Day 39 Sunday 10th Mar Varazdin to Virovitica 114 km

I'm getting good at building these rain shelters - couldn't do it in a fresh breeze though

It was raining when I set up the tent and it rained all night. I woke up and decided to stay put until it stopped. I tried to work out a method of taking down the inner tent without removing the outer. Possible if you are a contortionist. The rain stopped and I decided to get going. Just before leaving it started again and I decided to find a hotel that night to dry out. In the afternoon the rain stopped and the wind shifted round to the NW......a tailwind! I decided to keep riding until 8pm to make up for my lie-in...... and camp out again.

In the evening I was tired and just dying to pull up at one of the many cosy bars dispensing Beck's. After an inner conversation with my alter ego (more about these conversations in a later post) I agreed to settle for a 2 litre bottle of Holsten Premium (for less than 2.50 euros!). The shop wouldn't take euros but fortunately, after a heart-stopping delay, my UK credit card worked.

Mini-rant: Are technical (breathable) rain-jackets (Goretex and the like) a big con trick? The theory is the pores in the fabric are sized so that water vapour inside can pass through to the outside but the water outside can't pass through from the outside to the inside. Fine. 

Flaw 1:  If it is 100% humidity on the outside, like when it is raining, why should there be any water vapour movement to an already saturated area?

Flaw 2: The water vapour condenses into water on the cool inside surface of the garment forming a barrier to water vapour.

Sorry about that, but I've got a fairly pricey jacket and after an hour in moderate rain I reckon I might be better off with a cheap sou'wester or cagoule. End.

Let me go! It's getting dark and  I haven't found a campsite yet.

At dusk I stop to have a coffee and fill up my water tank. A customer and his wife think I might be famous and want there photo taken with me. I'm slowly adjusting to this celebrity status. Oh yes, and I know one word of Croatian - Facebook!

Ommelete for tea?

I end up camping on a patch of land behind a Honda dealership. A bright orange sodium lamp lights up my campsite and saves me battery power. I am amazed at the acuteness of dogs hearing. Most nights I manage to set a dog barking up to a kilometre away. There was a little dog in a house about 200m away that started yapping every time I opened the tent zip or turned my stove up to maximum. This is despite traffic on the main road - amazing!