23 May – 11 June 2028

Section 1 – Zagreb to the Plitvice Lakes

23 – 27 May 2028

We meet in Zagreb on Tuesday 23 May, in a hotel near the main square, and the first evening is deliberately nothing more than a drink and a decent dinner. The next morning we walk the city — the market, the cathedral, Tkalčićeva, the Stone Gate, St Mark’s with its tiled roof, then the funicular down into the Lower Town and its chain of parks. About three and a half hours of walking with the stops in it, and the afternoon free.

Thursday is motorhome day. We collect the vans, provision at a hypermarket with a car park big enough to take eight of them, and move out to a campsite west of the city to test everything while the depot is still around the corner. No planned sightseeing.

On Friday the tour proper starts, and it starts well: 131km south to the Plitvice Lakes, sixteen terraced lakes falling into one another down a limestone staircase, joined by kilometres of wooden boardwalk. The whole day is given to it. There are shorter official routes for anyone who does not want the full walk, and the boat and the panoramic vehicle are part of the park programme.

Section 2 – Zadar, Split and the Dalmatian Coast

27 May – 31 May 2028

Saturday takes us down to Zadar, and Zadar is a single flat traverse of the old-town peninsula — the Land Gate, the Roman forum, the round church of St Donatus, the long marble main street — finishing on the waterfront. The Sea Organ is built into the steps there: the swell pushes air through pipes under the marble and the sea plays it. Sunset is the time to be sitting on those steps, and the guided walk finishes early enough that you choose your own evening.

Sunday is the scenic coast road to Split, with two UNESCO old towns sitting on the route as optional stops. Neither is compulsory, and the reward for driving past both is arriving at our base outside Split in the early afternoon with the day still in front of you. This is a three-night stop and the first proper rest block of the tour.

Monday morning is Split on foot, and Split is unlike anywhere else on the coast: a Roman emperor’s retirement palace with a living city built inside its walls, so the cathedral is his mausoleum and the shops are in the substructure. Cellars, the Peristyle, the Golden Gate, the green market and the Riva, done by lunchtime. Tuesday has no programme at all — it is the free day, with the optional Hvar island overnight for anyone who wants it.

Section 3 – Pelješac, Dubrovnik and the Road North

31 May – 6 June 2028

Wednesday we cross onto the Pelješac peninsula over the new bridge and follow the vineyards out to the coast near Orebić. This is red wine country — Dingač and Postup, grown on slopes steep enough that the harvest still comes down by donkey in places. The wine experience that evening is walkable from camp, deliberately, so that nobody has to drive after a tasting. 

Thursday is a slow morning through the vineyards to Ston, whose defensive wall runs five and a half kilometres over the hill behind the town and whose salt pans have been worked by hand since Roman times. Lunch there, oysters if you want them, and on to our base north of Dubrovnik by mid-afternoon. The motorhomes stay put for both Dubrovnik nights.

Friday is the Dubrovnik morning, and deliberately not walls-first. Three hours through the Old Town on foot — the Stradun, the Rector’s Palace, the Jesuit Stairs, the little bar built into a hole in the sea wall — then the afternoon is yours for the walls, the cable car up Srđ, the museums, or a long lunch. Saturday is the long transfer north to a quiet beach campsite below the Paklenica mountains, and that evening is meant to be nothing but a relax and a good dinner.

Sunday runs up the Velebit channel with the islands on your left, then onto the motorway so that nobody arrives in Istria wrecked, and we reach Rovinj with the evening still available. Rovinj is worth seeing in that light — a town packed onto a small peninsula with a bell tower on top — but it is optional, because it is the end of a 330km day. Monday is the rest day: Pula and its Roman arena in the morning, an Istrian olive estate on the road back, and then the afternoon deliberately empty. Istria has been rated the best olive oil region in the world, ahead of anywhere in Italy or Spain.

Section 4 – Into Slovenia: Caves, the Soča and the Vršič Pass

6 – 11 June 2028

On Tuesday we cross into Slovenia and the group splits at Divača — one track to Škocjan for the big cave, the other straight to camp for a half day off, with Predjama Castle available for anyone who wants a castle instead of a cave. Both tracks are back together for dinner. Wednesday morning offers the second cave, Postojna, reached on a shuttle from the campsite gate so that not a single motorhome has to move.

Then the tour changes character completely. We turn north-west over the hills into the Soča valley — a river the colour of which people simply do not believe until they see it — and camp on its bank outside Bovec. The afternoon is free: the gorge above the town, or Kobarid twenty-five kilometres south with its First World War museum and its waterfall, or a chair by the river.

Thursday is the big one. The Vršič Pass climbs out of the Soča valley to 1,611 metres and drops into Kranjska Gora on the far side — fifty hairpins, every corner of them cobbled, straight through the heart of the Julian Alps. We leave at 08:00 to be over the summit before the day-trippers come up the other way, and we are at Lake Bled by lunchtime with the whole afternoon free for the lake, the island church and the boat across to it.

Friday morning we leave Bled early, on purpose, because Friday is the only day of the week that Ljubljana’s open-air food market runs and I want the whole day for it. Ljubljana on foot is the dragon bridge, the market, the old town, the castle and the funicular, and it finishes on the riverfront exactly where the evening wants to happen. Saturday is a relaxed midday drive back to Zagreb and the last motorhome night. The vans go back on the Sunday morning, and then to the airport or into town, depending on your flight.

The Vršič Pass — a word about the driving

This is the one people ask about. The Vršič is a graded, fully sealed, guardrailed road that scheduled busses drive every day in season. The switchbacks in the Dadès Gorge in Morocco, which some has already done, are tighter and rougher. What needs managing is length rather than difficulty: fifty hairpins with cobbled corners that feel different underfoot in the wet, a long descent where you use the gearbox rather than the brakes. We go over it early. Everything else on this tour is tar, and most of it is easy.