Friday 7th October was a huge day! Dominic’s birthday, he was flash flooded at work. Terrible.

We wanted to see the National Park but tours left and returned to Zadar, 2 hours each way. After some discussion between two taxi drivers, the English speaker, offered to take us, wait a couple of hours and then continue the journey on to Rijeka which was our next stop.

8am our driver arrived in a very nice car and chauffeured us in less than two hours to Plitvica lakes. In the centre of a forest of beechwood mountains are a succession of turquoise lakes with waterfalls, one was 78m high. we chose a relatively short walk and followed the signs well, until we didn’t. Took the ferry across one lake to start, and back to finish. Except we turned right afterwards and did another 4km To arrive back at the ferry. We were not the only ones. Simon was waiting at Entrance 2 where he dropped us. We waited at Entrance 1. Mobile phones saved the day.

The beech trees were all colours of autumn and dropping leaves to make carpets for us to walk on. Tracks required us to look where we walked, steps up and down in stone were hard to see at times. Lots of tourists some with dogs, others with babies and a few big groups made our progress slow as we negotiated two way walking on a one way track. The lakes were clear and tempting for a swim. All we could do was take photos, thousands were taken that day.

Simon drove us on to Rijeka and our new accommodation and we chatted about the 1990’s war and politics, here and there.