No point in writing about Friday. I got to the airport via a big traffic jam – parking was before the worst of the jam but the airport bus wasn’t. Security was pretty painless and quicker than it looked from the jumble of people crammed in. The plane was delayed – flight information was pushed back about 20 minutes and when it was finally announced, it turned out the gate with a few empty seats where I’d spent those 20 minutes was the actual correct gate. We took a bus out to the plane and then had to wait on the bus for at least another ten minutes, staring at the plane in front of us that we weren’t allowed to get on. The flight was fine. I spotted Dubrovnik from the air – it’s actually surprisingly small.

The flight landed about half an hour late. All fine. It seems to be a pretty quiet airport, at least by evening. The official shuttle bus runs half an hour after each arrival – each scheduled arrival, it seems. We’d missed the bus for our arrival but the Munich flight was also delayed and so we got their official shuttle bus, all seven of us. Everyone else went off with cars or tour groups. It’s quite a long way from the airport to the town via what I suspect are some quite spectacular views if it’s not 10.30 at night and absolutely pitch black. Getting from the main road down to Dubrovnik old town is a bit of a mission, especially in a coach – those streets were not designed for coaches! Then up we went, back onto the coast road and down to the port. It was a 12-minute walk from the main bus station to my apartment, all uphill and I did start to wish I’d taken the private shuttle. Then I couldn’t get in. I’d picked it specifically because it has 24 hour reception but the door was shut and there wasn’t even any sign to say for sure that it was the right door. So I phoned them and Irina came down five minutes later to show me the way in via the garage. By this time, it was gone 11pm so I had a quick look around the apartment and went to bed. Had to be up early in the morning.

On Saturday morning, I had to be at the port for 9.30 for a day’s sea kayaking. That’s why I chose to stay here rather than in actual Dubrovnik. I didn’t want to be messing around figuring out buses at the crack of dawn on my first day with a strict deadline. But you can’t go kayaking all day on an empty stomach, so having arrived at gone 11pm, I had an alarm set for 8am so I could hop up to the next level to the nearest supermarket for bread and juice. This city – or at least this part of it – is all built on the side of a mountain, so everything is on “levels” and there are either steps between them or steep hills. In this case, it was steps. I got my bread and juice, had toast for breakfast, and hopped two levels down to the port. This was where I had my first real problem of the day. I would meet my guide “at the port”. Where at the port? It’s a pretty big place. I looked around for anyone in uniform but where were they likely to be? Where might they be expecting people to arrive? I lurked around the ticket kiosk and eventually decided the best thing would be to lurk by the boat. I’d looked at the boat info. I knew what boat it was and I could see it and surely I couldn’t miss the guide here. But by 9.45, just 15 minutes before the boat was due to depart, I was starting to panic. I got out my phone and was just starting to WhatsApp the company when I spotted two young men carrying two-part paddles which they put on the front of the boat. I stared. And then they stared back! This was my guide! I still don’t know exactly where he’d been waiting for me but I was found!

It was an hour’s ferry to Lopud, where we were starting our adventure and the ferry alone was worth the price of admission. The Adriatic is an amazing colour – bright turquoise in the shallows, deepening to teal and then to navy, and there are little rocky mini-mountainous islands poking out. We were actually only going two islands up and right up until we rounded the corner of Lopud’s harbour, we could still see the big bridge at the far end of the port that I can see from my apartment. We walked along the front to a kind of walled garden next to a church – was this once the graveyard? – and that was our base where we collected kayaks, got changed, put on spraydecks and buoyancy aids and then went across to the beach. We were actually two groups – the other group were kayaking and cycling but we were just kayaking. We went briefly through safety – not in the order I’d do it. I’d do “this is how to pop your spraydeck if you find yourself upside down under water” before “if you capsize, just hang on and I’ll sort you out”. The rest of the group were a family with two boys of roughly Guide age so they had two double kayaks, one parent and one child in each. I adjusted my footrests easily enough once I’d figured out how they move but the others struggled because there just isn’t room for a fully-grown man’s legs in the back seat of a double kayak and it didn’t seem possibly to extend the footrests enough with putting them halfway through the front seat. But eventually we got sorted out and headed straight into the harbour and across to Sipan, the next island. I’d measured this and from our beach to the little headland on the left-hand side is about a mile and a half. My legs went completely numb several times. They often do in a kayak. We had to dodge a lot of boats and bounced over some waves that would have terrified me just a couple of years ago – well, maybe three years ago.

Our first stop on Sipan was an arch which our guide – I never got his name! – assured us was absolutely safe and wouldn’t fall down on us. No, it probably wouldn’t but you never know, and I’m not trusting the geological opinions of someone who not only doesn’t know what kind of rock it is but has apparently never even considered that that’s a thing to know. Next we paddled back along the shore of Sipan, with Lopud looking across at us as if it wasn’t a mile and a half, and down to a cave. Here, we tied up the kayaks and jumped in the water. I wasn’t expecting this. They’d said swimming and snorkelling but I thought we’d land somewhere on a beach or shore and have a hour or two of free time, not “right, paddle up to me, jump out, swim away”. I opted to keep my buoyancy aid on which was a good idea because even in blazing hot sun, even the Med is cold enough to give me cold water shock at first. Once I could breathe properly, I began to realise that the buoyancy aid was making it really hard to swim so I took it off and actually, I worried for a minute that I wasn’t going to be able to stay afloat without it. I can swim. I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t swim. And apart from the few times I’ve capsized, either deliberately or because I’ve leaned away from waves and helped them tip me over, I’ve never been in the water with a buoyancy aid since I was a very small child with the otter suit. I declined to go into the cave, though. The entrance is basically a wild open version of Swildon’s sump 1 – a very short section of cave where you have to stick your head under water. I’ll bob in the cave entrance and assume it’s not going to fall on me but I don’t do sumps and if there’s one thing my caver brain has held onto for a very long time, it’s “cave diving is the most dangerous sport in the world”.

We got back in the kayaks somehow, minus the spraydecks, and paddled round the next headland to the little town of Sudurud where we had a reservation at a small fish restaurant overlooking the jetty. The adults had squid or tuna steak, the kids had spaghetti and grilled chicken escalope and I had bread and butter. More importantly, we had drinks. Our guide had suggested putting our bottles under the decklines where we could reach them during the paddle rather than sealing them in dry bags in the hatches but what that meant was that I ended up with warm pineapple tea rather than the juice by the time we reached Sipan. Fresh cold Fanta was wonderful.

By now the day was getting on. It was about 3.30 by the time we left the restaurant and we had to be back on Lopud to catch the 18.10 ferry. So we paddled across to Ruda, a small uninhabited island (mini mountain) just across from Sipan, paddled into a large sea cave with a huge hole in its roof, and then straight back across to Lopud. The weather was deteriorating by now. The channel betweeen Lopud and Sipan tends to be choppy but the wind was picking up and it remained choppy all the way in to the beach. It was a bit of a struggle. I didn’t see it myself but apparently our guide towed one of the doubles back the last bit. I knew they’d fallen behind and I knew towing was a possibility but every time I looked back, they weren’t being towed so I have no idea when it happened, especially as our guide was also towing an empty kayak from the cycling group. No idea what happened there either. We came across their guide trying to tie up three empty kayaks on a beach on Sipan, so ours helped out by taking one of us them with us. Where did the people go? We saw them coming back later, when we were all on Lopud, and they were carrying their kayaks into the base, so there goes my working theory that they took the boat home directly from Sipan.

Anyway, we got back with an hour to spare, and that was after we’d brought the boats in and got dressed. I went and got another cold drink and some chocolate and sat on a bench to do nothing in particular. By the time we got on the ferry, it was cold and windy and I began to wish I’d brough my hoodie with me after all. It had seemed unimaginable that I could want it when I set out in the morning and I hadn’t wanted it at 11pm the night before. But actually, the wind was blowing across from the Elafite Islands and as soon as the ferry turned parallel to the coast, the wind dropped and it was quite pleasant.

I made a stop at the big supermarket on the port (where I had to leave my backpack in the lockers!) because everything is closed in Dubrovnik on Sundays. Need enough food to get through to Monday. Then I came home, ate toast, had a bath and went to bed. At 11pm almost on the dot, a massive thunderstorm started. One rumble was so loud it had to be directly overhead but the next rumble turned into an enormous bang. The building had to be hit. Some building had to be hit, anyway. I went out on the balcony and looked but there was no sign of anything. I can only assume maybe someone was so startled by either the thunder or the lightning that they crashed their car into something? But I saw no sign of that either. Both BBC Weather and the Met Office were predicting at least 24 hours of thunder and lightning by that point and one of them was saying it would go on until at least Friday but this morning, it’s back to just rain and cloud and actually, although the sky is fairly white rather than blue today, it seems nice enough. Which is why I’m still sitting inside with all the doors and shutters open appreciating a cold breeze. I’m being lazy today. It’s been a long and busy couple of days and I’m on holiday.