With mechanical gremlins putting a large spanner in the works practically before they had left the startline and cataclysmic weather conditions threatening to make a bad situation even worse, Claire Frecknall and Jo Burt did the sensible thing and engaged Gravel Holiday mode instead. With language barriers, 18km climbs and an excess of schnapps to deal with, it sounds like quite a challenge even without the racing aspect. 

There are certainly many benefits to riding an ultradistance gravel race as a pair - the joy of sharing the experience, the moral support, safety and the ability to work together, draft and share supplies - but it has its challenges too, as Jo demonstrated perfectly just a few miles from the start line.  

The Seven Serpents is a 850km gravel (and gravel+ in parts) route that travels from Ljubljana in Slovenia down through Croatia and back up to finish in the Italian port of Trieste, crossing two islands in the Adriatic along the way and squeezing 16,000m of climbing with some hike-a-bike in there somewhere. While we have both ridden ultras solo before and have done plenty of bikepacking trips together, this will be our first time setting off as an official pair on the start sheet. 

The event starts mid-May, so I was looking forward to some sunshine and dusty gravel tracks after a tediously long and particularly wet winter back home in the UK. The photos from last year’s inaugural edition looked to promise this, but the closer to the departure date we got, the clearer it became that this wouldn’t be the case. Sun cream was crossed off the packing list to be replaced by a long sleeve jersey and some waterproof shorts. 

“How’s my back tyre looking?” Jo asks. It looks like a simple slow puncture, so Jo tells me to carry on. I know he’s a faster rider than me, so I gently pedal off, expecting him to catch me up again shortly after pumping some more air into his tubeless tyre. Half an hour of soft pedalling later and there’s still no sign of him, I know something isn’t right but keep trudging on in the torrential rain and slop. Eventually I reach a small town where I can shelter from the elements and safely remove my phone from its plastic bag to call him. It’s a double whammy of disasters, the tyre is leaking from a tear at the bead and he’s also had a routing error after his Garmin crashed and he lost sight of other riders he could follow. He’s somehow dropped down off-route and I can hear in his voice it’s not going well. 

It’s too cold to stop and wait here, so he tells me to carry on while he admits defeat and fits a tube to the failing tyre. It’s nearly lunchtime now and I can see from the spot tracker that he’s only just back on route a few miles along from Ljubljana, I calculate that even on a good day and with a working Garmin it would take him at least 3 hours to reach my current location and trying to navigate by phone alone in these conditions is going to take far far longer. It isn’t viable for me to continue and expect him to make up the distance, but it is also too cold and wet to stop and wait. Just a few miles down the road I recognise the ruins of an old bridge and realise that I’m in a village I’d visited on a previous holiday, I remember there’s a small cafe just off the route and so I leave a group of riders huddled at a bus stop and head to the relative warmth to wait for Jo. 

Although he took a road shortcut that cuts off the last big gravel climb, he arrives looking broken. He’s been racing to make up time after the morning’s failures and it’s clearly taken its toll. If there’s anything worse than feeling like you’ve failed, it’s feeling like you’ve let someone else down too, one of those perils of riding as a pair. Despite looking like he’s about to cry, he just about holds it together as I give him a hug and lead him over to the table where I’ve been sitting. I then rush to the counter to order another round of coffees, pizza and a huge burek, a traditional Balkan pastry that would become a staple food for much of the trip. I also apologise for the trail of muddy water that was now puddled all over the white tiled floor of the cafe. Some of it might have been tears to be honest. 

Jo doesn’t look in the mood for heading out into the rain for another 120km of riding to reach our planned destination for the night and now that he’s left the route we have officially scratched from the race. Our finishing times would be no longer relevant on the leaderboard, so we decide to deviate from the official route. We decide to take a more direct course to the campsite chalet we had already booked and planned to reach later that night, something that still involves a pokey 400m climb straight out of the town. 

On arrival we’re surprised to find our friend Adam is already there. He had reached a town not too far along from where I’d met Jo, before deciding he was too cold and wet to face the rest of the route so hopped on a train to Postojna and I don’t blame him. He came here for a nice holiday, riding bikes in the sunshine in beautiful Slovenia. As it was me who first mentioned the Seven Serpents event to him, I feel a little guilty of mis-selling the dream. We shower, wrap ourselves in warming blankets and spread our wet bathroom-basin-washed clothing over almost every available point in the chalet before heading to the on-site restaurant for a decent hot meal and a much needed cup of cocoa.


Jo’s tyre is looking even worse come the morning - it’s totally flat with an exploded tube and upon removal we find a huge split in the sidewall. Despite stitching it with dental floss and adding a tyre boot we don’t feel like a remote and rocky 140km day over into Croatia is a wise decision in its current state. Luckily, Google says there’s a bike shop in town that opens at 9am, so we kill an hour eating breakfast before heading down, although we all doubt the chances of finding a 650b gravel tyre in a small Slovenian town. 

The shop is closed, with a note on the door that we don’t understand, but there’s an Intersport just outside of town as another slim hope, although this only sells 26” and 29” tyres. Jo stocks up on inner tubes just in case and on a hunch, we try the first shop again and surprisingly it’s open and with a little gesticulating from us and broken English from the owner, he beckons us to the back room where we rummage through racks of largely unsuitable tyres. Eventually he hands us a 27.5 x 2.0 tyre that may just squeeze in the bike, so we hand over money and roll back up the road to fit it. There are smiles of relief all round as the broken tyre is ceremoniously dumped in a supermarket bin and we can finally remove ourselves from this situation. 

The morning’s faff means that it’s 11am before we leave and even with an intact tyre it’s nowhere near enough time to get back onto the official route across into Croatia to find food and accommodation before the predicted heavy rain returns that evening. This is the point Adam decides to cut his losses and book an early flight home - the forecast for the next few days is looking to be more of the same wet and miserable with the addition of high winds, not perfect holidaying weather, especially when back home it’s warm and sunny. We hug Adam goodbye, ask komoot for a gravel route to Fuzine and actually go with its suggestion. This might be a risky option in some locations, but what we got was 100km of prime gravel tracks through unspoilt and empty forests. It packs in 2,300m of elevation gain, so even as a shortcut it isn’t a particularly easy option, especially as we had neglected to check refuelling points, of which there turn out to be none - much like the official route which had long stretches without any opportunities for food or water. 

The border between Slovenia and Croatia goes past unmarked, but we can tell when we cross over, event organiser Bruno had warned us at the briefing that the gravel is very different in the two countries. Most of the off-road tracks we ride in Slovenia were well packed and the smoothness of the tarmac roads was incredible - so much better than our pock-marked roads in the UK. In Croatia on the other hand, the gravel is more like the off-road riding we are accustomed to back home - rough and loose with chunky stones and hefty potholes. 

The terrain and trees seem to change too - perhaps more rugged and harsh, which wasn’t helped by the thick grey clouds and strong winds that were starting to roll in. Our one hope after the expanse of no resupply was Platak, a ski village over the border that was also on the official route and looked to have a few hotels and restaurants. By the time we arrive we’re virtually out of water and have already shared out the energy bars we’d bought with us for such situations. A quick ride around reveals that everything is closed, but I spot a vending machine at the end of an empty carpark. It’s covered with a metal cage, so I assume that it’s also shut for the season so imagine our joy to find it’s at least partially working and while it refuses our initial requests of a Snickers bar or some peanuts, it did allow us two bottles of Fanta and a bag of dry bruschetta, a disappointing but adequate get-me-home energy supply for the last 25km. 

After a long tree lined descent and a couple of harsh and unexpected climbs we finally reach Fuzine just before the supermarket shuts, so we stock up with breakfast supplies and snacks before looking for a place for a decent hot meal. Options are very limited and the burger bar is closed so we head to a restaurant up the road a little bit. It’s a lot fancier than I feel comfortable in wearing dirty cycling kit, but the waiter does an excellent job of hiding any judgements he may have of us and takes our order for bread, salad and a very meat-and-potato heavy dinner, which is just the thing we need to fill our long day empty bellies, but not the thing we need to drag up yet another climb to our bed for the night. 

We reach the village where we’re staying just as it’s getting dark. While squinting for house numbers, an elderly man in a flat cap walks past and as we stop to fuss his dog, it transpires that he’s the owner of the apartment we’ve booked. He speaks no English and us no Croatian, so we settle on long forgotten GCSE level German as our shared form of communication. He shows us in, lights the log burner and offers us a glass of his homemade schnapps to warm us up and help us sleep well, warning us of the bad weather that would be coming in overnight. We know this already.



The following morning, we were planning to rejoin the Seven Serpents route over to the island of Krk, but we wake to news that the bridge across is closed due to dangerously high winds. It’s gusting up to 115kmh and a large number of riders are already gathered near the crossing unable to move. Howling winds and rain batter the tin roof outside our warm apartment and thankfully our host is in no rush to kick us out. Instead, he offers to relight the log burner and brings down two large glass bottles of schnapps as a gift for us to take home with us. They’re sadly too big and heavy for our bags and bikes, so we decant some into a bidon and use Google translate to write a thankyou note explaining why we are not able to take his gift. It always feels awful turning down such kind gestures. 



At around midday the weather looks to be clearing, so we eventually leave the comfort of our apartment into what turns out to be the most terrible conditions I’ve ever ridden in. It’s a mere 8 degrees C and water runs down the roads turning them to rivers. I pull my buff up over my face and wiggle my toes to try to keep warm on the long decent. It gets warmer as we drop down the hill, but it isn’t until we near the coast that it becomes clear just how windy it is. Gusts buffet us across the road and the prospect of riding across the bridge alongside trucks and caravans is terrifying. Thankfully there’s a walkway that’s protected by a metal barrier, so we can push our bikes across the almost 1.5km long bridge. It’s still terrifying. The wind is so strong that at one point, where it funnels against the cliff face, the rear end of my heavily loaded bike lifts off the ground as I firmly clasp the handlebars trying to control it. 

Once we’re onto Krk, we find a shop to get a coffee and food and gather ourselves after the traumatic experience. We’d heard reports of dangerous stretches of hike a bike in the high winds and a 3km section of peanut butter mud that we’d have to face later that day, so we reconsider our options again. We’re well out of the race now and there’s no need to put ourselves through that sort of thing. Instead, we choose to ride the ‘Quick Bite’ route from the event that had run the previous week (in mostly beautiful weather). This is an easier 550km route that roughly follows the same path as Seven Serpents but bypasses a lot of the tougher parts and hike-a-bike sections. 

As if the weather knows we are taking it easy, the sun comes out an hour later. We remove our waterproofs and drape our long sleeve jerseys and knee warmers over our seat packs to dry. Winter gloves are swapped to summer mitts and a warm glow of relief washes over us. The trip from this point onwards is smoother going. The less strenuous route ensures that holiday mode is fully engaged and despite it still containing some huge climbs that wouldn’t be considered a fun time to most people, it’s a far more relaxed ride and we stop at cafes, eat in restaurants and take detours to visit places that catch our eye. 
 

Our next stop is the island of Cres where we arrive at the port 10 minutes late for the ferry, so kill an hour eating ice-cream while watching fish in the crystal-clear water. On the other side, we wait for the cars to leave the port, so that we can have the road to ourselves. It’s a perfect ribbon of smooth tarmac that runs high above the sea along the length of the narrow island.  Somewhere below us, the full route we should have been on, follows rough singletrack paths. 

Eurasian Vultures soar above us as we arrive at our accommodation and we’re sat watching them on the patio when some Seven Serpents riders arrive to stay for the night. They wash their clothes and bikes and tell us about the tough day of hiking they’d had. The following morning, we enjoy a leisurely buffet breakfast on our own, as the full route riders had already left hours previously.

Keen to catch the earlier ferry and get back on the Quick Bite route, we climb up over the island to the port where we meet a group of tired looking German riders who are all nursing niggling injuries and annoying mechanicals and not relishing the idea of the 30km climb that awaits them on the other side. It makes our 18km gravel climb up from sea level seem less daunting but it’s still the toughest climb of the week. It takes us hours, but the views from the top are absolutely stunning, with the ferry we had taken earlier that day just visible in the distance and around the corner we look up to see a radar station on the summit above us that’s a checkpoint for the full Seven Serpents route. I’m relieved when we roll straight past the path up to it and onto a descent that quickly puts a smile on our faces after the long struggle of the climb. 

The final day into Trieste is predominantly downhill, but much like the rest of the previous week those free rolling easy miles turn out to include plenty of surprise uphill sections. Some of them are just enough to take the momentum out of a fully laden bike, but others are longer and even more energy sapping than the hills you know exist and have mentally prepared yourself for. Rolling into the square on the same day as the riders who have ridden the whole route feels weird - we’re still feeling fairly fresh after our shortcut version with no snatched, disturbed, uncomfortable sleeps on mountainsides in wet clothes or grabbed garage snacks, but plenty of hot meals and reasonable timed starts from comfortable apartments instead. The full route finishers who arrive are noticeably hurting, hobbling about, puffy faced and bedraggled, clothes dirty and maybe ripped from crashes earlier in the week. Some are unsure if they had entirely enjoyed the experience but are still delighted to have finished. 

I feel a little disappointed to not be joining them as an official finisher but am also happy to have enjoyed my week here. It’s still been an adventure on the Quick Bite route and we are happy to have recovered from and made the best of a tricky situation. The route has been absolutely incredible and the challenging start to our week was a reminder that tough times will pass and it’s these struggles that make what comes afterwards even sweeter.