Avid readers of our blog will no doubt be wondering why we’ve been travelling so fast. After all, we’ve hardly seen Italy, and our legs have got seriously tired and we’ve even starting complaining in our blog. No, we’re not masochists, we don’t hate Italy, we’re just a little stupid!

After speaking to some fellow travellers, we discovered that we had misunderstood the visa rules for Europe somewhat. Although we knew that many European countries have implemented free movement between borders (the Shengen agreement), we didn’t know that our three month visa applied to the entire Shengen zone, rather than individual countries.

The whole Shengen arrangement is a little confusing, since not all European Union members are part of the agreement. For example, the UK, Russia and most Baltic states are not part of the Shengen. However, Iceland and Denmark are, despite having their own currency!!!

Unfortunately for us, this meant that we had spent almost all of our time up to that point in the Shengen zone, leaving us around three and a half weeks on our visas, This left us with three options; exit quickly, leaving enough time on our visas so that we could re-enter later, stay until the visas expire and then leave for 90 days, or illegally stay (we had heard that the southern countries were more relaxed) but have to remain in the Shengen Zone for our entire trip.

We chose the first option. Although it meant we needed to make a hasty exit (and a lot of cycling without a break) it meant we could see Croatia, Montenegro and Albania, but still re-enter when we wanted to start making our way back to Morocco.

After almost three weeks on the bike (with only two rest days), we’re now firmly ensconced in a cheap little apartment in Cres harbour, Croatia. It’s rather nice…..it has wifi, a small kitchen, opens onto a balcony overlooking the small harbour and there’s a very small food market within 20 metres of our door. It’s predicted to rain solid for the next three days…..we may barely move from our beds!