900 Miles in Search of Croatia: A road trip from Winchester to Croatia

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I stood there unable to speak.
I was lost for words and hadn’t a clue what to do next. The big scary man in front of me was shouting angrily in a foreign language. My wife Jane was watching nervously from the hire car while the guard dogs were barking and circling aggressively. We had just arrived after a desperate two hour ramble with AWOL Google Maps in deepest darkest Croatia trying to locate where our camper van and all our possessions were being kept. It was the big man’s swanky garage with acres of new white concrete and rows of vehicle ramps under huge glistening steel buildings. The only words I could understand as he furiously waved his hands were ‘DIESEL PUMP KAPUT!! – GO BACK TO ENGLAND!!’ Which he kept repeating as if I were deaf. The ridiculously-big-for-this- rural-village iron gates surrounding the compound were just about to close and we literally had minutes to decide what to remove from our vehicle before we made our escape. Not quite the Fall of Saigon but we had to leave quickly and with just what we could carry on our backs. We grabbed the essentials and literally seconds before we locked the van to hand over the keys remembered our cash stash of €500 under the driver’s seat – phew. We chucked our stuff in the back of the car and sped off pondering three things; Would we ever see our beloved 28 year old VW camper van again? Was this some kind of Russian backed drug farm hide-out covering as a harmless outback neighborhood garage? What were we going to do after returning the hire car that day when it would be just the two of us with a couple of suitcases, the clothes we were standing in, stuck in another country in a place where it seems absolutely none of the 1.5 billion people globally who can understand English actually live.

This long awaited sequel to the Amazon bestseller '900 Miles for a Cornetto' takes us in search of yet another fascinating adventure. This time it's Croatia and the idyllic Istrian peninsular. The VW camper van fan and guitar playing writer Andy Read discovers the magic of Pula, Rovinj and Porec and uncovers the history and charm of this part of the Adriatic coastline. Join the expedition as the route south takes in Belgium, Germany, Austria and Slovenia, followed by the return journey through Italy, Switzerland and France. There's people to meet and things to learn, new sights to see and shiny treasures to discover in this roller coaster ride of crisis, disaster, fun and good times – and everybody gets home in one piece, just.