop you on the street about 40 metres from the entrance.
Cafes
It was no surprise to be able to find several serious independent coffee shops in Split that offer a quiet place to sup and to read or write in comparative peace. You will find a place that suits you and I found these.
Tinel Speciality Coffee Shop
A shoebox of a space just across the street from Trg Republike and at the beginning of one of the narrow streets that feed up the hill in Varos. This modern place has all the hallmarks of the breed – wood furniture, serious coffee menu and ‘home’ roast coffee, pastries and young, purposeful staff. It had the advantage (for me) of being slightly away from the Old Town crowds.
Mobility Access
Only a step or two down into the shop. Only a bench hard up against the shopfront outside.
D16
Despite being in the Old Town this place is tucked away in the rabbit warren of alleyways in the north section. Although slightly bigger than the Tinel Speciality Coffee Shop, it shared many of its characteristics. Another peaceful place to sit and write.
Mobility Access
Again there is the odd step up and down to cope with but otherwise the only real difficulty may be tracking down its location.
Restaurant Spalatin
This is a full-on tourist restaurant in Trg Republike with a forest of outdoor tables set in the square itself. As such it might not seem an obvious place to lump under cafés. But, in the afternoon, when the buildings around the piazza shroud the outdoor tables from the sun I found it an excellent place for peace and people watching. The service is ropey (slow and with that offhand air that comes from dealing with too many tourists). I could sit for fifteen minutes before someone appeared but when you only you want a place to sit and rest that matters less. My visits encompassed entertainment in the form of a bridal party cavorting in the square and two youngsters with their bicycles vying to show off to those who cared to watch.
Mobility Access
The tables where I sat are in the body of the square, a flat paved surface.
Getting Around
With apologies but there is nothing I can offer about moving around Split by public transport or by taxi. Our hotel was in the Old Town and we either took private car (Trogir and the Meštrović Gallery) or we walked everywhere from there because everything was so close. On our final morning we were taken from the hotel to the ferry harbour by golf-cart and I do not know if this sort of service is available should you need to get to a hotel deep in the Old Town with your luggage on arrival.
TROGIR
Trogir brings yet another UNESCO World Heritage listed Old Town at which point some people will be asking whether they really need to visit Rovinj and Pula and Zadar and Šibenik and Split and Trogir (and Dubrovnik). Doesn’t one old town start to merge into another? Well, I am going to cop out and say it depends on your viewpoint, on what you want from your own trip around this astonishing country. If history and architecture and wandering pedestrianised streets and watching the world go by are not your thing then one or two may sate your wants. For us each one had its own atmosphere and interest. Even amongst these many old towns Trogir is regarded as the one most uncorrupted by later insertions thus enabling it to retain an evident medieval feel. Audley had arranged that we have a car for the day to take us, meaning we could be taken to and picked up from the edge of the Old Town. (We also used the car to stop off for our visit to the Meštrović Gallery before the end of our day.)
Trogir’s Old Town fills an island about 500 metres from east to west and only around 250 metres from north to south. That island sits in a narrow channel between the mainland and the much larger island of Otok Čiovo, linked to both by bridges, one of which dates back to those medieval times. It lies about a 30 kilometre (19 mile) drive west of Split. It has some superficial similarities with Zadar’s Old Town. Its shape is the same near rectangle. It is surrounded by the water that made it such a defensible site. It has fortified walls that circle much of what remains. There is a waterfront promenade outside the walls on the southern axis. Within the walls is a cornucopia of medieval and Renaissance buildings, a Venetian bastion, the usual collection of churches, a warren of narrow streets and alleys, plentiful eating and coffee places to stop, all delightfully packaged and neatly maintained. The only downside is that, because of its small size, it can seem quite crowded with us day visitors. The lovely little main square, Trg Ivana Pavla II, gathers a cathedral dating back to the 13th century, a Venetian-era palace, a classic Ragusan-style town hall and a 15th century clock tower and loggia and is peaceful in the early afternoon. Not so in the middle of the morning when it seethed with groups of listless teenage schoolchildren and the tours from the cruise ships dutifully trailing along behind the upheld board with their designated group number. Again, I think of how it must be later in the season. All of which suggests that the slow traveller might want to consider an overnight stay the better to admire Trogir’s beauty.
Mobility Access
The old town island is flat and the streets are that light stone paving worn smooth by long use. There is the occasional two or three steps up to be negotiated to get up to some buildings (the cathedral and the loggia for example) and the occasional side street with a more uneven surface but little beyond that – unless you plan to climb the cathedral bell tower. We did have the advantage of our private car and driver so I cannot help with additional issues you may face with your own car or public transport.
BRAČ
There is a wealth of Croatian islands that lie in the Adriatic Sea. The raison d’ëtre for most of them is tourism in its many guises. So some focus on the coast’s renowned wreck diving and still more provide beaches and resorts to cater for all markets. Yachting holidaymakers ply the waters and harbour towns. We wanted to try one that seemed less well known than a Hvar or a Losinj. Our initial choice was elsewhere but Audley suggested this one, one of the largest, most easily accessible islands. Brač is around 25 kilometres east-west and around 10 north-south (15 by 6 miles). It rises quite steeply up from the sea to heights above 700 metres/2300 feet. It is an island of swooping hills and valleys, of countless coves and harbours, of small, near-pristine sea towns where fishing has been pushed to a secondary role by tourism, of a bio-agriculture based on local vines and olive groves, of a quarry that once provided the stone for Diocletian’s Palace and of calm Mediterranean beaches. Although we took one day out to potter around the island, this was more about taking time to relax. For us it really worked and we would recommend it for that. So much of that was down to the right choice of place to stay.
Getting There
Because Brač lies just off the coast at Split it is relatively easy to get to (compared to some other islands off the Croatian coast). There is a regular ro-ro car ferry that trundles back and forth several times a day on the one-hour crossing from Split’s harbour to Supetar. We were in the hands of Audley’s local agents who supplied the large saloon car that met us at the Split ferry harbour and saw us across the water to our hotel. In all it is only about two hours door to door.
Hotel Lemongarden (5 nights)
https://www.lemongardenhotel.com/en
This hotel was near perfect for our expressed wish to relax. Indeed I am not sure why I say ‘near’ because I now struggle to think what we would change. It has been added to our short list of places to file for a potential return. To say it is a resort hotel would give the wrong impression, although it has many features that characterise such places: spa, gym, heated outdoor pool (of a sensible size and shape for laps), gardens, beach club, excursions and bikes and cars for rental. Yet it is based in the heart of the small fishing port of Sutivan facing across the wide strait towards Split. One might say the hotel is the heart of the port. It faces the quiet harbour at the centre of the front. It encompasses a separate patisserie and gelateria with its own sea front tables and, further along the front, a separate bar used by locals and tourist alike.
The outdoor tables of the restaurant spread along the harbour front, separated from the hotel buildings by the essentially traffic-free road. It is so close to the harbour edge that you are wary of over-indulgence lest you take an impromptu swim. The staff are housed in a set of purpose-built rooms further up the town. It dominates the neat-as-a-pin sea front, but in a very low key way. Around the courtyard entrance, the rooms are spread across several two storey buildings that blend in with the surrounding town. It has five-star service. The rooms are, for the most part, spacious suites or near suites, many of which have balcony spaces facing the sea or the gardens. All the in-room facilities you would expect from a place of this status are here. The décor has a slightly surreal edge that adds to the ambience.
We ate in the restaurant in the mornings and evenings. Sitting outside at the restaurant tables either as the sun rose through the cloudless sky, or as it set in a cornucopia of blues, reds and oranges as the sky darkened, was really pretty idyllic. We only moved around to walk along the harbour front or up the narrow streets of the town or to head out to the beach club. This is a ten-minute ride by the hotel’s golf-cart along the coast where the private compound offered a full-service lunch and bar, loungers on a low terrace shaded by both umbrellas and trees with only a couple of steps down needed to reach the sand and the sea. And, mercifully, the piped music was low enough only to be heard around the dining tables and had a musical selection more in keeping with the overall sense of peace of the place.
Mobility Access
The hotel and grounds are not large but there are no lifts to the upper floors and one set of rooms is up a short incline, so choosing your room requires some care and discussion with the hotel’s helpful staff. There is the odd step or two between certain parts (down into the bar area or up to the spa and gym building for example). The pool has access steps with handrails.
An Island Drive
The hotel has three convertible Minis that hotel guests can rent by the day. We were able to arrange one with just a day’s notice and it provided a delightful way to get a flavour of the rest of the island. We drove up and up through quiet, sun-dappled pine woods to the island’s high point where you can stop and take in magnificent views that stretch far across the surrounding sea and islands. In Sutivan most cars are banished from the area of the town that spreads out from the harbour but elsewhere the coves that nestle along the northern coast shelter quiet (at least at this time of year) villages and towns. We went east as far as Pučišća, a quite startlingly attractive town that sits on the end of a fjord-like inlet with wooded slopes rising high above the town. Here the buildings have been restored and cleaned to sparkle in the sun, showing off to best effect the stone from the quarry in the hillside nearby that supplied the stone for Diocletian’s Palace and many another Dalmatian coastal city. The road along the coast winds up and down the wooded hillsides and the narrow valley floors are where the island’s agriculture is found. A gentle, slow day on a gentle, slow island. An ideal end to our trip.
Brać to Split Airport
The journey back to the airport is managed by Audley’s local agent with the care we have come to be used to as we reverse our outward trip. As an alternative, the Hotel Lemongarden does provide a private motorboat service that takes you directly from the hotel to a landing stage close to the airport (which lies a 27 kilometre (17 mile) drive west of Split’s old town). A minor word of warning; the car ferry from Supetar operates on a first come, first served basis. On a busy day (at the end of a public holiday weekend in our case) queues build up and, even though our driver had been queuing for more than an hour before our departure, the last car able to get on the ferry was the one in front of us. We had to unload the luggage from the car and become foot passengers. Audley’s local agent, Calvados Club, had efficiently arranged for another vehicle to pick us up and whisk us around the Split ring road for our flight home.
