Discovering the island off Zadar during May holidays
This year’s traditional May first tour of Croatian islands was spent on exploring two islands – Ugljan and Pašman. Both are among larger Croatian island and both part of the Zadar archipelago. They’re even connected to each other by a bridge over the canal of Ždrelac, which is a special attraction of its own, with the large arch.
Despite the cold and rainy weather, which awaited us at the harbour of Zadar, we were in a good mood. Both us and our guides were marry and ready to take on any challenge on the other side of the Pašman canal. After a shore ride with a stop at the island Ošljak, we arrived to the town of Preko and continued to the settlement of Ugljan on the island Ugljan. The town was like abandoned, with nobody around except for an occasional seagull posing for our cameras. Considering the peace and quiet we saw it’s hard to imagine the crowd that arrives here during the summer. At the cape near the harbour there’s the Franciscan monastery standing there since 1447. It’s got a one arched church of St. Jerolim. We pushed forth to the settlement called Kukljica, which became out temporary home. It’s the most tourist developed place on the island, with many bays and beaches, pine forests and the church of Gospa Sveta, with a well-kept coastal path leading to it. There’s also a look out point above the place, with a huge white cross that can be seen from far away.
For the next few days we kept exploring both islands. From Kukljica we took the marked path to the late gothic church of St. Pelegrin from the early 14th century, continued to the town of Kali and headed forth towards Preko and the starting point to reach the fortress of St. Mihovil (at the elevation of 265 m). There’s an asphalt road leading to the fortress, which is quite well preserved and the ruins can be seen from far around. From the top of the fortress we got a great view of the Dugi otok and the islands of Kornati to the south, as well as of the hills and the tallest peak of the island – Šćah. To the north we saw the whole of city Zadar and the islands separating Ugljan from the mainland. The way to the top was not difficult at all, so a group of us decided to “conquer” the top of the island as well and went to Šćah - the tallest peak of the Ugljan (288m). And here’s where the true joy of mountaineering began. The path was almost unmarked, so we were forcing our way through the bushes, between trees and looking for the right direction. Our brave bunch never thought of the risks we were exposed to, but our wonderings between St. Mihovil and Šćah ended OK, although we never conquered the hill. We broke our expedition short and ended in the place called Lukoran. It was an adventure not to be forgotten.
Our last day we had for exploration, we spent on the island of Pašman and reached its tallest peak – the 274m tall Veliki Bokolj. We started our ascend at the place called Nevidžane, and the macadam road was leading us all the way to the top. There’s a lookout platform there, which reminded us of the remains of the fortress, especially as it offered great views just like St. Mihovil. A smaller group decided to conquer yet another hill, so we went to Mali Bokolj, which we reached from the village of Banj and along the way we conquered also the peak of Oštro. The path wasn’t trodden, so we were in the wild heading towards the ridge of Mali Bokolj, but it wasn’t as bad as two days before. And we were also lucky to run into four locals on top of Oštro, who gave us tips on how to find the way down from Banj to the place where the resto of our group already awaited us.
It was time to leave. It was short, but sweet. Vivid but relaxed. Marry, vibrant and full of adrenalin. We were an attractive bunch in Kukljica and the locals took us in as their own. During the height of the tourist season nothing like that could have happened.
