Sinj to Sinj
Date: 26, 27 May 2025
In just two days of not very arduous biking out of Split, we were in a completely monolingual zone. When they said most people in Croatia speak English, they meant most people live on the coast – and we were tucked in under the Dinaric Alps, about 40 kilometres as the crow flies (and there are plenty of them), where the rest live.
We decided to bike up the TD a bit to see the Eye of Croatia – only about 35 kilometres from Sinj, but very much removed from Cruise Ship Central on the coast. The road out of town was very busy and narrow, but only five kilometres out we turned onto a bike traveller’s dream: a tar-sealed road with a 60 km/h limit, almost no cars anyway, and an increasingly majestic view with Lake Peruča on our left and the Alps looming over our right – tree-covered plains, wild-flowered meadows, and the occasional ruins of old stone farmhouses. They’ve been replaced by bland 1990s houses which are no doubt warmer, but won’t survive the next few hundred years – leaving future archaeologists only the empty shells of the old buildings upon which to build their hypotheses of life in the 21st century.
An even quieter, narrower road leads to the Eye of Croatia, a spring that feeds the Cetina River – the longest in the country – and which, from the sky, resembles an eye. Although it’s touted as a Thing to See, it remains well off the tourist circuit and retains its charm. It’s well worth the side trip if you’re biking through.
We stayed at Marija’s Holiday Home at Ćorić on the lake – our apartment was the ground floor of an intact stone house, one of about ten making up this village, each with a well-tended vegetable garden. We imagined how isolated they must be in the winter months – 500 metres above sea level in the snow. The nearest store was 1 km along the main road, and with the help of our babelfish (Google Translate), we stocked up.
We’re trying to learn the basics, but there’s nothing in the Slavic languages in common with ours, so it will be slow. I can manage zdravo (hello) and hvala (thank you), and the smile on Marija’s face when I attempted dobro jutro in the morning made the effort worthwhile. I should have asked her to sing the song that accompanied her Wi-Fi password – FCECBCDFCE – and it would have been a beautiful, soulful lament, but she had already shown enough kindness with gifts of eggs and fruit, and we won’t forget her interesting but cold stone room. Perhaps that’s why the old houses have been abandoned.
It was a gentle, downhill, tailwind-assisted ride back to Sinj (with interesting Jill-led loops through small side roads), where we have a second-floor apartment in “Dalmacija” – listed as bike-friendly, and made so by the owner who enlisted one of his staff to help him carry our bikes up the stairs before giving us coffee in the café-bar downstairs. Their language sounds angry when they’re talking loudly to each other in the streets, but their kindness is just below the surface.
Max elevation: 473 m
Min elevation: 300 m
Total climbing: 878 m
Total descent: -802 m
Total time: 08:40:20
Battery use: 90%. I was trying to use 70% but we went further than we planned. I wasn’t trying to be economical at all as sometimes I figure we’ve spent a fortune on these bikes and I’m going to use them.
Max elevation: 473 m
Min elevation: 301 m
Total climbing: 426 m
Total descent: -477 m
Total time: 03:16:03
Battery use: 55%
Loving your photo gallery and your posts. Beautiful scenery, wonderful cycling. Xx