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The Una River - The first day 2019

The Intotruction

Legend has it that the ancient Romans, warriors who through many wars and conquests somehow roughened and lost their sense of beauty, breaking out on the banks of the Una River, were amazed by the beauty they have never encountered. They swallowed with their eyes the unseen emerald-green colour of the water, waterfalls like from a fairy tale, the picturesque and untouched shore, the surrounding landscapes that have no equal.
Fascinated by the sight one of these Romans exclaimed "Una!" ("One!" Or "Only!").
Above sentences, taken from the Una National Park website, are still relevant today, at least as far as I am concerned.
I saw it for the first time as a boy, during primary school when I was lucky enough to travel by train on the Una railway to the Split town. There was no frequent travel at that time, and when there was, there was no end to my happiness. Whether the reason for this was that my father was a railroad man or not, I don't know, but in my childhood, the journey by train was placed in my memory like "The best in life", so the most beautiful, most exciting, most impressive, most ... ., which with its indelibility and clarity of memory remains fresh to this day in these late years of mine. To such an extent that my heart and soul trembles as I climb into the train car, which will just be started. It doesn't matter where just to go!
Some pictures I experienced in that childhood, even though it lasted only a moment, somehow were deeply recorded in the memory units of my brain. One of them is a view at the Štrbčki Buk falls from the train, a view that lasted literally for a second, because the greenery along the railway line allowed the eyes so little time to look at the scene. Yet, that second was enough for me to remember that scene for all of my life.
Because of that, the desire in me to visit those waterfalls has remained alive until now.
The beauty of that picture from my childhood about Štrbački Buk falls was further enlarged by bicycle rides along the Una river realized several times, but they were all downstream from the Bihać town. They only ignited my desire, because the Una rive downstream from the mentioned town looked beautiful and fantastic, and then how does it look in its upper course!?

"Nothing has changed except my attitude.
And that's why everything has changed! "
In other words, a man puts fences in his head and holds them tightly, and yet by longing looks outside. A change in my attitude, relevant to this story, happened, it seems to me, in 2008 when my friend, an otherwise passionate fisherman, told me about the Martin Brod place on the Una river. The three of them used to get into the car and drive to the place on Friday afternoon where they would arrive early Saturday morning. It was followed by the enjoyment of fishing on the Una river until Sunday afternoon, and then by car, they got back home. With that emotional excitement and the sincere confidence that emerges when you talk to someone who understands you, he told me about the beauties of those travertine barriers and waterfalls that flow over them. I guess he noticed the extent to which my eyes were wide open and my mouth open in a desire to absorb his every word, so in the end, he added that I should go there definitely, I would surely like it.
And so the seed of unrest is planted in my soul!
Before a concrete story, I feel the need to mention something else.
I filmed everything interesting to me with two technical aids. First is my longtime companion - the Olympus C750 camera, still interesting to me primarily because of the 10X optical zoom. The second is the "smart" cellphone Samsung A7, whose curiosity is in the form of two lenses, the second of which is a small focal length, ie ultra-wide, suitable for shooting in narrow city streets.
You will recognize the camera images by the 4: 3 format which I show in the image below

While the cellphone is doing 16: 9 format images, which is shown in the image below

Let it be known, if that is important to someone.

The first day 2019

If you don't want to read, skip the text and see the images of this day of journey here.

You can see the map of the this day of the journey here.


My most beautiful, dearest ... etc life companion drove me to Novska that morning, which saved me a day of riding, a ride that I take several times during the season in my one-day tours around "my territory"

The picture above shows that my bike is quite loaded. I didn’t put the bike with the equipment on the scales, but I felt it was heavy while riding. While the road is horizontal, I still drive somehow, although not fast. As soon as a minimal uphill has appeared, there are multiple shifts to a lower gear and a significant increase in my breathing and heart rate.
I can’t deny to myself that I wasn’t aware of this when I was planning the amount of luggage, but the desire to travel and the (excessive) optimism suppressed that cognition.
In the centre of Novska, I turned right, towards the south, crossed the Novska - Zagreb railway and slipped under the long viaduct of the motorway.

As I crossed the new bridge over the Strug canal, I looked sadly at the old bridge, which had been destroyed in the last war. I remember how I had crossed it in 1985 by bicycle before the unfortunate war.

Far in front of the Jasenovac palce, in my direction, I came on a long line of cars, obviously waiting at the border to enter Bosnia. Namely, immediately after the Jasenovac place, the road crosses the bridge on the Sava river and, continuing straight after the border station, it also crosses the Una river. In that small space between those two bridges, and right in front of the border station, I should turn right on the local road towards the Hrvatska Dubica place. So I paused in confusion for a moment, then bravely I set out to ride around the column.

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That the column has been at a standstill for a long time is shown to me by the fact that some people got out of their cars and lazily watched the surroundings in the hope that this long-awaited wait would finally end. Although I anxiously expected it, no one from or next to those cars is angry that I am going around the column so recklessly. Only one, half-jokingly and half desperately, offered me to exchange my bike for his car.
Turning to the right between those two bridges, and in front of the border station, I descended into the sleeping village of Uštica, where I was greeted by a cheerful dog eager for company.

After the Uštica village, the road has followed by the Una river on my left side, sometimes right next to each other, and sometimes at a distance of hundreds or more meters. There’s no uphill yet, so I enjoy a morning ride on the horizontal road.
And then I remember!
I forgot the bike lock padlock!
There you go now!
After I calmed down in myself something that is a mixture of concern, resentment and self-blame, I decided to go to the Bosnian side in the Dubica town to look for a market there and buy something for locking my bike on.
Immediately upon entering Bosnia, or as it is now called, the Kozarska Dubica town, I found a bank in which I exchanged my funds in convertible marks, as the currency of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina is officially called. After inquiring about the mentioned market, I found out that I need to go some 4-5 km more.
By the way, I was surprised that on the Bosnian side, the Dubica town is a real town, while on the Croatian side, only a small village.

Riding through the streets of the town and asking passers-by I finally found that market and bought that padlock. My search for the market dragged on and I felt a slight nervousness about wasting time. Therefore I immediately set out in search of a way out of town.
After calming down the mentioned nervousness, I decided to drive to the Kostajnica town from the Bosnian side of the Una river, purely out of curiosity, because I drove on the Croatian side two years ago. This means that on the way back from that famous market I did not ride through the town by the same streets, so I was quite surprised when I came across - the town hall.

Leaving the town, which, I have already said, was unexpectedly large, the straight road led me through the greenery. I was passing through a few villages, and one of them invited me to - a brandy. As I usually do not consume anything stronger than beer, I filmed the call with a camera and continued riding.

Arriving at the Kostajnica town (the Bosnian one), I decided to switch to the Croatian side and go to the Dvor town. The reason for that switching was that Dvor town, because if I continued on the Bosnian side, it would reach the Bosanski Novi town, and the Dvor town I would watch from afar, across the Una river.
So, again crossing the bridge over the Una river. The bridge had again crowded with cars waiting to enter Bosnia. It was only two years ago, while I was driving here, I found out that here in the Kostajnica, the border is not the Una River, but that it has been moved to Bosnia for a hundred meters so that the old town has remained in Croatia.

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When I came to the middle of the bridge, I filmed the Una river, which has already shown here that the ride-along will be interesting.

The old town is located right on the right bank of the Una.

On the website of the Hrvatska Kostajnica I found that the old town of Zrinski is a fortress that was probably built in the 13th century, around which the Kostajnica settlement later developed for easier defence. He played a significant role in the wars with the Turks, and his most famous rulers were the Zrinski family.
Right across the bridge is the church of St. Antun.

The website of the Hrvatska Kostajnica states that the church had built from 1729 to 1746, and the bell tower had completed in 1799. Together with the valuable inventory in the church, this monastery complex was one of the most valuable sacral complexes in northwestern Croatia. The church and monastery had demolished in January 1992 during the Serbian occupation. From 1996 to 2001, the reconstruction had done thanks to the exceptional efforts and investment of the Franciscan Province of St. Cyril and Methodius as well as the Ministry of Culture, and Antun Heimiler, the priest.
As a bicycle fan, I was glad to see that the Hrvatska Kostajnica town has similar sympathies.
I parked my one next to theirs, so I filmed this interesting duet.

It was almost 2 PM when I realized I was hungry and it was lunchtime. At a nearby bakery, I bought a meat pie and some apple and cherry pies and yoghurt at a nearby store, and then in the also nearby park I found a bench in the thick shade, and I started with the lunch.
Today my goal was the Dvor town, which is about 35 km away. So, I should arrive substantially before dark, so I shouldn’t have to worry too much.
However, it was not quite like that!
The euphoria about the realization of the long-awaited trip was still strong enough, even too much because the conscious part of my thinking did not allow access to some little things that might not have been just little things.
I feel quite tired, even too much, which confused me, considering that I had a practically flat road so far, as far as the climb is concerned. Well, the mileage wasn't great either. In addition, a full stomach contributed to this feeling of a mixture of confusion, passivity and anxiety, to which my body responded - by sleepiness. In the shade where I had lunch, I immediately accepted the proposal and fell asleep
for the next twenty minutes.

Needless to say, I woke up as a different man, in a much better mood and eager to continue the journey.
The main road led me "somewhere up" where I should turn right at the intersection and go down to the Una river, where I am now. Not wanting to waste my energy on it up and down, I walked along the Una river by a narrow local street which, some hundred meters before I got out on the main one, had lost its asphalt surface.

A special kind of "prefabricated" embankment has seen in the above picture which testifies to the turbulent events when the water level of the Una river goes to the sky.

I was not particularly worried about riding on (short) macadam because I was happy to have avoided an unnecessary uphill.
After leaving the last houses of the Kostajnica town, I drove along the slope of the hill on my right side. Up somewhere on that hill was a railway that gradually descends towards the Una river. In places where local creeks in that hill dug a watercourse for themselves on their way to the Una river, the railway had to cross those watercourses with bridges.

So, on the right side, except for these pair of viaducts, was nothing interesting so when I turned the pedals I turned my eyes to the opposite side. There I had a view of the Una river valley and the hills across it. Between those hills and the river there was a road that ran parallel to the Una river. I have not seen the road but a row of houses indicated in its existence.

From the exit from Kostajnica, at first a little, and then more and more, there were uphills, and then behind them, downhills. After climbing on one of these uphills I filmed a view in front of me.

Even the longest uphills were not longer than a few hundred meters, but they made me very tired.
Although I knew that there were significantly more kilometres from the Kostajnica town to the Dvor town than from the Dubica town to the Kostajnica town, my subconscious was somehow of a different attitude. Almost in front of every place, I expected it to be the Dvor town, but it was not. Encountering those places was followed by disappointment in me.
And so again and again.
After many of my expectations and disappointments, I finally arrived at the Dvor town.
At the intersection I came across, I chose the straight option to enter the town itself, while the one on the left led to the detour.

To the left of the street was a path with a few steps that led "somewhere up." Through the trees, I saw the church's tower, and I correctly assumed that it might be something like a centre of the town or at least similar to it.
Panting breathlessly, and carrying a bicycle over the stairs (luckily there weren't many of them, two or three at a time), I found myself at the entrance to a larger horizontal plateau. The entrance, to call it that, was the width of a normal road (it was even paved). To the right was the Orthodox Church and to the left was the high school building.
First about school.
In a word, with the broken windows, abandoned, it looked creepy to me.

About creepiness, I'll talk a little later, and now about the building across the street from that high school - the Orthodox Church.
It was a little after six when I found myself on this plateau. I was pleased, as there would be plenty of days left to rest and dine and ultimately, solve the overnight problem.
Enough, though not excessively, the sun followed me on today’s journey, and those short but insidious uphills made me sweat a lot. Well, plus dust, so it's no wonder that I wanted to take a shower or at least some washing. I came to terms with the fact that there is nothing from showering today, so I would be very happy with one ordinary faucet.
And where to find it?
While the above was going in my head, I observed the environment in which I found myself.
This road to the left of my bike in the image below was a kind of promenade that runs through the middle of the park part of which can be seen on the left side of the picture. The park is the size of, say, a football field, and around it was various buildings.

One of them can be seen in the image above - the already mentioned Orthodox Church.

It was the church of St. Georgia had built in the mid-19th century. But this time it was interesting to me because there was a faucet in front of it. Namely, in front of the church, there was a stone wall in which there was a faucet with real, clean running water.

To the left of the fountain was an inscription in Cyrillic: "In honour of the Lord in the summer of 2011, the Repak Slobodan family"
I took off in my shorts and washed nicely with soap and water.
What a feeling! It was as if I had taken 10 kg of unnecessary weight off my back.
After the “shower” a dinner was followed. On the bench next to that promenade, I installed a stove and cooked mushroom cream soup.

In addition to the soup, I ate a little more and then washed the dishes, like a real tidy host.
And now the problem of sleeping was needed to solve.
I sat on the bench watching the surroundings and thinking what now.
Now, while I write these lines, I find out with the help of Wikipedia that since the middle of the 19th century, the municipality of Dvor had the most inhabitants in 1937, 26539 of them, and that number in 2011 dropped to 5570 (!!!).
After I read the above, some things became clear to me.
So it all started with that high school building. Its size, its enormity, tells me that there used to be a lot of high school students in this town. And if there were a lot of high school students then there were more people of all ages too. But its ghostly desolation, its neglect, its abandonment by all human activity to simply disappear, guided my logic, which is confusedly trying to comprehend some of these fragments, that it is the same with the people in this place.
Unfortunately, logic can sometimes be reckless and relentless, especially when it overtakes some of the considerations we have in our souls.
There were people, not that there weren't any. But through this park was rarely someone passed by. Either he or she is alone and hurriedly walking towards his goal (more often) or there are two or three of them who are trying to absorb something from this sunny summer evening that will make their sleep more nice and pleasant (less often) after a few hours.
Most of the time I was mostly alone.
Suddenly, completely unexpectedly, I was overwhelmed by a sense of loneliness.
I don't know if I've ever been overwhelmed by something like this like I was here in this town.
It is one thing to be somewhere far from the town (anyone), where there are no people or their buildings, or on some pass, either wooded or not. I was there alone but not lonely. But here in this town that will soon be gone, the anxiety of abandonment that flows in the air has, I guess, gripped me as well. I felt (almost) alone in the world.
I shuddered at these anxious thoughts, and tried to suppress them quickly by thinking about “concrete technical problems”
Where to spend the night !?
I got on my bike and made a circle around this wooded park in the hope that next to some of the houses I would find a few square meters of flat grass and a host who, after my humble request, would allow me to pitch a tent and fall asleep.
There were houses, but pieces of flat meadow were less, and hosts were not at all.
During that tour, I also came to the very centre of the town - the town hall.

Unlike most, this building was neatly decorated but like the others - without people.
I went back to the bench from which I set off on this tour with no work done.
Looking around, not expecting anything special to see, a solution to the problem of sleeping overnight came to my mind.
I'll spend the night in this park!
I'm not too much of an adventurer, I've never slept alone in a tent "wildly"!
But I guess that anxiety of a devastated and deserted town where that minimum of people amplifies that impression instead of reducing it (probably because there are too few of them for such a big place or town) dangerously threatened to overwhelm despair to me, so I needed some gesture, even revolt, by which I will tell the town that it is not dead, that there are more people to whom he looks interesting. And I was hoped that my childish gesture of spending the night in its park, though as strong as the strength of a soap bubble, would wake it up, encourage it to see a faint and distant, yet steady light of hope at the end of the tunnel.
Away from the wide path that goes through the middle of the park, somewhere across from the church, in front of which I did a "shower", in the forest of the park I chose a place for my tonight's (I hope so) peaceful sleeping.

It was not until the next morning before leaving that I remembered that it would be good to film the tent in which I spent the night that followed.

After I did the bedtime preparations I did with one self-portrait before “turning off the lights”

That's how the first day of this trip ended, in which I rode 84 km. Thinking about what was going on in those miles I tried to fall asleep.
Although I was visually separated from the surroundings, the "walls" of the tent were too thin to prevent the penetration of sound, so I could hear every passer-by passing through the park that night. At least that's how it seemed to me until I fell asleep.
My sleeping was restless and often interrupted. For the most part, my futile finding of a more comfortable position was the cause of these interruptions, but in two cases this was not the case.
I was awakened by the conversation of a group of obviously younger people, and completely awakened by the comment of one of them who said:
- Look at the bike and the tent next to it! So what fool pitched a tent HERE !?
"Let's get his bike," said the other.
- !!!!!! (I in my mind)
- You better not! He can come out with a machine gun and kill all of us!
Well, a quarter of a century has passed since the war, but in the minds of these young men, it was as if it happened yesterday. And it is easily possible that they were born after the war.
The next moment my tent and the bike next to it in their conversation were replaced by some other topic. Their conversation gradually subsided, which I concluded with relief that the boys were moving away.
I don't know when I fell asleep again or how long it lasted, but I felt some uncomfortable, even sinister discomfort, as a hint, an announcement of something bigger and more important. A moment later, like a torrent over my body, I was overwhelmed with a fever. I woke up immediately and, shaking from head to toe, I was trying with bad success, in the dark, to put on some of my clothes with long sleeves and trouser legs. Although I didn't have the slightest funny, in some corner of my mind I thought it would be interesting to record this sloppy dressing of mine as my body trembles like a leaf in the wind, and after then die laughing watching it.
After it seems to me, an eternity, dressed like that, I crawled back into the sleeping bag and desperately waited for the fever to stop.
To my surprise, which says I didn’t have much faith in my desire, the fever disappeared and my body calmed down. Even more, I felt the comfort of the heat slowly flowing through my body.
Finally calm and heated I felt a pleasant and relaxing sleep begin to occupy me.
A moment later I opened my eyes. The outlines of the interior of the tent I saw then, told me it had dawned. Apparently. the moment lasted a little longer, and the languid body and tired spirit allowed themselves a very deep sleep.
By the way, a note about the sleeping bag. I have three of them at home. One is ultra-thin, mostly for overnight stays on the shores of the Adriatic Sea during the hot summer. The second one is thick, very warm, but heavy and big. So, I decided on the third one, somewhere between the first two, consciously deciding that, in case of coldness, I would solve the problem with extra clothes.
So it theoretically seemed easy and simple. But it was practically not exactly like that, as can be seen from the above description.
As the proverb says, theoretically there is no difference between theory and practice, but practically that difference is huge.

You can view the continuation of this travelogue


Post je objavljen 11.01.2022. u 08:01 sati.