Lisa and I had a rest day catching up on blogging, diarising and planning at the campsite while Sean and Glenn did their own cycling trips.

Sean went for a ride to Croatia along the Parenzana cycle track – an old railway track. Croatia is only 12km away. Sean crossed the border with no checks and couldn’t find a cafe close by for coffee and cake there. He then decided to come back to Slovenia. That’s when he saw that passport checks were being made on cars re-entering Slovenia – and he only had his Australian drivers licence on him! He started to panic and managed to closely tail a van through the queue and then zipped through the checkpoint. He was waiting for the sirens to chase him down but luckily they didn’t come after him.

Glenn had a different experience checking out the Sečovlje Saltpans Natural Park near Piran. He got lost many times getting trapped behind the airport to get to the nature reserve. In order to get round it, it looked like he would have to cross into Croatia – but he had no passport. He did go across the first checkpoint leaving Slovenia into no man’s land but before going into Croatia he found a road off to the right to the salt pans that crossed back into Slovenia.

Here are photos from his adventures.

After Sean returned Lisa and I joined him for beers and chips beside the pool.

I found a nonalcoholic local Lasko beer drink with lemon – nice and refreshing. Glenn then turned up.

After a frittata lunch at 3.30pm Lisa and I walked down the cliff path to the beautiful natural stone beach Bele Skale. We had a lovely cooling swim in the clear water.

The boys cycled down to Izola to get ingredients for tonight’s paella. In the supermarket they were able to scoop up frozen mixed seafood including squid, clams and mussels. They cycled back up the hill, one lucky one on Lisa’s electric bike and the other on my old hard going bike , and turned up at the beach later.

We started cooking around 8pm after getting back to the campsite late. We cooked using our paella plate on the smokeless barbecue.

We eventually ate about 9pm – a little late even for us. But we are thinking we are moving to Spanish time! After a team effort it turned out very well – a very tasty end to the day.