Knin sits in a bowl of karst where the Dalmatian hinterland gives way to the mountains, with the long grey wall of the Dinara standing over it to the north-east. Above the old town a huge fortress occupies a limestone ridge, and the scale of it surprises people who have only ever driven past on the way to the coast. It is a place that mattered because of where it sits: the gap between the coastal plain and the interior has always been a gateway, and whoever held Knin watched over the traffic between the two.
The town was a seat of Croatian rulers in the early Middle Ages, and the fortress changed hands many times afterwards, through Ottoman, Venetian and Habsburg years. Knin also carries the heavier memory of the 1990s, when it was the centre of the Krajina conflict and the town was emptied and refilled in the summer of 1995. Locals will tell you about it plainly if you ask, and it is worth listening without rushing. The railway still runs through here, a junction on the line between Zagreb and Split, which gives the town its slightly hard-working, practical character.
For riding, Knin is the hinge of a loop through the hinterland of Šibenik. The roads in from the coast climb through dry scrub and stone walls, with the smell of sage and warm rock in summer, and the corners are open and rhythmic rather than tight. Traffic thins quickly once you leave the coastal motorway behind. The Krka river rises not far away and then cuts its famous terraced canyon down towards Skradin, so the same water you see as a modest stream near here becomes the waterfalls of the national park downstream. Spring is good, with green grass in the polje and snow still on the Dinara. High summer is hot on the exposed stretches, and the bura wind can come down off the mountains with real force, so keep a hand loose on the bars on open ground.
Knin is big enough, with around eleven thousand people, to have fuel, bakeries, cafés and a proper supermarket, so it is a sensible place to top up and eat. A burek and a strong coffee in the middle of town do the job. Climb to the fortress if your boots and your schedule allow, because the view south over the Krka valley and across to the Dinara explains the whole geography in a single glance.