Going fast - sort of!

In an email to a friend the other day I mentioned that in the last three months the fastest I’ve driven was 80kph. They’d done a fair amount of travelling with us in the UK and were well familiar with the way we used to enjoy our Minis. Needless to say they were surprised, possibly verging on disbelieving. However, I know I wasn’t lying. The Toyota Combi we drive here gives no impression of being able to travel any faster than the national speed limit for out-of-town single carriageway roads. I have taken to telling myself all speed sign are in fact in miles-per-hour to save myself from depression. That we spend most of our lives trundling around at thirty miles-per-hour or less requires some getting used to.

Today we travelled to Dubrovnik to pick up Rowan’s family from the airport. I made the welcome discovery that Croatia has a 90kph speed limit on out-of-town single carriageway roads. The two and a half hour journey contained two or three short sections of uphill dual carriageway along the Croatian coast but apart from that you must either exercise patience in single file or resort to life-threatening overtaking manoeuvres. So for much of the journey we trundled but for a few brief moments we actually felt like we were moving. On one section of downhill I actually caught the needle hovering around the magical three figures. I’ll choose to ignore the fact those three figures are the poor relative of their UK equivalent and enjoy the feeling of going fast again.