Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 238 km round trip from Ravno - roughly 6 h 09 in the saddle. On the way it passes Boljuni, Potkuk in Bitunja, Kalufi in Krekovi and back through Potkuk in Bitunja. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,250 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Vjetrenica Cave
The karst country inland from Dubrovnik is a landscape of grey limestone hills, stony fields and long, flat-bottomed valleys called poljes, which flood in winter and dry out in summer. Popovo Polje, on the Bosnian side of the border, is one of the largest, and at its edge, near the village of Zavala, lies Vjetrenica, the most famous cave in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Its name means wind cave, from the strong current of air that blows out of its entrance, cool in summer and noticeable from a distance.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Vjetrenica Cave is where the day begins. Next is Boljuni.
2. Boljuni
In the stony hills of eastern Herzegovina, a few kilometres from Stolac, a field of grey limestone blocks lies scattered among oak scrub and dry grass. These are stećci, medieval tombstones carved between roughly the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, and Boljuni has a few hundred of them, many decorated with reliefs: rosettes, crescents, spirals, hunters with spears, dancing figures holding hands, a man raising an oversized hand as if in greeting. Nobody fully agrees on who made them or what all the symbols mean, which makes standing among them oddly moving. Together with other cemeteries across Bosnia and Herzegovina and its neighbours, Boljuni is part of the UNESCO site of Stećci Medieval Tombstone Graveyards, inscribed in 2016.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Boljuni comes up about 36 km into the recorded legs. Next is Potkuk in Bitunja.
3. Potkuk in Bitunja
Grey limestone, thin grass, a scatter of oaks and juniper, and among them heavy blocks of carved stone lying where they were set some six or seven hundred years ago. Potkuk, near the hamlet of Bitunja in eastern Herzegovina, is one of the necropolises of stećci, the medieval tombstones that were added to the World Heritage list in 2016 together with sites across Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
about 72 km into the recorded legs you reach Potkuk in Bitunja. Next is Kalufi in Krekovi.
4. Kalufi in Krekovi
The Nevesinjsko polje is a broad, flat-floored basin high in the karst of eastern Herzegovina, ringed by bare limestone hills, and at Krekovi, near its edge, a group of stećci known as Kalufi stands in the grass. These medieval tombstones, carved between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, belong to the transnational World Heritage Site inscribed in 2016. At Krekovi you find slabs, chests and gabled forms, some decorated with crosses, rosettes and borders, set in rows facing roughly east to west in the old tradition.