BRAC
Distance: 23 miles, Climbing: 1960 feet
FACTOID: Croatia has over 1100 islands.
FACTOID: Brac is the source of alot of the white marble that you see in buildings in Rome.
On the first day of the tour we were eating breakfast by 8 and left at 8:20 AM for the short walk to the ferry we would take to the island of Brac. The ferry ride to the island was about 50 minutes. Brac is the largest of the islands on the central Dalmatian coast.
We got to see out bikes for the first time. There was an option for E-bikes but the Queen and I decided when we signed up that we were not ready for E-bikes yet. All the bikes were pretty new and very clean and obviously well maintained. Each of us was given a new water bottle with our name on it and the guides had filled up all the bottles.
The night before we were told to download a program to our phones called Ride With GPS. All the routes were loaded onto the phone and each bike had a holder for the cell phone. They did have paper route maps for anyone who wanted one.
The ride for today was fairly short but it was very hilly at the start.
Although it is the closest island to Split, a major tourist spot, it is the least visited of the islands that are along the coast. This made for very empty roads.
The first hill we climbed was about 10 km (6 miles) and all in the hot sun. After that first hill we wondered if we should have taken an E-bike as several people on E-bikes breezed past us. Over half of the people were on E-bikes.
For lunch we stopped at an Olive Farm Museum. We toured the small museum. Although the museum is filled with old items used for processing oil we were told they do not actually use any of the items we see but use much more modern machines.
At one organized rest stops some of us were able to go into the water and swim. The beach was very rocky. All the limestone that was used to build the Palace of Diocletian in Split came from Brac.
The ride as pictured in the above map was a circular one around the island. We finished the ride in time to make a 3:30 PM ferry back to Split where we had dinner and were given the instructions for the next day's ride.
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