Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia: Balkans Explorer and the Dalmatian Coast

Seventeen nights to Sarajevo and the Dalmatian coast and back, with the Alps and the Dolomites ridden on the way out and home again. Riders bring their own bike, or hire one.

France, the Swiss passes, the Italian Dolomites and Ljubljana in Slovenia carry the route east, which is a great deal of fine riding before the main subject of the trip even begins.

Sarajevo follows, with a stay in the old town, an included walking tour, the tunnel museum and the Kasbah. The operator handles the history with care, and it needs it: the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on a street corner there in 1914 set off the First World War, and the city endured the longest siege of a capital in modern European history between 1992 and 1996. Mostar comes next for the Stari Most, the sixteenth-century Ottoman bridge destroyed in 1993 and rebuilt stone by stone under UNESCO supervision.

Dubrovnik follows for two nights near the beach, with the city walls, the cable car, boat trips and the limestone streets that have appeared in Game of Thrones. The full length of the Dalmatian coast then runs north by way of Split to Zadar, with islands on one side and mountains on the other, before the route returns through Slovenia, the Dolomites, the Swiss passes, the Vosges and Reims. The price is quoted per rider. Seventeen nights is enough to make the ride out part of the holiday rather than a transit, and the Balkan roads at the far end of it are quieter than anything in western Europe.