There is a wealth of architecture to be seen here – medieval walled cities, Roman ruins, Venetian palaces, Romanesque churches and opulent Austrian villas – and colourful festivals are spread throughout the year, several of them inscribed on the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage, preserving local tradition and culture. Croatia’s islands are also home to a staggering array of wildlife and plants – from birds of prey to butterflies to bottlenose dolphins, including numerous species that are rare or endemic.
The islands are covered by a network of superb hiking trails. Paths are almost uniformly clear and well marked, and the views are frequently spectacular. Yet remarkably, despite many of the paths being almost no distance from busy tourist hot-spots, most see hardly any walkers at all.
The walks in this guide cover 14 islands spread fairly evenly along the length of the Croatian coast, visiting better-known places such as Hvar, Brač and Mljet, as well as less well-known spots such as Dugi otok and Lastovo. The walks can all be completed within a day, and are almost all easy, with no technical difficulties or scrambling. They range from short, easy coastal strolls with minimal elevation gain to more challenging full-day outings over rocky ridges and summits. The majority of the walks are on footpaths, rather than on unsealed roads and 4WD tracks, and most have access to shops and other facilities (and generally, public transport) at one or the other end of the route.
CROATIA: KEY FACTS AND FIGURES
| Country name | Republika Hrvatska |
| Capital | Zagreb |
| Language | Croatian |
| Currency | kuna (kn or HNK) |
| Population | 4.29 million (2011 census) |
| Land surface area | 56,594 sq km |
| Length of coastline (including islands) | 5835km |
| Number of islands, islets and reefs | 1185 |
| Time zone | GMT +1 (CET) |
| International telephone code | +385 |
| Electricity | 220V/50Hz |
| Main religion | Roman Catholic (87.8%) |
The islands
Croatia’s Adriatic coast and islands are the most popular part of the country with visitors, both foreign and domestic. Neveretheless, population density on the islands is low, particularly outside the main holiday season when they return to their sleepy Mediterranean selves. And while there are several extremely popular spots on the coast of the islands, which attract a huge number of visitors during the summer, inland the islands remain largely rural and remarkably little visited.
Even the most popular towns on the coasts of the islands are quite small, and almost universally have outstandingly well-preserved historic cores, often with narrow cobbled streets and lovely Romanesque, Venetian and Hapsburg architecture clustered around a sheltered harbour.
Landscapes and terrain vary considerably between islands, from olive groves and scattered forest to saltwater lakes, rocky ridges and plateaus crisscrossed by ancient drystone walls.
Given the islands’ popularity there is no shortage of accommodation, and there are supermarkets, banks and other facilities in the main towns. There are regular ferry services to all 14 islands in the guide, and there are bus services to all but three of the walks described.
The islands follow the same regional divisions as the Adriatic coast, and the walks in the guide are arranged from north to south – starting with those in the region of Kvarner in the north (including Krk, Rab, Cres and Lošinj, Walks 1–12), then covering Northern Dalmatia (including Pag, Ugljan and Dugi otok, Walks 13–18), Central Dalmatia (including Brač, Hvar and Vis, Walks 19–24) and Southern Dalmatia (including Korčula, Lastovo and Mljet, Walks 25–30).
Geography
There are some 1185 islands, islets, isles and reefs on the Croatian Adriatic – the precise figure varying somewhat depending on whether some of the smaller islets and reefs, submerged at low tide (it’s easy to forget that the Mediterranean has a tide – albeit a very minimal one in the Adriatic), are included or not. Of these islands 67 are inhabited, the two largest being Krk and Cres, each with an area of around 405km2, followed by Brač (395km2), Hvar (297km2) and Pag (284km2), while at the other end of the scale many of the smaller islands such as Susak, Lopud and Koločep have surface areas of less than 5km2.
Evening light on the rocky island of Prvić, just off the southern tip of the island of Krk, near Baška
Generally elongated, the islands follow the northwest–southeast orientation of the coast, and represent all that remains above sea level of a low, outlying range of hills which once formed part of the coastal ranges such as Velebit, Mosor and Biokovo, collectively known as the Dinaric Alps. Terrain (and vegetation – see ‘Plants’ below) on the islands varies considerably, from relatively flat and low to knobbly hills and crags, long sinewy ridges and spectacular sea cliffs, together with an endless succession of secluded coves, many of them accessible only by boat.
The hills on these islands are not particularly high – the greatest elevation on any of the islands is Vidova gora (780m), on the island of Brač; other prominent ‘island highs’ include Sv Nikola (628m, on Hvar), Osoršćica (589m, on Lošinj), Hum (587m, on Vis) and Obzova (568m, on Krk). While these figures may not seem very high, bear in mind that in most cases climbing them involves starting from just above sea level. In contrast, some of the islands are much lower – the highest point on Unije is only 95m above sea level.
Goli otok and Prvić, with storm clouds over Gorski kotar, from Kamenjak summit on Rab (Walk 5)
The Croatian coastline is spectacularly indented, with a total length of some 1777km over a distance of only around 526km (the latter figure measured as a straight line from the Slovenian to the Montenegrin border). This figure rises to 5835km when all the islands are included – the coastlines of the islands alone accounting for over 4000km of this figure. The coastline is rocky, with beaches made up of either rocks or, less frequently, pebbles. Fine shingle or true sandy beaches are rare, some of the best known – and consequently the most popular – being Zlatni rat (at Bol, on the island of Brač), Vela plaža (at Baška, on the island of Krk), Rajska plaža or ‘Paradise beach’ (at Lopar, on the island of Rab), Sv Duh (near Novalja, on Pag) and Saharun (on Dugi otok).
The islands are formed mainly of Cretaceous limestone – laid down on the seabed in the form of shells and other marine life when the Adriatic, along with the rest of this part of Central and Eastern Europe, was submerged beneath a shallow tropical sea some 66–145 million years ago. The Croatian Adriatic had become a coastal plain by the Pleistocene Era (2.5 million–11,700 years ago), with the gradual flooding of this coastal plain during the Holocene leading around 7000 years ago to the creation of the islands and the Adriatic Sea as we now know it.
The beginning of the trail from Kamenjak, with Goli otok ahead, on the island of Rab (Walk 6)
Croatia is karst country. Karst is formed by the gradual dissolving of the limestone rock by rainwater – or, more specifically, by the combination of rainwater and carbon dioxide from the earth’s atmosphere and the soil, which results in a weak