Temptation

This morning my Facebook status announced I was 'very tempted by the clear blue sky and sunshine outside.' Having worked all weekend today was a day off; it's never a bad thing when a day off coincides with good weather. Knowing we should really be in the grips of winter already I decided to give in to temptation, get my bike out and go hunting for the trails a tourist magazine I read promised run around the lakes. I probably found them. It's hard to be sure as the map in the magazine was not particularly detailed. Few maps for Bosnia and Herzegovina are. I have one good one but despite being sold as a drivers map it's basically too big to open inside a vehicle.

Today I navigated by Google Earth. Again, the satellite imagery for this country is not their best (drift into neighbouring Croatia and you'll notice an appreciable improvement) but it was good enough to guide me around the lake on the local equivalent of the Great British bridleway. The terrain was much more familiar than anything I encountered in Mostar. There was mud, for example, and it was green and smelt damp. It was also flat which made the twenty-five of thirty kilometre round trip a pleasant rather than a painful experience. The views over the lake towards the sunlit mountains on the far side were, at times, nothing short of spectacular. It won't be the last time I hit those trails.