DAY 119 - KRILO JESENICE TO SPLIT: 12.1 MILES (24,200 STEPS)

17 August, 2011

12.1 miles (Total:  1149.5 miles) 24,200 steps (Total: 2,232,291 steps)

“A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday, but never remembers her age.” Robert Frost (American poet)

The signs from Krilo stated that Split was only 10km away. Normally the signs show the distance to the centre of town, but this one I was to discover was only to the edge of town. Split is a very active port and the Old Town where I was looking to stay was at the end of the peninsula—a further 10km. It was one of the busiest holiday weekends of the year so accommodation and certainly cheap accommodation were very hard to come by.

My visit to split was being organised by the great British team of Chris Frean, Head of the Political Section at the Embassy in Zagreb and Sarina Kalebota, Pro-Consul at the British Consulate in Split. Having seen a great deal of the British diplomatic team, I am hugely impressed by the extraordinary ‘value add’ they provide for the UK overseas. One of the differences between British and other diplomatic missions is that they retain the services of local people. This may have initially been a budgetary inspired move, but the combination of experienced British diplomats and local representatives can be a very powerful, as is the case here in Split.

So during my first visit is to the British Consulate, which is located on the popular ‘Riva’ next to the Palace of Diocletian and the harbour, Sarina Kalebota gave me a tremendous briefing on the “do’s and don’ts” of life in Split. She has lived here all her life and worked at the Consulate for almost fifteen years and as they say, ‘What Sarina doesn’t know about Split—ain’t worth knowing’. Sarina is very discrete, but one can imagine that if ever you wanted a documentary series that would expose to the world the full spectrum of life it would be called the ‘British Consul’—the Consulate is the first port of call for Brits abroad who get ill, drunk, lose their money, get arrested or want to develop business opportunities.  However, the Consulate is also the cultural representative in the town for the UK—which in Split means a very busy life.

Chris Frean had been incredibly busy and travelled down from Zagreb to meet us for dinner and go through the programme for the next few days; a series of excellent meetings. I hadn’t appreciated how ‘sports mad’ the town of Split is. It prides itself on having produced more Olympians than any other city of comparable size, with the possible exception of Leipzig. They can point to 186 Olympians and 56 medallists. If there was any town that should grasp the importance of the Olympic Truce, then it is Split, with the recent experience of the horrors of war and a proud tradition of sporting excellence. I was told that there was one street in Split which can boast four previous world top ten tennis players, including the most famous—Goran Ivanisevic.

We discuss over dinner why Split should produce so many sporting greats and conclude whilst the climate and the existence of sporting role models was important, so was the genetic physique of the local people—invariably tall, in perfect proportion, and strong—this is the case for both men and women. Intrigued and on a purely scientific quest, I return to the busy Riva area of the city where the nightlife is just getting underway and get a seat with a good view to test the theory.  It is hard work, but after only four hours and three bowls of chocolate ice cream, I am able to conclude that there is some truth in the observation; it will require more work to be completely sure.