After showing you around the town yesterday, we are now off to explore of the Island of Hvar! Rosie and The Operator have had some of their best holiday times on a scooter. Today was no exception!
Deanos Scooter rentals opened at 0930 and we were there as soon as he opened his doors…well OK, there were no doors…as there was no shop. We were there as soon as he stepped behind his kiosk.
The Operator signed on the dotted line, handed over his passport as security and with a basic map and Deanos recommendations we were off on our 125cc. Hvar itself is not a very big island, 76km long and 12km at its widest. We had a nice relaxed loop trip planned and were off to make the most of it.
This scooter easily hauled up the New Road Hill road outside of Hvar en route to Stari Grad. Rosie was feeling good, The Operator had just passed a line of traffic that was being held up by two tourists on rented nifty 50 scooters….man they were going slow, as we flew past. We had stopped at a couple of laybys on our way up the hill to take photos of the view before us and from the side of the road we saw the Nifty 50s buzz past us like annoying gnats.
Quick, said The Operator back on the bike…the chase was on. Well, to be honest it didn’t take long to overtake the doggedly slow amateurs again. The Operator cut in front and swerved done a side road in front of them that led down to a wee cove boarded up tight for winter. The white pebbly beach looked amazing with the pebbly looking sky above and the grand balconied resorts of yesterday on the shore front. What is that buzz? The Nifty 50s had just pulled into the cove as we were ready to leave.
Driving up the steep hill out of the cove and having just turned back onto the main Rosie screams in The Operators ear and starts waving her foot around on the side of the bike. Whats happened! Stay still, yells The Operator back!
‘Its got me, its got me, its still stinging me’, yells Rosie shaking her foot on the back of the bike. The Operator yells back at Rosie to stay still or we will fall off as tries to negotiate a stop on a narrow uphill stretch of road.
Rosie, screaming in utter pain cannot repeat what she was yelling at The Operator. Credit to The Operator for managing to control the shaking, wobbly bike and park safely. Rosie jumped off the back and The Operator pulled off her sandal….a bee was lodged between the sandal and the strap and its stinger was deep in Rosies foot….my god did it hurt! 15 minutes into our journey.
Rosie silently dares The Operator to repeat what he said to me before we left the apartment about not wearing sandals on the bike….he knows better….and never utters a word. Stinger removed and magic spit applied we are ready to move off again.
Stari Grad is only 16km from Hvar, we pulled into town parked the bike in the small harbour and were just in time to see the fishing boats coming back in with their catch of the day.
A right crowd had gathered on the stone dock and were watching and waiting for the catch to be unloaded so they could buy it. How is that for fresh!
This ancient stone town, the oldest settlement on the island, was quiet as Rosie and The Operator wandered the streets. Its history stretches back in time to the Greeks who first started a settlement here in mega BC.
The look of the town was very Northern Hemisphere, small shuttered windows and blank walls with no decorative stonework.
It looked a place that weathered huge storms and was able to batten down the hatches readily and easily. There was nothing frilly and fussy about the 15th century buildings of the old town, the only decoration were the scattered flowers and planters of green outside some front doors or on window sills.
Yet the narrow streets once again had a unique beauty to themselves and every twist and turn was another pictorial delight to Rosie.
Skor Square is the main square in Stari Grad, it is small, in keeping with the town and very picturesque. The square was formed in the 17th century from a stretch of shallow water where there was once a shipyard that was infilled, the name Skor, comes from the Dalmatian language meaning shipyard. The houses are beautiful and curving stone staircases lead up to the doors. Flowers on the plants are still hanging in there from the summer and we are the only people here drinking it all in.
A couple of streets over the Church of St Stephen nearly takes up the whole small square. Rosie is backed up to the wall on the other side of the square and can only just get everything she wants into a photo albeit at a jaunty angle.
The church was built in 1605 and the bell tower which stands independently on the other corner of the square was built in 1753. The large stones which make up both buildings were taken from the ancient stone walls which once surrounded the town hence the same beautiful coloration. This square used to be the hub of decision and rule making in the village and has since subsided to blissful peace and quiet when the town turned more toward the waterfront.
This ancient relief carving high up on a wall in this square is worn with time and age, quite rightly so…it is from the 2nd century AD and shows the winged god Erotes. Forerunner of cupid….god of love and eroticism….I wonder what they got up to in this house overlooking the holy square back in the day.
The Harbourside was adorned with cushioned chairs that overflowed from cafes. Making the most of the autumn sun locals and tourists were sitting drinking coffees looking at the twinkling blue.
The smell of the lavender stalls hit you before you saw the purple kiosks. Lavender is grown commercially on the island and is sold in many forms from oil to hand creams, pomanders and drawer liners etc.
The ring of harbour is the only area in this town that looks alive and lived in, the more you wander into the interior as you can see from the above pictures it looks a little derelict and shut up, like everyone has abandoned the town and left. Turn a corner though on every second street and there you discover a pocket of life being lived.
On the outskirts of Stari Grad the final harvests of summer are being made in home gardens and the ground reploughed for the winter, anyone with a bit of spare garden has it in fruit and veges. The larger sections all have rows and rows of grape vines or olive trees that emulate the larger fields outside of Stari Grad.
This large fertile flat plain just out of town is simply known as the Stari Grad plain. The plain was bordered by the Greeks back in the day with dry stone walls and up to seventy smaller plots inside were allocated and marked with drystone walls. These plots are still in evidence and used today making this land one of the oldest, continuously used and organised agricultural plots in the world for its grapes, olive trees and fig growing.
There are over 40,000 wineries through out the country of Croatia, many small family growers bottle enough every year for themselves and might supply a local restaurant or two. Its is very hard to get the same wine that you like in a restaurant anywhere else outside a region, or island sometimes.
Vrboska is just a couple of kms out of Stari Grad, it is another picture perfect tiny port town that gives the impression of a sleepy hollow.
Its harbour backs up into the town and a series of picturesque humpy back bridges span it. Kids were racing up the footpath on their scooters, and doing a circuit around the bridges trying to catch each other. Their shrieks and laughter the only noise in this small town. Chaps were fishing off the low bridge into town and families were out strolling making the most of the clear warm day.
The next town is Jelsa, a couple of kms further down the road. Rosie and The Operator stopped for lunch here and watched the quiet harbour whilst eating our octopus carpaccio and pancetta pasta with mushrooms and truffles. Cyclists were stopping in this town for coffee as they toured the countryside.
We were leaving the flat plains behind and the landscape outside the town was starting to get hilly again. Stone monoliths of rock rose up behind the rolling hills which were still lush and green, cultivated with olives and grapes interspersed with pine forests. Beautiful churches clung to the hillsides being supported in the perfect picture by small stone houses.
We turn off the main road and the route becomes very windy and goes up hill and down dale. This is a wee loop ‘from and back too’ the main road passes us through the villages of Pitve, Vrisnik, Svirce and Vrbanj.
They are the kind of out of the way places where locals wave to you and kids are riding bikes with their pet dogs keeping pace. Grandad is riding his tractor back home from the fields with a ciggie hanging from his lips and he is tanned a leathery brown from the summer. We don’t stop, we just ride on through the small towns taking in the everyday rural sights.
We then turned off the New Road onto the Old Road which used to be the Main Road to Hvar until it was bypassed with the New Road…you get it?
This Old Road, once the main highway, is being left to crumble and deteriorate just like the villages you pass through as you get further and further away from the New Road.
We are starting to climb as well, the further uphill we go the rockier and crumblier the terrain becomes. Large vertical cliffs of stone tower above us and the canyons are shadowy and cold. The steep ground is terraced with the rock cleared from the fields.
Spartan olive trees cling to the hillside and are companions to fields of lavender which are taking over the landscape. The lavender bushes are at their flowering best in June and July and with it being October, they are long harvested and the plant is silvery grey for winter and blends into the rocky landscape. The smell of full bloom is amazingly still in the air and travels on the breeze as we drive through the valleys, it is a very beautiful fresh smell on this clear bright day.
The villages along the old road are decaying and dying, one half of a house has no roof whilst the smaller front is neat and tidy and obviously still lived in. Car bodies lie in the front yard among piles of stone.
We are still climbing higher and higher on the road, at the highest point you can see all the way back to Stari Grad and its sea inlet.
The downhill section back to Hvar doesn’t seen as long, soon we are driving back into town and our day is done. Deano recommended a bar down the road for a Happy Hour and wasn’t far behind us in finding a seat for himself. It was a great way to end the day with a nice cold beverage watching the harbour. Back then to our balcony to watch the sunset and have another tipple while watching the fisherman come home. Then around the bay for some dinner.
What a fabulous time we have had on the Island of Hvar! Time slowed down and we, like everyone else were not in a hurry. Rosie has just confirmed that ‘Island Time’ is not just a Pacific thing…it applies to every island world wide…Rosie is sure.
Tomorrow we catch the ferry back to Split where we will spend a few days exploring the city. Rosie cannot wait, this is one of the top destinations she has been dying to visit in Croatia.
