Senj is the town of the bura, and you should know about the bura before you get there. This cold, dry wind falls off the Velebit mountains onto the Adriatic coast in sudden gusts that can exceed a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour, and Senj sits in the worst of it, in a gap where the wind funnels straight down to the sea. Lorries get blown over on the coast road, the authorities close it to motorcycles and high-sided vehicles, and local houses have stones on the roof tiles. If the sea looks white and the flags are flat out, wait it out in a cafe. The bura usually blows from autumn to spring, and in summer it is much calmer.
It was a rough town for a rough job. For much of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Senj was the base of the Uskoks, refugees from the Ottoman advance who became border fighters and, for the Venetians, pirates. They defended the Habsburg frontier from the Nehaj fortress, a square tower built in 1558 on the hill above the town, and raided Venetian shipping with such persistence that it led to a war. The fortress is still there and can be visited, with a view over the channel and Krk island. Senj also has an older distinction. It was a centre of Glagolitic printing, the Croatian alphabet of the early medieval church, and a printing house was working here in the late fifteenth century, one of the earliest in the Slavic world.
The riding on the Adriatic Highway is extraordinary. Heading south from Senj, the road clings to a stark, bare karst coastline, with white limestone slopes falling into blue water and the islands of Rab and Pag low on the horizon. The corners are long and open, the surface is good and the views are almost constant, but the road is narrow in places, with trucks and campervans in summer, and speed controls are frequent. The best time is early morning or late September, when the light is clear and the heat gentler, and the traffic has thinned.
Senj has about five thousand people, so fuel, supermarkets, bakeries and seafood restaurants are all easy. A plate of grilled fish or a bowl of black risotto is the thing to order, and the old town, with its cathedral and narrow lanes, is worth a short walk. Fill up here before heading south, as the coast has long stretches with nothing but rock and sea.