We Do Adventure

I like driving. This is a good thing as a lot of my work here in Bosnia and Herzegovina revolves around driving. Almost all the driving I've done in the last three and a half years has been behind the wheel of one of Novi Most 's Volkswagen Transporter vans. I won't claim extensive knowledge of this catagory of vehicle but I will say the Volkswagens drive better than any Ford Transit or Renault Traffic I've driven, particularly when road conditions are less than perfect. Conditions are thus a lot of the time; either due to the immediate impact of weather, the aftermath of weather or attempts to repair the damage both of the above cause. I made this video on Monday, when I spent almost eight hours doing a there-and-back-again trip. In five minutes it gives a good glimpse of what it looks like to be behind the wheel in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

While the town we came from in the UK is in the grips of some unseasonally large snow falls, Jajce has not yet plunged into the depths of winter. No doubt it will come. Today we had enough sunshine to add a rainbow to a now familiar view. Yes, a rainbow needs a little rain and we've had a bit but nothing like what's going on back in Mostar at the moment. Rowan was looking at some pictures on Facebook earlier and said she never saw the Neretva so high in the two years we were there. Apparently the border at Metković was closed due to flooding in the town . With so many of Bosnia and Herzegovina's main roads running alongside rivers I've often thought how vulnerable this network is to rising water levels. Snow, however, it is well equipped to handle, at least in our experience. Gritters and snow ploughs operate around the clock keeping the main routes passable, if not entirely clear. The requirements to put winter tyres on every November and carry snow chains help too, ...

There are a great many things we are told that are not true. Perhaps it’s harsh to label them all as lies. Certainly some are merely the result of unbalanced perspective. As our road trip headed south into Belgium and then Germany I began to realise there were great untruths I had fallen for. Britain’s roads are overcrowded. Britain’s motorways always have road-works. Britain’s M25 is really a car park in disguise. These statements are not, in and of themselves, wrong. They are just blinkered; they lack a broader context. Britain may wish to lead the world in a great many things but I’m here to burst the bubble on the idea it has the most crowded, congested roads out there. We all know giant centres of population like Delhi get gridlocked but since when did Belgium have so many people! Perhaps it’s just a tribute to the regional bent for bureaucracy that the traffic around Brussels grinds so painfully slowly. Frankfurt was worse. And on through Austria and Slovenia the crowding and ro...