Cycle trip day 50: island-hopping in Croatia

Day 50, and we're taking a well-earned rest in Split - one of the most spectacular cities either of us has ever visited. The old city sits inside the walls of Diocletian's Palace, a Roman emperor's retirement home that's now a living, breathing neighbourhood of restaurants, apartments and bars. It's extraordinary!

Croatia has been our favourite country of the trip so far, and for one simple reason: the landscape. In Italy we were cycling between beautiful places - Padua, Treviso, Cremona - but the riding itself was mostly flat fields of rice and wheat through the Po valley. Here, the landscape is the attraction. We've been riding through ancient forests, along breathtaking stretches of the Adriatic, and across idyllic islands. Pula's enormous Roman amphitheatre was a genuine jaw-dropper too.

Getting here wasn't entirely straightforward. Rather than take the busy coastal road, we decided to island-hop by ferry, which sounded romantic in theory. In practice, finding out which ferries run where, when, and whether they accept bicycles proved a real challenge. We met some fellow cyclists who'd had to backtrack 20km after discovering their ferry was foot passengers only. We got lucky, but it required a lot of research.

The terrain has also been a step up from Italy - we've had several days with around 800m of climbing, which is a decent workout when you're carrying 13kg of luggage. That said, after 2,500km we're in the best shape of our lives.

The one snag has been a cyst that developed on my right thigh, which had been cheerfully rubbing against my saddle for weeks. After painkillers and ice failed to shift it, I finally gave in and visited a clinic here in Split. The surgeon was brilliant - friendly, fast and completely pain-free - and we spent most of the 45-minute procedure discussing cycle touring and the restorative properties of seawater. His medical advice? Swim in the sea every day.

So we're taking four days off the bikes, exploring this beautiful city and letting things heal. After that it's five days south to Dubrovnik, where we'll stop to celebrate my birthday, then five more through Montenegro. After that: Albania. The drivers there are, in the words of my surgeon, "furious." The roads are variable, the mountains significant, the traffic considerable. The south sounds a little more forgiving, so we may get a transfer down there to avoid the worst of it. But who knows what will happen next?

Watch this space.