Day 4 The return to Slovenia and Croatia

Day 4. Standing outside the Alpi factory gates at 8:00 in the morning I wondered what sort of problems I might have. At 8:30 Angelo arrived and immediately instructed Marco on the problem. They jacked up the aeroplane and looked. The problem they said instantly was that the front wheel was not being stopped firmly on retraction (so much for the advice I had had earlier that the wheel rotating in flight was normal). They dismantled bits, cleaned them all up, readjusted them, regreased everything and then checked the main undercarriage. After about an hour and a half they said it was fine All I then had to do was pay for their time. Enjoyable though it was, it took me ‘til just before 12 before I could pay the bill and file the flight plan which of course required a further hour’s delay. The weather by now was not looking good in the Zagreb direction so I returned to Portoroz. They confirmed thunderstorms expected in the afternoon near Zagreb, so I elected to continue down the coast and stop there overnight in order to get an early start on crossing what are still significant hills 5000-6000 ft. Once again the flight plan required an hour’s notice, so I stopped for lunch. Although there were only two people in the restaurant and one person serving, the service was dire. It took all that hour to be served one course and over half of that was trying to get the waitress to take my order. The flight down the coast though was worth it. Deep blue Adriatic sea studded with golden sand edged islands. Beautiful. I landed as Losinj island and proceeded to tie the aircraft down. The airport was just about to close so I was hurried up. It took no prompting as the smoke from a building clearance site was choking and I was glad to get into the customs hall(!) for the police check. They took over 15 minutes and eventually came back with my passport stamped. I was then whisked outside into a bus for the 0 minute trip into town. As the airport closed, the to staff wanted to leave and so gave me a lift. Losinj itself is a lovely little coastal village and my hotel is facing the Adriatic even though my room doesn’. I have been promised a lift back to the airport in the morning as there are no taxis. I hope it works. With luck then I may just skip the big city life of Zagreb and head straight for Hungary.
So only 160 miles today making 1340 in total.