A night restless as the wind that whips through our tent, slicing through the cover and into our sleeping bags as though each were threadbare. We awake to find that most of the tent corners have shed their terrestrial trappings and are flapping about in the fierce gusts, leaving the pegs uselessly anchored into the ground - and yet the tent itself remains underneath us, has not blown off the cliff into the cold Adriatic as we had feared...
...and our day starts with a slow ride back down the hill into Senj, where we eat breakfast and drink our morning coffee and seek refuge from the wind. The wind is everything now, equally much so as the rain was all-encompassing only two days ago. It is unpredictable, occasionally blowing with a force that threatens to sweep us off our bikes past the often non-existent guardrails; even when it dies down, it is still strong enough to wick any sweat out of our cycling jerseys and leave us shivering. We decide that it is best to wait until the sun has risen over the coastal mountains, mitigating the cold winds with its heat...
...which it does by roughly 0900; we're off! The wind has not truly let up, but we cannot wait forever in Senj; we itch to ride, even more so than we desire safety from the wind, and so we inch back up the hill to pass our cliffside campsite and continue on down the coastal highway 8 towards Zadar, Split, and - eventually, after crossing through 10 km of Bosnia - Dubrovnik.
This is hands-down one of the best locations of the entire trip thus far. The islands of Krk, Rab, and Pag are unlike anything we've seen; their coast-facing slopes, denuded by grazing goats and powerful winds, appear as some sort of lunar landscape - it is a shame we are unable to make it over there, for the other side of Rab is reputed to contain several magnificent beaches next to a section of rainforest. Nevertheless, the view from the mainland is an uninterrupted spectacle; settlements are scarce through this stretch of road, and it is uncommon to see even one town in 15-20 km...
We continue down the coast for some time, at last reaching Karlobag after several hours and many hills' worth of cycling. This is the first town of any considerable size since Senj some 60 km or so behind - indeed, we were forced at midday to make a lunch of pasta, garlic, and olive oil, these being the only ingredients that we keep regularly stocked in our pantry. We finally restock in Karlobag, loading up on food for supper and breakfast. By now, we have assumed a regular pattern in our cooking: we cook large suppers, enough to fill our Tupperware container for the next day's lunch, and make sure to grab breakfast materials at the same time - in this way, we need only visit the markets once per day. Our breakfasts have become quite basic, consisting primarily of yogurt with whatever cereal or müsli we have in the pantry - a good, simple, and inexpensive high-energy meal to start the day! It is at last cool enough at night to reasonably store yogurt, something that would have been unthinkable in the mold-inducing heat of Spain and Portugal...
...and we continue on past Karlobag, fighting against the ever more fierce winds. At one point, the wind is so strong that we are nearly blown sideways off the road, and we consider stopping for the night on an unoccupied terrace by the roadside...but we take a short break, the wind subsides, and we keep on going right down into the pseudo-riviera - for it is the fashion here to call every potentially touristic seaside stretch a "riviera" - until we happen upon a small terrace of olive trees with adequate space to set a tent and a decent stone beach for cooking beneath. We cook and drink and eat away the evening hours, basking in the Adriatic sunset...
...and, having had our fill of food for the night, we head back up to our bikes so that we may detach the tent from my pannier rack and set it on the soft ground beneath the olive trees - but alas! It is not to be; the Croatian Road Service happens upon our would-be campsite, the driver of their neon-orange van inquiring probingly as to what exactly we might be doing there at such a twilight hour. There is nothing else for it: the site is compromised, so we continue on yet again - this time trying valiantly to see by the light of our meagre headlamp - and manage to find a scenic lookout a few kilometres down the road that is protected enough from view to avoid attracting the repeat attentions of the Road Service. We toss the sleeping bag down on the tent footprint, not even bothering to set the tent itself - there are no bugs here, and the weather is expected to hold up for a few days yet - before catching a night of sleep under the stars...